Mindflex- Rabbi Chanan Gordon- Spiritual Time Management Part 1

[Music] series so i think it's appropriate uh to tell you what a terrific person before we get into one of the most important topics of all of our lives and that is our time and how we spend it but i do think it's appropriate for me to give a little shout out to a dear friend and of course the founder of project inspire to tell you what type of person rabbi achaim samson really is a very dear friend i mentioned to rabbi sampson that about four or five months ago i had the the honor of being the emcee for the red cross dinner uh with jay leno and as we moseyed through the virtual auditorium if you will the coordinator of the uh the red cross you know said uh anthony this is cynthia gam who of course is the founder of m a d d a mothers against drunk driving and i happen to mention to rabbi sampson as a public speaker a person on the speaker circuit that is such a terrific thing when the organizer makes that introduction breaks the ice makes the speaker feel so terrific so not to be outdone before we began the this evening rabbi sampson says to me rabbi gordon i don't know if you know robin gam who of course is the founder of d-a-m mothers against dyslexia so that's just the kind of person that rabbi samson is just making me feel terrific and i couldn't but not avoid that shout out so welcome probably the most important topic in all of our lives because we have a finite amount of this commodity and that's time let's firstly talk about how important is time from a torah perspective the answer clearly is it's very important how do we know that firstly the first mitzvah in the torah is which is the counting of the new moon so the concept of time of counting is really the very very first mitzvah that the almighty memorializes in the torah if we want to take the end of the book end and that's when we end this journey we get an open book exam in the next world and we are told one of the questions is how did you spend your time in terms of your commitment to learning torah did you make a specific time to study torah there's no question that time is a vitally important concept so important is the concept of time my friends that the taurus starts with borashis bara elokim s the fourth word of the torah is an aleph and a tough which is the first and the last letter of the hebrew alphabet and our commentators teach us that that's a hint to the fact that the almighty created time the importance for our purpose is not only that time is very important but also the fact that if the almighty created time per force he's outside time which means for us that he knows what's going to happen in our future in fact one of the names as we know of the almighty is past present and future and so the concept of the fact that god is guiding us is implicit in the fact that he knows what's going to happen in the future let's begin our journey together this my friends is an hourglass showing you very graphically the passing of time so let's go back to some statistics if the average american has a lifespan of 80 years which is 28 835 days let's break that up in terms of how the average person spends their time the average person spends eight thousand four hundred and seventy seven days is sleeping a 1635 days eating 3201 days working 1999 days of commuting 2 000 676 days on some kind of a recreational activity 1576 days is shopping 720 days if we take it cumulatively involved in community activities we spend my friends 671 days of our lives in the bathroom finally 576 days we are involved in some form of or benevolent uh benevolent act which means my friends out of the 28 835 days that we all have of this journey called life if we take out those items that i just articulated we have only a seven thousand three hundred and sixty three days to fulfill our respective missions in this world i think it's safe to say that the goal therefore must be what's the most judicious way to spend these seven thousand three hundred and sixty three days and perhaps the subtext can be why is that that most people feel that their life is a continual rush and they never really finish most of what they set out to do the first nugget of wisdom i'd like to share with you in answering that question is because from a secular perspective most people think of time in the form of a clock what i'm going to encourage each and every one of you to do is rather to think of your life in terms of a compass by so doing one of the first things that i would like you to take to heart is that while most people prioritize their schedules people who use their time judiciously schedule their priorities let me say that again most people and in fact most most uh time management courses underscore the concept of priority in the schedule productive people rather schedule their priorities in order to understand this perhaps the most productive time management matrix that i've seen in studying time management over many years is that produced by the late dr steve covey what dr steve covey put together it was a matrix which divides the horizontal and vertical side of the page into four quadrants the top left quadrant are items that are important and urgent the next quadrant to the right is items that are not urgent but are important the third quadrant on the left are items that are not important and urgent and the last quadrant in the bottom right hand side are things that are not important and not urgent my friends i'm sure you won't be shocked to learn that most people spend their time in the fourth quadrant pursuing things that are not important and are not urgent or are not important and are urgent meaning they spend their entire life putting out fires their entire life in reactive crisis mode if you want to fulfill your life goals if you want to have a productive journey called life i'm going to ask you to try and focus on spending 80 percent of your time in the quadrant that is items that are important but not urgent let me illustrate this by an experiment was done in 1952 at the university of paris picture the scene professor walks in puts on the table a vase a number of rocks and next to the rocks he put some gravel and next to the gravel he put a pile of sand he challenges the class to put those items into this vase without displacing the water this is a top business school in paris and none of the students could somehow get the rocks the gravel the sand into this vase or into this jar if you will without displacing the water what the