All I Need to Know, I Haven’t Learned Yet

By Deb Weidenhamer

As a young adult it irritated me when people who were older than myself would tell me I wouldn’t feel or react the same way in ten years. I would even try to argue the point that feeling differently could have been true for them but I was sure it wouldn’t be true for me. I would still stand firmly for integrity and against injustice in the upcoming years. And it is true that I am still as dogged in my convictions today as I was ten years ago. The only difference is I don’t really engage in conversations with the unconverted, I am content to let others be wrong as I go one my own way.

This isn’t to say that the sage advice my older friends gave me was all wrong – in fact they were really right about so much including how time begins to rocket up to a speed of light pace. I had barely adjusted to the fact that it was the year 2004 in November and now I am having to account for another year. Where did last year go? I barely accomplished what I set out to do and now here we are in a new year with time accelerating even more.

It is frightening to think that if time has speed up this much in ten years, how fast it will be going in the next ten years. But I have come to discover that this pace of time comes from one really bad habit. That is the habit of ignoring what is going on in the moment. We are so focused on tomorrow’s tasks and next month’s quarterly goal that we stop to be a part of the current day. And day after day if we allow the day to control us instead of controlling the day, it is just another blip on the calendar of our life.

It isn’t that 24 hours has somehow been condensed, it is that we don’t stop to live in the day and to plan and control the moment. And as a world class procrastinator this is even truer for me, because I will put off till tomorrow what I could have scheduled into today. If you don’t think this is applies to you then let me ask you, if you are leaving to go on a trip, how is it that you get all your tasks done two days ahead of time? Simple, you take control of the time and plan it well so you can leave and enjoy your getaway.

And it occurs to me that this is an auction industry wide plague. We work in an environment that is dynamic and changes daily. We don’t know what we will be selling in two weeks let alone a year from now, so we allow our days to control us and those that work with us. There is a way to plan in a time of chaos which is exactly what the auction business is – controlled chaos.

In the next two columns we will explore how to plan and control the pandemonium and ways to begin controlling the days, weeks and months so that this can be a year where we remember its moments and slow down the clock. And hopefully we can teach those that are younger than us the art of being in the moment and controlling time.