The Time Finder with Paula Eder

The way you use your time is the way you live your life.

Find Time to Cook Rice

Posted on April 18, 2009, under Time Choices.

riceToday’s Finding Time quotation is a Chinese proverb that is quite simple, and yet gets to the point powerfully, as so many proverbs do.

“Talk doesn’t cook rice.”

Whoever came up with Nike’s “Just do it” slogan may have been familiar with this snippet of wisdom; but I think it actually gets at a more complex truth than Nike does.

Two recent Time Finder posts have examined the importance of planning in facilitating and managing transitions.  Find Time for Moving Through Change looked at the stages of change, while Finding Time to Bloom took nature as a metaphor to illustrate and enlarge on these ideas.

Both posts emphasized the importance of the preliminary work.  It is possible to go overboard on the planning front, however.  You can read more about this in this coming Thursday’s Finding Time E-zine as we continue our exploration of perfection paralysis.

The bottom line is that at some point, the thinking and planning and talking has to stop and the doing has to begin.  There is no way around this fact.  Between intention and action there is a step.  The journey can’t begin until that step is taken.

I would emphasize two things about this:

  1. Moving from intention to action is a step.  It is a big step, because it represents a new level of commitment.  You are putting yourself out and taking a risk.  It is important to honor the challenge that this can present as you launch into something new. You might plan a small celebration or ritual as you enter this stage of change.
  2. Moving from intention to action is a step.  It is a small step, because it is merely the first step of the many that will follow.  The journey, as they say, has a thousand steps; don’t make the first one bigger than it needs to be.

Do you find it challenging to move from reading the recipe to cooking the rice?  Was this post helpful to you? I invite you to drop me a line – I’d love to hear what you think!

What if you could find another hour every day? You can! For more Time Finding resources, you are invited to sign up and download The New Finding Time Boundary Template. It’s FREE, and when you sign up you will also receive (if you don’t already) my FREE, weekly Finding Time Tips and my FREE, monthly Award-Winning Finding Time E-zine!

Let’s explore time together …

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