We make choices everyday. Some good, some bad. One day, Indiana Jones made a choice, and they haven't seen him since.

Deep in Adventureland sits Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye. As the story goes, the year is 1935 and Indiana Jones has discovered this ancient Indian temple. Within the temple are countless intriguing artifacts, multiple booby traps, and inscriptions throughout offering advice and warnings to visitors. Unfortunately, Indy’s funding has run out, so he and Sallah began offering tours to raise money for the continuing expedition.

The deity worshiped in this temple, Mara, offers those who would dare to venture in one of three gifts: eternal youth, visions of the future, or earthly riches. But there is a catch. You must not “look into the eye of the idol.” Apparently some did, for tourists have mysteriously vanished, so Indy goes to look for them. He doesn’t return, either, so Sallah continues the tours hoping someone may find Indiana Jones and rescue him.

Most interesting when the attractions first opened were the decoder cards handed out to guests as they waited in line. They could use these cards to decipher the messages inscribed on the walls. Messages like:

LOOK NOT INTO THE EYE OF MARA AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE THE GIFT OF ETERNAL YOUTH EARTHLY RICHES OR FUTURE KNOWLEDGE.

ONLY ONE SPRING CAN RESTORE YOUTH AND VIGOR CHOOSE WISELY.

TRUE REWARDS AWAIT THOSE WHO CHOOSE WISELY.

MARA SHALL GUIDE YOU THROUGH THE DOORWAY OF YOUR MOST SECRET DESIRE IN THE CHAMBER OF DESTINY.

Mara will grant you your most secret desire … as long as you don’t look into the eyes of the idol. Now, you must choose, but choose wisely.

Continued in "Once Upon YOUR Time"!

A crux of time management is choice: within certain parameters, you choose what to do with the time you've given each day. If you choose poorly, you may not go missing like Indy did, but what will go missing is your ability to get things done.

This one may be a bit hard to swallow, but stay with me. This strategy is simply to recognize that everything you do is a choice. That’s not to say that sometimes an outcome is so bad that it’s almost unthinkable, but it’s still an outcome, just not the only one. Consider an extreme example.

Do you have to eat? No, you don’t. You should. If you don’t, you’ll end up in the hospital and you will die, but you still don’t actually have to eat. Hospitalization and/or death are overly negative outcomes, but the fact that the result of that action is negative doesn’t invalidate that it’s a choice. In fact, when it comes to your health, sometimes your body will make the choice for you. Don’t have time to get enough sleep? You will when your body becomes so physically exhausted that you get sick and are literally unable to do much of anything for a week.

How about a less extreme example? Do you have to go to work today at that job you can’t stand? No, you don’t. You could choose to take a vacation day or a personal day off. You could talk to your supervisor about the possibility of changing your workload or your specific job description to better match your strengths and what you enjoy. You could quit and find a job somewhere else. You could start your own business doing something you love. You could wash windows, walk dogs, or mow lawns to bring in money instead of working at that job. Are some of those more difficult or uncertain than others? Sure, but they’re still possibilities.

When you accept this truth, your view of your calendar and your task list will change dramatically. Possibility has enormous power, sometimes even more than actuality. Knowing that there are other options will give you a sense of power and control over your schedule that you may never have had before. Now, each task you do, you are doing because you chose to, not because you “had to.”

On the flip side, it also removes your excuses. If you don’t accomplish what you set out to do that day, what choices did you make that caused this? Sometimes it happened because something you determined was more important (and more urgent) arose and you chose to do that instead.

Continued in "Once Upon YOUR Time"!