PART 1 in the SERIES “Open and Closed Hand Living’
Today, I am starting a series of posts called ‘Open and Closed living”
One of my biggest struggles in knowing what to keep in a closed hand and what to keep in a open hand. As a typical guy, I am constantly trying to decide what my priorities are and manage my time EFFICIENTLY.
Should I be spending time on my business, on my website, with my wife or with my family? What is appropriate and when?
I would love to spend ALL my time at home with my kids and not have to think about work but realistically – that ain’t going to happen! We need money to eat!
I could schedule my life to the nano-second, divide my life into sections and develop a cool formula to work out what time I should spend at what… 26.8% with my daughters, 30% with my wife, 1.2% on facebook…
YEAH RIGHT…
I know myself well. I know that I will spend most of my time doing what I SEE is of highest priority and is the most enjoyable. To my shame, there are times that my enjoyment IS the highest priority and I sacrifice family time to do it… golf anyone? So this is where the closed hand and open hand thing comes in…
I have to decide which activities in my life belong in an open hand and which belong in a closed hand.
- CLOSED HAND ACITIVIES are those that are of HIGHEST priority – the things that are non-negotiable and should be done
- OPEN HAND ACTIVITIES are those that are negotiable and can be taken away without leaving me in fetus position, crying in the corner.
Closed hand activities should be unmovable – PICTURE A CLENCHED FIST.
Open hand activities easily given away – PICTURE A GIVING HAND
Let me give you a practical example by using our old friend again…
Golf. Golf is great, BUT…
The second that hitting that small white ball around a field (or like me, looking for a small white ball in the rough!) takes higher priority than watching my son play soccer is the second that I need to make the activities “change hands”… golf in the open hand, spending time with my son in the closed.
Again, Golf should be negotiable (open hand), spending time with my son is non-negotiable (closed hand).
The hard thing is managing our time so that we have the right acitivites in the right hand – right? How do we even know when we have something in the wrong ‘hand’?
We’ll discuss this more in my next post… but I can tell you now, it got NOTHING to do with principles, strategies or keys… relieved?
Till Then…
Glen
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