submitted by Linda Baldwin; photo by Mike Engelberger
From let: Club President Andrea Kaminski, John Zeratsky and Past President Jason Beren
How many times have you thought what happened to my week? Why didn’t I accomplish what I wanted?
John Zeratsky would say that defaults have taken over your life. It’s not your lack of self-control or willpower. It’s all of the electronic distractions, calendars, meetings, etc…the defaults that prevent you for making time for what matters.
Taking your guilt out of the picture, Zeratsky shares his journey from list maker- organizer extraordinaire to living a life making time for what matters.
He highlighted his personal journey from Green Lake to UW-Madison to the high-tech Google world. He and his partner wrote a book sharing methods for getting out from under the daily milieu, “Make Time.” The book shares 87 tactics to make time everyday for what’s important.
Four Daily Steps:
- What’s the highlight of your day? Write it down on a sticky note. What’s your top focus of activity today?
- Create barriers to distraction. For example, put that phone away. Turn off or delete aps that demand your attention.
- Build energy to enjoy the moments and interactions that matter.
- One day at a time. Each day you can choose to spend time differently.
Feeling a need to disconnect from the world of carryout, Uber and Amazon, he and his wife then embarked on a sailing adventure from SF south through the Panama Canal and then up through the Caribbean to Key West. On this trip, they were able to disengage from their frenetic world and decided to begin again in Milwaukee…”relearning the value of belonging.”
Zeratsky ends his presentation describing his journey in “self-care” (on their voyage) to the realization that his greater need was contributing to the bigger world. He ends with “the threads of connection can’t replace that feeling of belonging – that you are meant to be somewhere.” In his case, Milwaukee.
If you missed our meeting this week, you can watch the video here.
Rotary Club of Madison, Wisconsin 