This post is a reminder that you cannot skip the basics. If you ignore the basics, then they will wait quietly in the background and then sneak up slowly and stab you in the back when you are the least prepared. Am I being too dramatic? I do not think so.
We think we are awesome, cool, and on the top of our game. We take shortcuts to get even more of an advantage. These shortcuts are usually in the form of skipping things that everyone has to do. However, for some reason, we think we are special. An exception, perhaps. However, we will find out eventually. We will find out that the basics cannot be ignored, usually at a time when it is the most inconvenient for us. They will be reckoned with. They do not go away. They accumulate, and one day, you will pay the price.
I have many examples because I am a professional at trying to skip the basics and have found myself on the losing end of that proposition on a frequent basis. Here are some to consider:
- Sleep – Everyone has to sleep. Even those people who like to pretend they do not need a lot of sleep. The human body is extremely consistent and predictable in this regard. It does not matter your background, race, gender or anything else. Sleep is required, and for the most part, that is 6 – 10 hours per day, depending on many factors. If you skip sleep, you will eventually crash and be forced to sleep. There is not escaping this basic fact. Try to run and hide, but the sleep debt in your life will come calling.
- Taxes – You might get away with a few years of not filing, perhaps more if you have a wage that is under a threshold and you get most of your income via W2 or a similar reporting method. However, most professional people do not fit this, and the tax authorities (there are a few) will creep up on you. You cannot avoid this basic. You can outsource some of the responsibility, but you still have to take time out of your schedule and deal with your personal and corporate taxes. If you do not, you will be forced into it, and that is not pleasant.
- Nutrition – You have to eat what your body needs. You can only live on “reds, vitamin C, and cocaine” for so long. This was a Grateful Dead reference, so do not get offended that I said cocaine. It is a figure of speech indicating someone who is strung out. I could have said Diet Coke, Donuts, and M&Ms, which have the same concept. The point is that you cannot ignore your nutrition. You will pay the price, and it will come slowly and first, and then suddenly, you will be forced to deal with the issue, and it will be expensive and extremely time-consuming.
- Relationships – You cannot ignore the small things that need to happen on a regular and frequent basis to build and maintain a relationship. You can take it for granted for a while, but if you continue to ignore these basics, then there will come a day when that relationship will shut down on you. You will wonder, what happened? The reason will be clear – ignore basic relationship maintenance, and you will be caught off guard one day when that relationship is no longer available to you.
That is four; I could keep going. Home maintenance. Everyone has to deal with this as well. Leave things alone for long enough, and one day, you will wake up with everything breaking all at once. You will act all put out and think that you did not deserve all this to come crashing down. What really happened is that you ignored basic maintenance for far too long. The point is that there are basics in life that you cannot avoid. One of them for me is this giant stack of mail sitting on my desk. I know I have to deal with it, but I keep ignoring it. Someday soon, I will pay the price tag. I am getting away with the time savings now, but when I get pulled over because the tags on my car are expired – then I will suddenly remember the stack of mail that I have been ignoring.
Yes, the basics will kill you if you ignore them. You must plan on and incorporate time for the basics in your life, whatever the happen to be. I like to pretend that I am superhuman and above all that, but the reality is that I am not. We all pay the price someday.
