Crawling across the plywood of our attic, I spied the tan plastic bag and knew exactly what was inside: Daytimers.
Before there was Google Calendar and Evernote…
Before there were Palm Pilots…
Back when Windows referred to the glass in your living room—not an operating system—we needed a way to keep track of our schedules.
Many of us in the business world used Daytimers—a spiral bound pocket book with calendars and appointment pages. And in that tan plastic bag up in my attic were several years’ worth of old Daytimers.
You know what caught my eye as I flipped through those planners—more than a quarter of a century old? It wasn't the business stuff, the appointments and meetings and billing issues. It was the personal stuff—things that define a family. Example? I found notated on one page where our baby girl, Lynnette, learned to say, “See you later” when talking on the phone.
In another planner, I found a note affirming our little girl performed both major bodily functions in her toddler toilet. And as any parent can tell you, that's definitely a milestone worth recording.
As I flipped through more pages, I saw notes marking a movie my wife and I went to see…the date we went to a Cubs game…the list of guests invited to a surprise birthday party for her.
I frankly cannot point to a single business item that caught my eye or tugged at my heart. Yet…the kid stuff…the me-and-my-wife stuff…..that mattered a whole lot.
All that meticulous tracking of billable hours that seemed so important at the time…just wasn't very important at all.
Life, I was reminded in that attic moment, is made up of daily, ordinary, routine things that are anything but insignificant viewed through the lens of time.
Strange how a coating of dust creates so much clarity.