professor did without opening his mouth was he took the an empty jar he first put the rocks in he then put the gravel in and then the sand and then poured in the balance of the water nothing was displaced what's the life lesson for all of us who are trying to live tour our observant lives and use our time judiciously my friends the call for all of us is to put the big rocks in first figure out what are the big rocks in your life your family your significant other your health putting the big rocks in first ensures that you will not be in reactive crisis mode and trying to balance things that by definition are going to cause the wheels to come off another way of perhaps saying this my friends is keep the main thing the main thing as opposed to getting caught in the thick of thin things [Music] so my friends in order to have to order to use our time judiciously we said point number one instead of prioritizing our schedule we are going to schedule our priorities and more specifically we're going to put the big rocks in first point number two in order to use this commodity that the almighty created called time in the most judicious way is get rid of distractions one of the biggest challenges of living in a world where there's been a proliferation of technology and i'd like to dispel a few myths because we don't get a second chance to use this gift called the time this is not a dress rehearsal myth number one that i'd like to dispel is there is no is such a thing as multitasking there is a plethora of research that says unequivocally that the almighty created the neurological process the brain that we cannot possibly bifurcate our focus and we cannot possibly be thinking about two things contemporaneously and do justice to both the importance of making sure that we don't seem busy but rather are productive is do one thing at a time do it well and be in the moment myth number two which again has become a common concept of the millennial generation people like myself ages of late 19 to the latter part of 20s is the concept of a fomo fear of missing out so my friends i'm here to tell you that most people spend money they don't have to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like and the people that they are trying to duplicate and people that they are trying to not miss out of are people that are not even going to be part of these big rocks let's review we start off by saying that time is a very very important concept from a toy perspective we said that the almighty created a time and we see that in the fourth letter of the torah we see that the first mitzvah is rosh hadish once again underscoring the importance of time and we see the fact that the almighty tells us he's going to ask us how we used this beautiful concept at call time we then said why is it that most people seem to be in a total rush and while they seem to be busy are not necessarily productive we said that the reason is because they are thinking of a time as a clock instead of as a compass the concept of a compass is finding out where do you want to be three five seven years from now and focus on the direction rather than the small hand and the large hand what that means from a graphic perspective is we shared the famous four quadrants of dr steve covey and we said the most productive people in the world should spend eighty percent of their time in the top right hand quadrant which are which means spending time doing things that are important but not urgent well again the most productive people in this world will spend most of their time in the top right hand corner focusing on things that are important but not urgent we said that really means keeping the main thing the main thing the second point that we raised my friends is to get rid of distractions we underscored the fact that multitasking is a myth one cannot by a definition focus on two items and expect not to compromise one's productivity and then we spoke about the fact that fomo is a wonderful name for a dog but it's certainly not a way to look at our lives in a productive way i'd like to move to point three so that we can use our time in this world in the most judicious way and that is the challenge that we all have of being in the moment i'd like to share with you an example of two emotions and i'd like you to scream out from wherever you are uh whether you think that those emotions on the time spread spectrum are related to the past the present or the future emotion number one would be guilt correct excellent that clearly is the past how about remorse remorse clearly is renting space in one's head regarding the past how about fear outstanding so fear clearly is an emotion that that is a concern about the future how about anxiety once again it's a concern about what's going to happen in the future sadly most people don't live in the moment which means that we are in effect allowing thoughts to live rent free in our head and we're not really focusing all of our emotions our neurological juices to be in that time that we are supposed to be in let me illustrate the power of this concept if i may i grew up in south africa one of the most beloved and certainly one of the most sagacious tourist scholars in south africa sadly was a victim to a very big tragedy his son suffered from asthma i understand that during one vacation he was in muzenberg near cape town the father turned around for a few minutes apparently the son had an asper attack in the ocean and tragically he met his demise the story goes that this very well-known rabbi literally couldn't break himself away from this depression and blame himself and perseverates it about this incident that happened and couldn't move on with his life until finally uh he went to israel and had a meeting with the khazanesh the khazanesh was certainly one of the greatest tourist scholars of in the recent decades and the cousins said to him and i'm going to paraphrase that if you don't bury the past the past will bury you my friends there are many people that spend so much of the emotional energy and their concerns living in the past i want to share with you another story one of the benefits of being on the speaking circuit and speaks a lot of people is many people during retreats and workshops come up to the podium afterwards and obviously say rabbi this is the most outstanding speech ever given in the history of the world which i hear a lot and then one woman said to me you know rabbi you cannot believe what he was like he was toxic he made me feel like a fool