What would your perfect day look like? What would it need to include?
It’s fun to think about a perfect day, but of course, we realize, a perfect day isn’t really possible. Still, how great would it be if your day included most of these qualities you listed? Half? Some? It would still be an incredible day, right?
I wonder how many of us aren’t even hitting one of these per day? Why is that? I’m guessing it’s because we didn’t make time for it and plan it into our day. Sure, conflicts come up and there can always be urgent tasks to finish, but planning some of what we love will brighten anyone’s day. Right? Let’s remember to schedule blocks of time for some of the activities we enjoy doing along with all those pesky to-do items from our daily rat race.
We cannot have a great day if we don’t even know what it would look like, right? Let’s plan for it.
What does your day look like now? What do you need to start including?
I had the good fortune a few year’s back of asking David Blaine any one question I wanted, so I chose, “What is the most influential book you have ever read?” His answer to me? The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. I did a quick search on iBooks and found it was a free book. I downloaded it and began reading. What a treasure trove of applicable life lessons.
Benjamin Franklin tried to live a perfect day and deduced that while it wasn’t possible, we can do much to improve our day.
Here is a peek at Ben’s schedule from 1750:
I look at his day and I find some great advice that we can apply:
1) Begin Your Day With an Empowering Question: Franklin asks “What good shall I do this day?” What questions are you asking yourself and are they empowering you? Create some great questions to help you get yourself moving in the direction you want.
2) Work is for Work: Franklin clearly establishes the need to focus and finish work while at work. He doesn’t bring anything home. Make the best use of your time when at work. Don’t bring work home. What a great philosophy. Make time for work and knock it out of the park, and when quitin’ time hits, well… enjoy yourself.
3) Make Time for Yourself: Franklin made time for himself each day. He balanced this in with his chores and work. He made time for himself. Too often I find if we don’t schedule what is meaningful it just doesn’t happen. To live without a schedule means leaving things to chance and that’s when we either don’t make time for things we enjoy, or we lose hours wandering the internet meaninglessly or watching way too much TV. Make time for yourself and balance it in your day.
4) Everything Has it’s Place: Rather than a huge spring cleaning, Franklin builds in time for organizing what he has. I will take the liberty to assume Franklin is somewhat of a minimalist and avoids clutter. Sure these could be chores around the house as well, but if so, it is not the all-encompassing chores many of us bury ourselves in each day.
5) Make Time for Reflection: I really like how Franklin ends his day in reflection, asking himself what good he has done. I think each of us needs to reflect at the end of the day and examine how we spent it. We should ask ourselves what we should keep doing, start doing, and stop doing. Reflection is key.
6) Rest is Important: For many, a good night’s sleep is negotiable, but not for Ben. he made it a priority and accounted for it. Rest is important to those who want to make the most of life. He didn’t over sleep. He kept to a schedule. He made sleep of equal importance in his day as all of his other activities.
7) Wake Early: We can see the Franklin woke up early and that this was important to him. When you look at his life it is amazing what all he accomplished. Waking early was clearly a key to his success.
Make your day great!
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