are you ready to put the power of synchronicity into getting shit done?

i’m going to suggest something radical. i want you to throw out your to-do list. i’m not kidding. take it now, and tear it word from word. every task you’re supposed to finish, everyone you’re supposed to call, the reminders for the thank you note to your boss for the raise, the birthday card for your neice, the electricity bill. everything. now put the pieces of paper in a bag along with your wrist watch, which represents your concept of time. ‘there’s never enough time,’ we say, ‘time is running out,’ we insist, ‘it’s later than you think!’ we cry.

now get a hammer. smash the watch and the paper. break it up real good. now put it in a top hat and set it aside. we’ll come back to it later, but first i’d like you to pick a card.

seriously, read on only if you’ve burned, shredded, or drowned your to-do list. and put it in a top hat.

that’s the card you want? don’t show it to me. have you memorized it? ok, put it back in the deck. no, face down. good.

now i want you to get a pen and a piece of paper. do it. seriously, do it. i want you to write down the three people you know personally who most inspire you. now write down your three favorite activities. now write three favorite times in your life.

and now write down the one thing they all have in common (e. g. the quality of ‘gentleness’). i want you to write the opposite of that one thing (e. g. ‘forcefulness’). and now, this is complicated, but i want you to write down the opposite of the opposite, without using the first word (let’s say, ‘allowing’). put that aside for now.

ok, have you ever experienced coincidence? have you heard talk of the same book several days in a row, and subsequently found a copy of it on the sidewalk? have you run into a friend in a distant city? randomly asked someone’s birthdate and found it was the same as your own?

write down the first coincidence that comes to mind. immediately and without thinking, write down what that coincidence signaled to you (e. g. ‘my best friend called me at the same moment i picked up the phone to call her. the phone didn’t even ring. from this i take that somehow we are connected in an unseeable way’).

now plug your answers into this equation: i am (allowing) that (we are all connected in an unseeable way). make it grammatically correct so i don’t look like a shlump. just jam it together. go ahead. i have a 5 o’clock show on a cruise ship.

now i want you to take this equation, and put it in the top hat. wave your hand and say, ‘there are no coincidences! there are no coincidences! there are no coincidences!’ now, take out your piece of paper really dramatically as if it’s your old smashed watch that’s been magically transformed into this new thing.

is this your card?

no?

no. it’s today’s to-do list.