What would it take to squeeze the marrow out of every waking minute?

Lisa and Dan have really got me thinking about the finite lately.

We’ll start with Dan.

Dan Blohowiak interviewed Bill Jensen recently, and in the interview, Bill pointed out that there are 1440 minutes in a day and we should stop wasting them.

I don’t want to waste my life, but what does that mean—not waste “my life”? It’s such a long-term concept that it’s difficult to get my head around. I know I don’t want to wake up at 65 and think, “I wasted my life.” Beyond that? You got me. Hell, I have a hard time thinking out past the next hour. A lot can happen in an hour.

When Bill said that we only have 1440 minutes in a day, a flip switched—I finally understood what it would take to avoid wasting my life. Not wasting my life means not wasting another minute. I can get my head around a minute. A minute is immediate. Its presence can be felt immediately and its absence can be just as immediately missed. The number of minutes in a day has more meaning than the number of hours in a day.

And then I read Lisa’s “Tip of the Day - #27”: “Lead like there’s no tomorrow”. She writes:

A coworker of mine got some pretty wicked news that she has a very aggressive form of cancer at 36 years of age. Another coworker recently lost a parent in a tragic accident. An old coworker recently lost her job when her company went belly-up.

It is a shame that it often takes events like these to snap us back to appreciating each day and living fully for the moment.

What serendipity.

I’m not going to be someone who lets life happen to them. I want to take life by the minute—and make every second count. As Lisa says, “I don’t want to live in fear for what could happen, but I do want to get better at living well, healthy, fully and for today (with an eye to the future).”

As you can see, Bill and Lisa have me asking some heady questions: Am I where I want to be? Am I spending my 1440 minutes wisely? They’ve also got me asking about my future: what I want to do with the next 5-10 years? After all, how I spend each of today’s minutes will affect the possible uses of my future minutes. In a way, you could say that the future is happening today.