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When was the last time you said “I don’t have time”?
I said it yesterday. A couple of times. And I’m pretty sure I said it the day before too.
I have a job, like lots of people. I also have two small children, like lots of people. When I say “I don’t have time”, I really mean it.
I have so little time that I bought a dictation app for my mobile so I could write these posts while walking. “Good idea!”, I thought.
I had the idea of dictating this post while walking to the gym. Here’s the first (and last) paragraph of the dictated post:
“I have no time. That’s why I kill people, north of the mama. What real lemming is we have other priorities.”
Eh?! What was a waste of money…
So that’s how I ended up sitting here in Starbucks, writing this post on my mobile (with my own fingers, of course), listening to the song ‘Is you or is you ain’t my baby’ by Louis Jordan, recorded in 1962. I know this not because I’m an expert in music but because I Shazamed it. A marvelous app that never fails (take note dictation apps).
I can’t even remember what I was saying when I was talking into that useless dictation app. I do know that I definitely do not kill people.
The last sentence was supposed to be “What we really mean is we have other priorities”. Lemming?! Really…
That sentence is key, though. Most of the time when we say we have no time, what we really mean is that we have other priorities. We say we’ll do something we promised ourselves we’d do but then we’ll watch the news, or Big Brother (I know…), or check Facebook for the third time today.
Imagine you want to get a six-pack. Really, you only need ten minutes of ab exercises a day to achieve it. Well, that and eat well but that’s not my business.
We find it difficult to achieve, though, because our priorities are misaligned.
English practice is the same. If you can get ten minutes of quality practice per day, that’s a great start and you’ll find that suddenly you begin to find extra time to practise more. Because we all know that we only say we don’t have time when we’re talking about doing something that we either don’t normally do or that initially we don’t fancy doing.
We rarely say we don’t have time to do the things that we love or the things we do everyday.
Priorities…
In fact, go back to the third paragraph and you’ll see that it says When I say “I don’t have time”, I really mean it. If I really think about it, though, I know it’s not true. It’s one of those excuses I make just like everybody else. We all make excuses.
The truth, however, is that they aren’t excuses at all because we truly believe we don’t have time. I invite you to sit down for a few minutes write down a typical day of yours almost minute by minute and see where your time is going exactly. Then think about what things you would like to carry on doing, and then the things that you could replace with a new habit.
When you start a new habit and you’re able to keep it up, it quickly becomes routine and you end up enjoying it and find extra time for it.
Find those ten minutes everyday and do some quality practice in English.
Right, I’m off to do my 10 minutes of ab exercises.
As soon as the news finishes…[thrive_leads id=’1049′]