Living Life on Purpose

I've been doing a lot of random personal development stuff lately, which has unearthed for me a whole plethora of blog topics. It's amazing what a tiny bit of thinking can uncover.

One of the major things I've been thinking about / working on is goals and time management. You know the whole: I want to do X by Y, and will do this by alotting Z amount of time to it." I always seem to become interested in this sort of activity around springtime. It must have something to do with all the free time that bubbles up with the lack of extracurricular activities (yeah, I know you're thinking 'Get a job!', and actually, that's not such a bad idea. I might get around to applying for one this weekend, in fact!).

While working on all this goal planning (though I've yet to actually make any goals) and time managing, I came across an interesting conundrum: the goals are far more important than the time management skills. Even more interesting, there's definitely a level above goals that has even more power: purpose. It seems that there's a hiearchy of flowitude (yes!) from purpose to goals to time management to "results."

I think of it this way. If I had all the time in the world and could manage it well, what good would that do me if I didn't know what to use the time for. Sure, I could "manage" my way to watching every show on television, or becoming a level eight swordmaster on some MMORPG, or creating a giant castle out of cheese, but what good would that do me? And more importantly, what good would that do the world?

This problem manifests itself in another area of personal development I find interesting: polyphasic sleep. If you want to know about it, how to do it, and it's affects, check out the series on it by Steve Pavlina. The gist of the idea is that you take 20 to 30 minute naps 6 times a day instead of taking one (therefore monophasic) rest during the night. I have to admit the idea seems interesting. The amount of time it would "add" to ones life is astounding.

My only personal problem with it is: what would I do with all that time? I can't even get myself to get up earlier than 8 AM on the weekends because I don't honestly have anything I'm so passionate about that it can get me away from an extra hour or so of sleep. As of now, I'm hoping that this love affair with sleep has something to do with my being a teenager (because we apparently have majorly weird circadian rhythms) and not anything to do with me just being addicted to sleep.

Anyway, with that tangent out of the way, my point is that we should live life on purpose. No amount of time management skills, or goals, or anything "self-help" related is going to help with making you happy if you don't have a real purpose. Do things on purpose. Live life on purpose.

I'm working on my own personal purpose, though it's been like pulling teeth. It's almost as if I don't want to live life on purpose because I'm afraid of actually waking up and facing life consciously. For now, my purpose is something to the tune of "To live consciously, courageously, and in congruence with my beliefs."

Corny, yeah. But maybe it'll get me out of bed at 6 AM on a Saturday morning.

Note: Yeah, I'm on a major self-actualization kick as of late, so I apologize for all of these blog posts. I suppose their one redeeming virtue is that they're much more down to earth than my usual philosophical musings. Maybe you'll actually find something of value in them. And if not, hopefully you'll find my future posts more fulfilling.

Note (II): I'm glad to see the interest in the new blog idea. Well, more so in the idea of a new blog than in the idea I had for the new blog. :) I'll see how many of people's suggestions I can fit into the site. I still don't have a name for the blog or any idea what the domain name should be. I'm sure I could come up with something, but I was just wondering what everyone had in mind. Thanks for the interest.

Namaste.