Last week my friend, Carla, told me about a book she was reading with the genius title of Slowing Down to the Speed of Joy. I mentioned I’d like to read it and she gifted me with one of the 5 copies she bought at an author’s event recently. The premise of the book, whose subtitle is “The Simple Art of Taking Back Your Life” is that busyness in our lives robs us of joy.
Since I’ve retired I don’t suffer as much from the busyness problem as I did when I was still working. I haven’t finished the book yet, but by Page 10 two things really made an impact on me. First was how much of Covey’s 7 Habits teachings are woven into the book. Most people who don’t have extensive experience with Covey will not recognize the 7 Habits as readily as I did. This is not a criticism of the author, but rather a testimony to how effective implementing the 7 Habits can be in making life improving changes. Having Kelly describe them in a new way to a new audience who might not otherwise encounter them is an excellent way of re-presenting “Powerful Lessons of Personal Change”, the subtitle of Covey’s 1989 book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
The other thing that resonated with me was on Page 6 where he described, in high school, making excuses for not getting important things done in his life because he was so busy. He had a teacher who called him on all those excuses by saying “That sounds like excellent nonsense, Mr. Kelly.” He goes on to explain that the teacher’s implication was that no matter how well you articulate nonsense, it is still nonsense. Even excellent nonsense remains nonsense. He says our lives have become full of excellent nonsense. That is the part that really struck a chord with me. He finished by saying “It is time to take a wide-eyed, unflinching look at the nonsense that fills our lives.”
Because of all that Covey experience, in retirement, I’m pretty good at keeping my excellent nonsense to a minimum. Still, if I let down my guard it creeps in and I have to hack at it with a machete every once in a while (talk about mixed metaphors!). How about you? What excellent nonsense do you have in your life and what are you going to do about it?
Leave a Reply