Lessons from Skydiving: Make Your Sixty Seconds Count
Procrastination. We all do it. But not while skydiving, although I do know a couple of people who have slightly procrastinated pulling. Yes, I procrastinate sometimes when it actually comes to jumping--the fear factor, the feeling that everything else in my life needs to be in order before I actually jump.
But when I am in freefall, every second matters. Every second is individual, fleeting, yet somehow slowed at the same time. I have sixty seconds to learn as much as possible about flying my body. Sixty seconds to adjust my fall rate, take docks, break, redock, and then track away before deploying, and soon, I am sure I will be filling my sixty seconds with other complex, fun tasks.
When I find myself wasting time, I set a timer and a goal--to see how much I can get done in sixty seconds. Because that is all I have on any given skydive before my parachute opens and I shift from flying my body to piloting my canopy. And that is more than enough time.
I wrote this post as a sixty second challenge. To be fair, I spent sixty seconds reflecting, sixty seconds writing, and sixty seconds reading and revising. But I created something in those three minutes, rather than just being a passive consumer, and I learned something about life and myself in the process.
What will you do in sixty seconds? Take the sixty second challenge. Make your sixty seconds count. Take life a minute at a time. And let us know what you do in those, your most focused, moments.