Are We There Yet? vol. 106

A long-time client and friend sent me the cartoon above. With tax season upon us, many of us are involved in the long-held tradition of scrambling to try to minimize our taxes.  We tend spend inordinate amounts of time in this endeavor. But, reducing taxes is not the only area where we spend valuable time to address issues that in the big scheme of things, may not be where we would choose to spend our time.

Last week, I listened to a podcast where the actor George Clooney was being interviewed and he noted how having children had changed his perspective about what is important in life.  He said that he could not imagine someone’s deathbed thought being that they wished they had read through one more script. But I’ll wager that even with this changed perspective, he spends too much time reading scripts and evaluating new projects . . . because he’s human like the rest of us.  My colleague, Charles Verruggio, told me about using the 10-10-10 rule to maintain perspective.

With this 10-10-10 rule, you think about your decisions or whatever may be bothering you using three different time frames. How will you feel about it in 10 minutes,10 months and 10 years?  It’s very easy to get caught up in the moment and either dwell too much on a decision or get anxious or angry about something that has happened. I can remember times when I’ve been stressed about things that upon reflection years later didn’t warrant the level of worry I had at the time. I try to use this rule whenever I remember to do it and have found that it does allow me to have a different perspective and feel less anxious. Good luck with your taxes!   

This week’s selection is:

BOOK:

Sidecountry: Tales of Death and Life from the Back Roads of Sports by John Branch

New York Times reporter John Branch’s riveting, humane pieces about ordinary people doing extraordinary things at the edges of the sporting world have won nearly every major journalism prize. Sidecountry gathers the best of Branch’s work for the first time, featuring 20 of his favorites from the more than 2,000 pieces he has published in the paper.