The Right Time

In 2018, I put a book I had written (One Thing is Needful) in a figurative drawer and thought I would never look at again. But in 2020, I got it out again and started working on it. Two years later, I’ve basically finished it. I’m working on sharing it more soon.

I try to follow the Lord’s will about when to do things. Sometimes I do the right thing, but it’s not the right time yet. Sometimes it takes me a whole lot longer than I want it to.

In the end of 2018, I moved to this home in the mountains and I thought I would live here for forever. But I didn’t stay more than a few months, and when I moved away, I thought I would never come back. A year later, at the end of 2019, we owned this house and it’s been my home for almost two years now.

I really worked to get a novel published before I had kids, but it didn’t work out. I thought I wasn’t good enough to be a writer and that I failed. But years later, I went to a conference, surrounded by authors and people trying to write, and I realized that I didn’t fail because I wasn’t good enough. I failed because it wasn’t the right time for me yet, and I had more things to learn.

The right people will be in your life at the right time. I have felt very much alone and I thought no one was there–but those times forced me to reach out to people who needed me. And then people came when I needed them to. I was led to people who I needed to connect with. I learned from others when I needed to learn those things.

I still don’t know the timetable for many things in my life. Some things will be a lot slower than I want them to be. Some things might happen a lot quicker.

But if I trust in the Lord, I can do His will.

And His will is much more about becoming the person I need to be than just getting things done.

There is no better time because it is your time. -Boyd K. Packer

7. How do I stop wasting time?

According to an app that I use, I spent almost 6 hours one week on Google. I spent 3 hours 15 minutes on Netflix. I spent 3 hours on Gmail. And I spent another 3 hours on YouTube. I spent less time on Facebook, as I have been checking it once a week (which is completely sufficient).

But 6 hours searching for things on the internet? I don’t know if that is totally accurate, but I do spend too much time looking up what randomly comes into my brain. I am sure that some of my searches are productive, but many of them are not.

I often will stop one method of wasting time only to fill it up with another one. I stop checking Facebook only to look at the news more often. I stop watching Netflix only to watch more YouTube.

I don’t want to waste time, but I persist.

(Most of this discussion has been wasting time by staring at a screen–but this is not the only way I waste time. I recently spent 10 hours reading a book that I had already read before, and I don’t see how that’s much better than watching 10 hours of movies.)

I get distracted very easily sometimes. I do things that are easy and fun, instead of taking the time and effort to focus and work hard.

So how do I focus? How do I prioritize?

  • Planning what I want to do in a day and when I want to do it.
  • Get out of the house and change my location.
  • Keep trying even when I get distracted, and bring myself back to focusing again.
  • Fill up my life with enough good things to do that I don’t have time and energy to sit there and be bored.
  • Use routines so that I know what to do next instead of constantly trying to figure it out.
  • Block of certain hours for focus and certain times for leisure.
  • Review my goals, values, and commitments regularly.
  • Get enough sleep, exercise, eat, and drink water.
  • Take breaks by getting off the computer when I’ve been on it for a while.
  • Track my time so I have to be accountable for where the minutes go.
  • Have lots of good things to do that I really enjoy doing and want to do.

Any other suggestions that help you?