Is “one day” on your calendar?
Have a look. Monday’s there. So are Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. One day isn’t. It never has been, and it never will be.
I use that when I’m speaking at events, because most of us have said it at some point. “One day I’ll do this. One day I’ll do that.” One day, one day, one day. We say it as if it’s a real date, and meanwhile the things we care about most sit there waiting.
... the chief beauty about the constant supply of time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoilt, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your career. Which fact is very gratifying and reassuring. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.
Arnold Bennett, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1908), Chapter III, Precautions Before Beginning
Bennett’s good news is that you can’t waste tomorrow’s time today. However badly the morning went, the next hour turns up clean, as if you’d never wasted a minute in your life.
Why we wait for Monday
So why do so many of us write off the whole day, the whole week or even the whole month after one slip?
I think it’s because a slip makes the slate feel dirty. So we wait for one that looks clean: a Monday, the first of the month, the first of January. Until then the bad day carries on, because we’ve already decided it doesn’t count.
Bennett saw that coming in 1908. The very next thing he says is that there’s no point waiting till next week, or even until tomorrow. “You may fancy that the water will be warmer next week. It won’t. It will be colder.”
What gets me about “I’ll start Monday” is this. If you’ve just made a decision about something, and you really care about it, why would you not start straight away?
Flip it
Instead of thinking about one day, flip it and make today day one.
What’s one thing you can do today that starts you moving towards the life, the business or the relationship you actually want? Just one. It might take a minute. It might take an hour.
Bennett had a warning about this part too. The enthusiasm we feel at the start wants to move mountains, he said, and then it gets tired and quietly dies. “Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quite a little.” A few lines later comes my favourite sentence in the whole chapter: “I am all for the petty success.”
You won’t always get to choose what’s happening around you. You’ve always got the ability to choose what you do next, though. Never lose sight of that.
It’s okay to start again. It’s okay to start again right now, and again after lunch if the morning gets away from you. No one knows what the future’s going to bring, so every hour gets Bennett’s clean page, including this one.
If you want the business version of this, where rooms full of business owners turned their “one day” lists into first actions, it’s in One day, or day one?
So what’s the one thing you’ve been saving for one day?
