My husband and I took our son, Gabriel, to his second “Music Together” class this morning. We’ve noticed that he really enjoys it — he smiles, laughs, and appears very excited and engaged! And we have also interestingly observed that he picks and chooses the activities he participates in during the class. Sometimes he takes a few steps off the mat, tilts his head, and watches and analyzes the class while making his decision. Most of the time he chooses to re-engage, and other times he decides not to.
In a sense, he decides where he wants to spend his energy. And if something does not suit him, he will not simply succumb to what’s going on right in front of him.
Could this type of analysis be something we should be doing as adults?
How often do we feel that we have to do something? That everyone is “crazy busy” and spread so thin, so we adopt the same behavior?
When things are thrown at us, we have a tendency to automatically prioritize them. But is this the best course of action? Or should we be deciding if we should even bother to prioritize certain things in the first place. That is, should we not participate at all?
Perhaps this post has more questions than answers. But I challenge everyone (including myself) to consider optimizing for time and energy. Let’s challenge if something actually belongs on our plate or not. Let’s ask ourselves “why” are we engaging and participating.
Last year I had the great pleasure of meeting Al Pittampalli, author of Read This Before Our Next Meeting and blogger/founder of The Modern Meeting Standard. In fact, he autographed my personal copy of his book. What I really like about Al is that he is someone who is not afraid to ask the hard questions, hence his mission to change the culture of the Modern Meeting to be better than what it is today.
Inside my book, Al personally wrote,
“Lisa, End the status quo!”
On that note, perhaps we should consider applying Al’s advice to our lives (in addition to meetings!) and end the status quo by doing what my 21 month old son does: optimize ourselves by choosing how to spend our time and energy.
Isn’t it amazing what we can learn from those who are so new in this world — young souls who have a blank slate without preconceived notions?
