Here’s the thing: Life can be so easy if you just let it be easy. I want to be an actor, guess what? Acting can be easy if you allow for that possibility. You need to make room for the possibility that some things are going to come easier for you than others. Everything doesn’t have to be so hard! Here’s a problem that I experience: I have a difficult time distinguishing quality from quantity. Against my better judgment, there is a large part of me that sincerely believes that if I put 8 hours into something, the end product must be better than the result had I put into it only 5 hours. Let me give you an example. In university, I was notorious for pulling 8-10 hour days working on an essay. I would get up early, go to meal hall for some toast with peanut butter and banana, and then head to the library where I would plonk myself on my butt and work to exhaustion. Even if in reality I spent 3 out of those 10 hours procrastinating on doing my work (if you really broke up how I used my time) it didn’t matter. I experienced satisfaction because at the end of the day I could say “I spent this long at the library doing work.” Being a hard worker is a belief that makes up a large part of my self-image.

In my first year I was in a course called Arts 1000. As part of this course, I had to write 4 essays, 1000 words each. For 3 of these essays, I worked my ass off. I worked through the material (all philosophical in nature) and tried to come up with clever and original thesis statements. Then I would slave away at my computer trying to make all of my ideas fit together. I would work for 8+hours straight on these 1000 word essays (that’s 3 pages double-spaced, it’s nothing), and we weren’t even required to do any research. For clarification, when I say 8 hours – remember that this time is inter-cut with facebook and solitaire time. On each of these essays I received an A-. A good grade, I was satisfied – but man did I have to work for it. If I worked that hard and only got an A-, I must have to work double as hard to get an A+, right? For the fourth essay, as always we were given 3 different topics to choose from. I chose one and started brainstorming and coming up with ideas. After an entire day of work, I was beyond frustrated because I just couldn’t figure out how I was going to tackle the topic. I just couldn’t get my head around it so, as part of a rather rash decision, I decided to scrap all of the work I had done. I chose a different essay topic. I wrote an outline for the essay in 1 hour, and then pounded out the essay in 2 hours. I just wrote it. I didn’t cut away from my work, I just wrote it and got it over with. I handed in this essay, and a week later I got it back: A+. Fluke? Maybe, except something similar happened on two separate occasions during my university degree. On all of these occasions, I of course ignored the evidence and continued to do what I had always done.

Putting large amounts of time into school work helped to strengthen this belief, so I of course didn’t change my behaviour – even when presented with evidence that my paradigm was skewed.

There is a difference between being a smart worker, and being a hard worker. There is a difference between being realistic, and being open to opportunities. To reiterate, success does not have to be something that’s hard to achieve. There are no rules when it come to being successful. So be open to possibilities. It’s not about time. That’s the thought I’m going to leave you with: it’s not about time.
I also received a request for an example of how to fill out the weekly planner I posted yesterday. I will post an example of that tomorrow.