John
Ever wonder why you’re always so tired, feels like your so busy, unmotivated to develop yourself, or just want to sleep all day? It’s probably because you didn’t feed the goose. If you don’t know who or what the goose is, it is you.
Why you calling me a goose?
The term ‘feed the goose‘ comes from a fable in the ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People‘ book by Stephen Covey. In short, it’s about a farmer that had a goose that laid gold eggs. He grew impatient and greedy for wanting more, so he killed the goose and opened it up; only to find out it was just a regular duck. Now the farmer has no way to get the gold eggs anymore. Had he just nurtured and fed the goose, he wouldn’t be in that predicament. The story actually has more than a single lesson; the first one being that you need to nurture the goose (yourself) and keep it healthy to receive those gold eggs (to keep doing what you do best) and the second lesson being that one needs patience.
How I failed to feed the goose
Just like a vehicle, our human bodies need to be refueled to keep going. By refueling, I mean taking the time to rest, reflect, and nurture your body; feed the goose. This is one of the things I struggle with most when I’m trying to stay on my personal development train. I find myself using up my refueling time by working when work-time is over, helping others because I genuinely enjoy it, and wasting time doing unproductive things. Here is how my weeks usually go, I work long hours during the weekdays, spend time helping others on the weekend, staying up late watching rap battles or Vice documentaries – and then it’s already 11:00 PM on Sunday. Then the vicious cycle comes starts again.
Usually, there isn’t time in between those events where I can sit back and relax; which is a big issue since the constant drive takes a lot from my body. My performance in anything sucks, I can’t concentrate, and I am just so damn exhausted with anything I do. This leads to a lack of wanting to develop myself, a lack of wanting to learn, and an increase in procrastination. All of that comes so easily because I don’t have the will power bandwidth to control myself anymore. This doesn’t fair well when you need to be in tip-top shape for when you have production problems at work that need to be resolved ASAP.
Other examples of how people forget to feed their goose
My examples of how I waste my personal time may or may not relate to you, but I’m sure you get the point. There are numerous of other ways that “things” can easily consume your time. For instance, watching Netflix, unproductive day dreaming, procrastination, and pretending to be busy. Don’t get me wrong though, I do understand that watching a movie or other actions can be considered a way to relax, but I’m just saying maybe instead of that, you could probably catch a nap if you body needed it.
How to start feeding the goose
The first thing I did was reflect on how I actually spent my time. By doing so, I was able to determine where I spent my time and then prioritized it. Looking back at a weeks worth of time, I asked myself these questions (and this is an oversimplification):
- Do I really need to be working on this work-related project right now?
- Will this person die if I don’t help them?
- Is watching an hour of rap battles to decipher how disrespectful a bar was productive?
After pondering about it, I came to the following conclusions:
- Do I really need to be working on this work-related project right now?
- Mmm…probably not.
- Will this person die if I don’t help them?
- They’ll survive.
- Is watching an hour of rap battles to decipher how disrespectful a bar was productive?
- No, not at all.
Truthfully, I didn’t cut cold-turkey and say no to every person. I also did not stop watching Dumbfoundead make funny jokes in rhyme-form. However, I did cut back the amount of time I spent on it. That personal time I took back – I spent it on things that would help me refuel; like sleeping, cause no one can get enough sleep, right?
So hopefully you can learn from my mistakes, recognize that you need to get your time back, and feed the goose (yeah, I said it again).