I barely have enough time to keep up with all of the reading I want to do, so why do I subscribe to so many streaming services?
I watch a lot of shows and movies, but I really don't love TV in general. In fact, my children were raised completely without television—for the better, in my opinion. In the town where we lived when they were growing up, there was no such thing as "television," even local channels (we lived in the mountains), unless you paid for cable. Yes, we watched movies together, rented from the library, but no television-on-demand.
Fast forward through all the things I could say about TV at this point to arrive at my point: many worthwhile shows exist, but you have to pay for a lot of services to access them all. Shogun on Hulu, the adaptation based on James Clavell's novel, was the latest entry for me.
(Sidebar: Remember when streaming was going to replace cable by being better? And further, when we were going to spend less money on subscription television? Ha!)
If someone needed an audience with the Shogun, they would ask for "a stick of time" which was, to my great delight, a literal stick of incense. When it burned down, time was up.
I'm not a fan of the way incense smells, so this is not a time keeper strategy I could likely adopt in my own life. But the part of me that's always seeking better ways to organize my time, my tasks, and my thoughts is drawn to the image. The time literally disappears as the stick burns to ash. There's no illusion that time, as shown by our endlessly repeating clocks, is a renewable resource. We are finite creatures, with only one life to live.
How many sticks are you devoting to your daily tasks? Are you burning too many in pursuit of what is neither essential nor brings you joy? Not burning —or not burning enough of — the ones that matter?
I challenge you to join me in the strategic management and deployment of your sticks. To the extent that you have control over how you spend your time, take control. Choose.