the way he treated the neighbors the kids this carried on for a good five to six minutes and clearly i felt she must be describing her significant other um and exactly what i thought she said rabbi it's horrible we got divorced and i i cannot believe what it it took about 10 minutes for me to realize that she was talking about her ex-husband whom she had divorced 22 years ago my friends we just explained how sanchrosync this commodity called time is how every single millisecond is a gift don't rent space on things that you cannot change the past is an is a part of the spectrum that you certainly it cannot change what about the future the gemara in the tractate evolus says very clearly that we are actually proscribed from spending too much time prognosticating or thinking about the future because as we said at the beginning of this incredibly dynamic lecture the almighty's outside time he's controlling the future and concerns about the future in a sense fly in the face of one's trust in the almighty himself so i think this is the time to share with you what i think will be 10 rules which hopefully will change all of your lives and that's the concept of being able to let go and move forward so one can be in the moment so that one is not locked into pain and remorse about the past and one is not renting space in one's head someone is not like a car driving with the hand break up here's the 10 things my friends that you need to move forward and to ensure that you use this commodity called time in the most judicious way rule number one is letting the opinions of others control your life please understand that what other people think of you is none of your business how many times i've had i've had people say rabbi because this person thinks that if this person did that my friends the clock is ticking the opinions of others is not the best way for you to spend this sanctuary same commodity you call time number two let go of the shame of past failures one of the i think the benefits of speaking to many people but also from a professional perspective being surrounded by and representing many famous celebrities and sports people is i can say with absolute confidence that there's no one that i've met in this journey called life that has achieved greatness without mistakes missteps and curveballs that if they look back they are very embarrassed about let go of the shame of past failures point number three being indecisive about what you want stop being indecisive about what you want my friends the the road of life is filled with many flat squirrels who couldn't make a decision there is a number of of ways that one can quantify things to work out which way to tip the scales it's going to be a topic of another class but being in this limbo is one of the worst ways to burn through this special commodity called life point number four [Music] is stop procrastinating on goals that matter to you my friends once you understand that something's important that that's something that you want to actualize and be part of your legacy every minute every second that goes by before you start executing on your plan is a precious time wasted a point at number five it's a huge mistake to choose to do nothing by definition doing nothing is making a decision by default decisions are not easy to make again we are going to speak about how how to make decisions in a separate class but the idea of flooding yourself with working out which way to go and being stuck is one of the ways that we can waste the suppressors commodity call time the sixth thing you need to get let go of my friends is let go of the notion that you always need to be right productive people are people that you want to use this commodity called time judiciously focus on wanting peace of wanting not necessary to be right but wanting to be loved and to love the seventh thing that i would like to suggest that you need to let go of is running from problems that should be fixed [Music] the carpet my friends is getting very lumpy from things that are swept under it if there's an issue if there's a problem don't spend again a precious time trying to figure out what needs to be fixed stop running stop perseverating make the decision move on the eighth point that i think that you need to let go of in order to live a productive life and use time judiciously is is to stop making excuses rather than decisions productive people make decisions uh people that generally are not living the way one can and are not actualizing their potential are making excuses instead of making decisions the penultimate point that i'm going to suggest that you let go of is overlooking the positive points in your life there's a force that the almighty created which tries to bear down on us the mystery sutton the citra whatever you want to call it if you want to use this commodity called time judiciously focus on your positive points focus on your traits focus on the unique tools that you have as opposed to the points that you would have could have and should have had and the last point that you need to give up in order to move forward to use your time judiciously is not appreciating the present moment we all know the cliche that the concept of the present is really a gift i'd like to tie this all together for the first part of our time together by quoting what i believe is one of the most accurate prayers it's a prayer that anyone who's familiar with the 12-step program will recognize it's called the serenity prayer and i believe it encapsulates everything that we've discussed today the serenity prayer my friends is as follows god grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change the courage to change the things i can and the wisdom to know the difference spending time thinking about what could have done if you cannot change it is criminal if you can change it do so and move forward and studying torah hopefully will sharpen your clarity to have the wisdom to know the difference my friends we all get a certain amount of this precious commodity we've discussed today the concept of a compass and not a clock we've discussed today keeping the main thing the main thing we've discussed today the importance of getting rid of distractions we've discussed being in the moment we outlined 10 points that you need to get rid of in order to use this commodity called time productively i'd like to end this evening by saying go out and live every single day as if it's your last because one day it will be good evening and thank you