I heard the quote above a few weeks ago in church. It struck a chord, so I immediately pulled out my phone, did a quick search, and made a quick note.  I really liked the idea stated in this quote, but I honestly hadn’t given it much thought again until this week.

I had someone ask me recently what my biggest pet peeve was in my job.  He asked,  “What is the one thing that bothers you more then anything else?”  It did not take me long to reply, “My biggest pet peeve is listening to people complaining about time.”

Time is a struggle for us all.  Busy schedules rule our lives.  Regardless of how you divide it, there just does not seem to be enough time in the day to make it all happen. I am writing this post during one of those weeks. This is a week, as I am sure most of you can sympathize, where I could use a few more hours in a day to fit it all in, to make it all work. But, time is constant, we all have the same 24 hour day and we always find time to do what really matters to us.

I think one of the reasons the “time complaint” bothers me, is because when I hear people say, “I don’t have time to do _____.” I can’t help but really feel they are saying, “I don’t find _____ enough of a priority to make it happen” or “I don’t care enough about ____ to make it happen.” And to be honest, there is nothing wrong with that.  We cannot do everything, but we do always seem to create the space to do the things we find most important. We need to find a way to do what really matters, but to not use time as an excuse for things that don’t fit.  Things don’t fit because we rank them based on our priorities, and if they were more important to us, that would lead to there being time to do them– while at the same time, knocking something with lower priority off the list.

This conversation about time made me realize why I immediately identified with this quote when I heard it.  I truly feel we all have dreams of what we want to accomplish until it comes to dedicating the time and doing the things that achieving those dreams requires.  No matter what we say, we just don’t want most things that much.  We want our dreams to come to us, rather then relentlessly chasing after them.

So, my challenge to you in the upcoming week is to make a list of your dreams- What do you want to accomplish?  What do you want to chase?  And what are your priorities for your life?  Then really analyze where you are dedicating your time. Ask yourself the tough honest question: Do the places I am investing my time align to my dreams and vision for my life and my perceived priorities? Hopefully the answer is yes.

If not, you just “dream by night.”  If you fully want to achieve your dreams, you must find a way to be the “dreamers of the day.”

If you really want to take this challenge to the next level, fill out this Time Log for one week. Take some time to track each hour and find out where you are investing most of your time.  I have done this before and I was amazed how much time was wasted.  I was spending a great deal of time on things that did not matter to me and then complaining about not having enough time for what I thought was important.  Obviously, my priorities were not what I truly thought they were at the time. I know this task is time consuming and cumbersome, but it was an eye-opening experience for me.