Its 9:30pm.
And you’re staring down the barrel of a lackadaisical day.
Perhaps you never really managed to show up to your work today. Or maybe you neglected someone that you needed to have been with as a friend, relative or partner.
The day has been slipping you by at every turn. And now you’re turned upside down by it.
I’ve been there. I was there two hours ago.
And so I’m writing this, as much for myself as I am for you:
There’s a lot you can do in two hours
Let me say that again.
There’s a lot you can do in two hours.
In two hours you can
Finish half the work of an average 8 hour workday.
Publish 500 words, complete a sketch, or produce a jingle.
Workout, meditate and shower.
Transport yourself through film or reading.
Share dinner or a long phone call with someone you love.
You can achieve all this in two hours if you can show up with focus—and often a whole lot of courage. But the showing up is most of it.
And the reason to show up is that two good hours can change the momentum or your week. And it will entirely transform your day.
In two hours you can turn a poor day into an average one. You can turn an average day into a good one. And you can turn a good day into a great one.
Be careful with the last goal, because asking too much of a good day is sometimes the way to have a bad one.
Let’s revisit the tough day we started on.
It’s been two hours now and its 11:30pm.
If it was a relationship you were neglecting, you went ahead and had that conversation.
It wasn’t easy to reach out, which is why you were avoiding this in the first place. But you’re glad you got the conversation started. Regardless of how things went—you have started the process of moving forward.
You’re surprised how much further you are now with these two hours of courage, humility and attention.
Or, if you had been dodging work all day long, you finally decided you’d had enough.
Though the day has been ablaze with distraction so far, as you sat down the noise starts to dissipate. Soon, you’re locked in. The two hours go by. And you’re glad you sat down.
This is what two hours can do for you. And I’m sure you know this too–you’ve had these bursts of progress in the past. I’m just here to remind you that you’re capable of this, right now, in the next two hours.
I don’t want to oversell this.
Two hours won’t save your life.
And two hours won’t rescue you from the awful days that are out of your control.
There are days when life hits you like a train and there’s almost nothing you can do. There’s nothing for you to do in these days. You just have to take it on the chin and get some rest if you can.
But there are so many days where there is something we can do, but we fritter away in our own dissatisfactions.
Days when we wake up tired and sabotage ourselves. Days when we build towers of self-loathing with each unfulfilling hour. Days when we give up mid-way because its 4 pm and nothing has got done.
If you’re on one of those days, this is for you.
The fact that you haven’t gotten anything done today isn’t a message from the universe telling you you’re incapable of following through. This is not an evaluation of you as a person. It’s just one day.
You’re a human being who gets to have off days.
Just because you haven’t started off on the right foot doesn’t mean you can’t end on it. The hours and days that are behind you are behind you. And you can either dwell on them, or you can let them go.
I hope you will let them go.
Because staring you in the face, in its fantastic, crystalline beauty, is the rest of your life. A life filled with hours and hours and hours of intense possibility. Of creation, connection and joy.
I hope all of it will be yours. And why shouldn’t it be? There’s no telling where you might find yourself in just two good hours.
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