I can confidently say that one of the biggest time-savers in the last decade for me is this philosophy of having a wilingness to enjoy the incomplete. It may seem like an odd proposition but interestingly enough, it works. Let me give a few examples:
* Imagine you were able to enjoy your favorite TV show even though you started watching it half-way through and had to take off before the end of the show.
* Imagine you were able to enjoy only a few chapters in the book.
* Imagine you were able to enjoy only a couple of items in the meal as you had to attend to an emergency somewhere.
If you observe the examples, I didn’t pick examples where you shun from your responsibilities. For example, I didn’t say – Imagine you were satisfied even when you delivered only half of your assignment last week. That would be stretching the system a bit.
In any case, we all know that it would be lot better if there was completeness. However, we also know that declaring satisfaction about something is totally under our control. There is no rule which states that you should not enjoy something that is incomplete. Nobody said that you got watch that TV show in complete to enjoy it and nobody said that you can’t enjoy a TV show even when you watched it only for a brief period in time. The rules that seem implicit are those that we made up. If we can make up the rules we can make them up again – this time in a manner that will help us.
I am not suggesting that you artificially setup situations to not complete something and starve yourself of the enjoyment. No, that was not my point. My point is that there will be times (actually many times) in your life where things are incomplete and all I am asking is for you to be willing to enjoy that incompleteness.
Try this for a week. Make it a point to enjoy the incomplete and you will see the difference.
Note 1: Here is a Squidoo lens that links to most of the previous articles in this series:
Squidoo: Distinguish Yourself
Note 2: The first 25 entries in the series have been packaged in a ChangeThis manifesto that was published on September 07, 2005. You can download that manifesto here:
ChangeThis Manifesto: 25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself (PDF, Free)
Note 3: My latest manifesto on ChangeThis was published on August 6, 2008. This is a photographic manifesto featuring 15 of my mini sagas (stories in exactly 50 words). Here is the link:
ChangeThis Manifesto: Mini Sagas – Bite Sized Lessons for Life and Business (PDF, Free)