John F. Kennedy once said that “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining!”. Here are my thoughts on how this applies to me and could apply to you as well!

“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining” – JFK

G’day guys. Welcome to this Aussie English video. I thought today would be relatively appropriate to film this video, and I’ve been wanting to talk about it for a little while. There’s a saying by JFK, John F. Kennedy, the president of the USA who was unfortunately assassinated in his limo. So, he was shot. He had an amazing saying and I’ll get it up here just so I don’t misquote it.

“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”

“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” And I thought it would be appropriate to film this one today because it is the complete opposite of that. The sun is very clearly not shining. If I pick this up and show you out my window it’s incredibly dark in here but you can probably hear and see that it is raining quite a bit. It’s not too heavy, but heavy enough for it to be heard obviously on the podcast.

So, why do I think that this phrase is incredibly important, and what do I think it means? I guess primarily this means that you should act when the time is right as opposed to when you have no choice. So, literally in the sense of this phrase, that you should fix the roof when the sun is shining, it’s obviously that if there’s something wrong with your roof, if you have a hole in it and water can get in, it’s best to get on top of the roof, you know, use a ladder, climb up on the roof with your gear, your hammer, your nails, your boards, your tiles, whatever it is that you’re going to cover those holes over with and fix the roof while it’s sunny instead of waiting for it to rain and then have the problem of the rain coming in through the holes and having to go out in the rain and then try and fix the roof.

So, how do I think and how do I feel that this relates to, I guess, me personally but everyone to some extent? I think that you need to act when the time is right with regards to anything that you’re doing in life. So, this may be taking advantage of certain situations whether it’s your career, whether it’s… I don’t know, could be anything really, getting fit. You’ve got to do it when it feels right. Don’t wait. Don’t wait for the “right time” in quotation marks there. The right time is when it feels right. And I have to keep telling myself this. Especially with things like studying my PhD, working on the podcast and trying to create episodes as well as trying to train at the gym and do classes and do weights. A lot of the time I tell myself I’m not going to do it today because I can’t do what I want to do, or I don’t think that I can do what I want to do, and I often have to remind myself that if I feel like doing it I should go and do it and just see what happens, because who knows, maybe I’ll be able to get everything that I want to do done, and ultimately, it’s better to fix the roof while the sun is shining. It’s better to act and do these things while you’re in a good mood and while you want to do these things. So, if you’re pumped up and you want to go to the gym it’s best to go to the gym even if you’re not going to be able to go for 40 minutes, for example, and do the entire gym session you would normally do. If you don’t go you do 0 minutes, right? But if you go for 20 minutes and you enjoy it it was worth it. And it’s the same for making these podcast episodes. Quite often I’m telling myself, you know, I have 10 episodes that I want to get done but oh my god it’s going to take like three hours to do all of the recording and then I have to write the transcripts. So, maybe I’ll just not do anything. Ultimately, that leads to getting nothing done, or having to act when I least feel like doing it because I know I haven’t put an episode up in four days and it’s, you know, I want to keep a rhythm up but I’m not in the mood and I know I need to get one up. So, I push through and I do it when I’m not feeling like it. Instead I try now to remind myself that if I feel like making an episode I’m going to make an episode. If it’s the middle of the night but I feel like doing an episode I’m going to make an episode. If it’s raining outside and I feel like making a video to put on YouTube I’m going to make a video and put it on YouTube. So, I guess that’s really the essence of this video. It’s if you feel like doing it try and find reasons to do it even if you can’t necessarily complete the entire task that you had planned in your head. And this is the same for me and the PhD. I try and study in little bursts when I feel like studying and then I give myself a break. I do something else that I want to do, that I feel like doing whether it’s going to the gym or recording some episodes on the podcast or practicing languages, and little bit by little bit overall a lot more gets done than if I was to try and sit down and force myself to do a lot when I don’t feel like doing it.

So, that’s today’s video guys. Repair the roof when the sun is shining. Don’t wait for it to rain. See you later guys.