We live in an age of massive distraction. Would you agree?

There are countless things vying for our attention on a daily basis, and it’s so easy to place our time on things that don’t matter. The things that we choose to give our time and attention to on a daily basis add up and eventually define our life.

I’d like you to think about these two questions:

1. Do you run your days? Or do your days run you?
2. What REALLY matters in your life in the grand scheme of things?

Earlier this year, I went to a mastermind retreat and the special guest speaker was Wayne Cotton, the mentor of the leader of my mastermind group. He created a color-coded calendar that I personally follow to help me structure my day, week, month, quarter, and year.

Basically, the calendar works with four colors:
Green – “Green Machine”: work time
Red – “Red Tape”: administration time
Blue – “Blue Sky”: thinking and planning time
Yellow – “Mellow Yellow”: time off, relax, do the things you love

(If you’d like to watch a short video explaining more about these colors and how the calendar works, I would highly suggest it. You can do that here: www.nobrowndays.com)

What I want to highlight today is the Mellow Yellow, the M.Y. time. Believe it or not, the most important is the Mellow Yellow time. Here’s where I go back to the two questions:

1. Who runs your day?If you find yourself distracted easily, overwhelmed with everyday life, and your To-Do list gets longer and longer even though you’re working really hard to check things off it, your day is running you. These days compounded over time result in a LIFE that runs you. You don’t want that.Instead, YOU want to run your own life. YOU determine what’s important and where, when, and how you spend your time. This is what has dramatically changed my life and I know it can do the same for you. This leads me to the second question.
2. What REALLY matters in your life?At the end of the day, what’s really important? I bet you would say your health, your family, your friends, your volunteer job, your hikes, your strolls on the beach, watching a great movie at home with those you love, etc.

Did you see the movie “Gravity”? I saw it twice at the theatre, once in 3-D. I watched it twice because I thought the cinematography was spectacular. The views they show of Earth from space really give you a stunning example of how small we are in comparison to the universe and how finite our lives are here on Earth. And the truth is that we can be wiped out at any time without apology.

When you think about your life in this way, you can’t help but strip away all the things that don’t matter that you may be dwelling on–all the distractions, drama, negativity, and problems that are competing for your attention and pulling you away from the things that really matter in the grand scheme of things.

This week, I challenge you to consider these three questions:

1. Will you commit to taking some M.Y. (Mellow Yellow) time this week to focus on what really matters?
2. If so, will you commit to scheduling it in as a priority?
3. How will you spend your M.Y. time? (Have fun listing the possibilities.)

I’d love to hear your answers to this. Please leave a comment and tell me how you answered these questions today.