This Hackless Productivity Hack Holds the Key to a Peaceful Heart
Slow down, just for a minute, and focus on the spaces between
Recently I helped a blind person I’ve never met, go from freezing to comfortable.
Be My Eyes is a free service for people with visual impairments, connecting volunteers with people who need help interpreting visual cues. It’s been a while since I’ve received a call from the Be My Eyes app, but that distinctive tone lightened my heart, as it always does.
The person who made the call was having trouble working out her air conditioner remote control, so I gave verbal directions for where to put her fingers as she held the control up to her phone’s camera.
Such a simple thing, but it made a real difference in the life of someone who will probably never know my name, nor I theirs.
There’s something about helping someone with something they’re unable to do themselves that feels like a ray of sunlight on the soul. Doing things just for myself feels good for a time, but it’s like a pleasant path with a dead end. Or a lonely road that stretches on, leading nowhere.
And so I ask —
What’s the point of self-care, if it benefits only me?
Why watch a good movie or read a good book, if it’s solely for my own entertainment?
Why take on a better productivity system if all it does is give me more time for myself?
I have come to the conclusion that each of us has a core of light within us. I believe that the brightness of this core increases or decreases according to the quality of what we bring into, and send out from, ourselves, because I have both felt and seen evidence that this is true.
You can often see this light in others. It usually shines out through their eyes, but sometimes it can emanate from their entire being. Like the “ugly” woman who turned out to be the most breathtakingly beautiful person in the room.
Be the person who, with appropriate boundaries in place, puts up their hand to help.
Be the person who, when needing aid themselves, gives someone else the opportunity to feel the joy of helping.
Be the person with a positive look or word to share, even when no one appears to be in need (someone always is, though).
I write a lot about productivity, but sometimes I wonder if that’s the right word for my efforts to reach the wonderful life my sights are fixed upon. Please let me know if you find a better name for it.
As I write this, 2022 is winding down. Christmas preparations are well underway, and that precious peaceful pause between December 26 and the end of the year is whispering of the slowing down, the quietness to come.
I truly hope your heart will find moments of rest in the bustle of the coming weeks, and that the lure of just-one-more-productivity-hack will blow away like chaff on the breeze. Slow down, my friends! When spent wisely, one minute at a time not only counts, it accumulates into the very thing you were looking for.