Recently, I sat in front of a television screen watching a cartoon where a character and his friends were trying to climb a mountain. The natural tendency is for people to see climbing as a way of going up, but that is far from the truth.

As I watched this show, I heard one of them say, “Guys, let's climb down.” It suddenly dawned on me, like it was something strange, that we can climb either way but not both ways. Then, as I fixed my gaze on their activities, I saw them truly climbing down — each one of them, using a rope, climbing down into a hole. It was an eye-opener for me to ponder the effect of this in our lives. You see, every single day you wake up, you're either climbing up (putting effort to go up or succeed), or climbing down (exerting effort to go down or fail).

Let's take this for example, two students are writing a test in a few days. One of them strategically gathered his school materials — textbooks and notes, and arranged them neatly on a bookshelf. He had already dusted them for a few minutes, say 25 minutes (you can tell he's a time-waster). Plus, he spent some amount of time wrapping or fixing torn pages to make sure they look good and last longer. At the end of the day, he spent about 90 minutes with the books without studying for the test. Question: couldn't he have spent that time studying? This suggests he worked so hard to “put his books away". The length of time he put into arranging the books would have been more productive had he opened them to study, but he never did. Indeed, he climbed. But where? Up or down? Your guess is as good as mine — he climbed all the way down.

On the other hand, the second student didn't even spend any amount of his time trying to fix or arrange the books. He decided to devour every page like a lion pounds on his unconscious prey. He studied for about 90 minutes like the other guy, wasting no time to even notice his younger one playing around. He's so engrossed that you could step on his toes and he won't demand an apology since he might not even notice you did in the first place. As he was about to conclude the session, he decided to ask questions on the materials he just studied to make sure he could recall the salient points. This he did with utmost concentration as well. This is it: this guy just spent time climbing, not down, but up.

Everything we do can either be a climb up or a climb down. These individuals here illustrate that idea so well. Our actions and inactions are never without outcome. Many people detest the outcome of their dedication. They're so dedicated to doing nothing — these are the ones who are busy over nothing. I said “nothing" because what they are spending time on might not be even up to 5% worth it when compared to what they should actually be spending time on.

When you're busy with things that have little or no value, you're climbing down. When you're busy with things that will add value to your life, company, relationship, etc., you're climbing up. This climb is sometimes conscious or unconscious. The guy who spent about 90 minutes doing everything except what he should be doing was merely putting in all the effort to do nothing!

The results? As stated, our actions and inactions have consequences. We don't have to love their effects. It's a matter of what-you-put-in is proportional to what-you-get-out. Here is a good question to always have in mind: is what I am doing now likened to climbing up or climbing down? If it is down, you need to stop. Rethink. Turn. If it is up, you need to move ahead with more tenacity because you know you will get nothing less than your desired results. Finally, let me ask you: are you climbing up or down?