Pop quiz: What is your most valuable non-renewable resource? What is the one thing that you spend all day long every day and yet you can never get any more of it? The answer of course is your time. Do you know anyone that can create more time? I didn't think so (but I was hoping you might!)
But more important than understanding that time is your most important resource is knowing that there are no guarantees about how much time you have left. I don't mean to shock you, but you have no idea if you have 50 years left or 50 seconds left. There is no way you can predict how much time you have left. Sure, you can make a guess. But that's all it is - a guess. Unfortunately, most people have no idea how valuable their time is and they spend it like it will never end! Everything they want to achieve will happen "one day" or "at some point".
Can this be right? Do humans really just spend their lives filling time in the belief that time will never end? How can this happen? Well it's simple - for some reason we just think life will go on forever. We just think time is basically endless. We think that there is plenty of time to do whatever we want to do. Every day we wake up and there's more time right in front of us. Another 16 hours of time before bed! The problem of course is that this is a completely flawed belief. The only time you really have is right now.
So how do you spend your time? Have you been wasting it? Or do you spend your time wisely? Whilst we now know we can't get more time, we can always save time can't we? We can work faster or we can work smarter and by doing these things we can save time. When we save time we create more free time. We all like free time don't we?
We all love free time don't we? Free time is time free of any outside obligation. It's all yours to do with as you please. Ideally, your entire day (every day) would be free time. That would be time nirvana! But that's a discussion for another day. You want more free time so that you can spend more time doing whatever you want to do (like play video games or sit on the internet for 6 hours straight for no reason). So let's look at two simple strategies that you can use straight away to create more free time.
Number one: Four or five 15-minute breaks from doing work equals an hour or more of free time every day. If you do that five days a week that's five or so more hours of free time every week. Five hours a week equals 250 hours a year! What could you do in 250 hours of free time? That's a lot of time to do whatever you love doing.
Number two: Be aware of your dead time and use it wisely. What's dead time you may ask? Dead time is when you are not doing anything productive but it is also not really free time. For example, you may be out and about walking the dog, you might be riding a bike, you might be waiting for someone to pick you up after soccer practice, or you might be driving a car (these are merely examples). Dead time is any time that isn't really used for anything at all - so start using this time to get ahead.
There are plenty of things that can be done during this time. Listen to a recording you made of some information you need to memorize. Practice a speech or pitch you're working on. Look over some flash cards. Do some reading. Watch a video on your phone (hopefully something that actually advances your current life goal - not just funny cute cat videos). This is time that you can use to get ahead. If you do 20 minutes of work on the bus on the way home then that's 20 minutes less you have to do when you get home. If you do that every day for five days a week that will be 100 minutes ahead each week. If you do that every week you will be 5200 minutes ahead (which is 86.67 hours in case you were wondering).
It's time to start valuing your time more than you ever have before. Remember, your time is always coming to an end. You just don't know when that end point is. I hope for you that it's still 100 years away. But there's a good chance it's less than that. Much less! So make every minute count. Save as much time as you can and spend your life doing something meaningful to you. Good luck.
But more important than understanding that time is your most important resource is knowing that there are no guarantees about how much time you have left. I don't mean to shock you, but you have no idea if you have 50 years left or 50 seconds left. There is no way you can predict how much time you have left. Sure, you can make a guess. But that's all it is - a guess. Unfortunately, most people have no idea how valuable their time is and they spend it like it will never end! Everything they want to achieve will happen "one day" or "at some point".
Can this be right? Do humans really just spend their lives filling time in the belief that time will never end? How can this happen? Well it's simple - for some reason we just think life will go on forever. We just think time is basically endless. We think that there is plenty of time to do whatever we want to do. Every day we wake up and there's more time right in front of us. Another 16 hours of time before bed! The problem of course is that this is a completely flawed belief. The only time you really have is right now.
So how do you spend your time? Have you been wasting it? Or do you spend your time wisely? Whilst we now know we can't get more time, we can always save time can't we? We can work faster or we can work smarter and by doing these things we can save time. When we save time we create more free time. We all like free time don't we?
We all love free time don't we? Free time is time free of any outside obligation. It's all yours to do with as you please. Ideally, your entire day (every day) would be free time. That would be time nirvana! But that's a discussion for another day. You want more free time so that you can spend more time doing whatever you want to do (like play video games or sit on the internet for 6 hours straight for no reason). So let's look at two simple strategies that you can use straight away to create more free time.
Number one: Four or five 15-minute breaks from doing work equals an hour or more of free time every day. If you do that five days a week that's five or so more hours of free time every week. Five hours a week equals 250 hours a year! What could you do in 250 hours of free time? That's a lot of time to do whatever you love doing.
Number two: Be aware of your dead time and use it wisely. What's dead time you may ask? Dead time is when you are not doing anything productive but it is also not really free time. For example, you may be out and about walking the dog, you might be riding a bike, you might be waiting for someone to pick you up after soccer practice, or you might be driving a car (these are merely examples). Dead time is any time that isn't really used for anything at all - so start using this time to get ahead.
There are plenty of things that can be done during this time. Listen to a recording you made of some information you need to memorize. Practice a speech or pitch you're working on. Look over some flash cards. Do some reading. Watch a video on your phone (hopefully something that actually advances your current life goal - not just funny cute cat videos). This is time that you can use to get ahead. If you do 20 minutes of work on the bus on the way home then that's 20 minutes less you have to do when you get home. If you do that every day for five days a week that will be 100 minutes ahead each week. If you do that every week you will be 5200 minutes ahead (which is 86.67 hours in case you were wondering).
It's time to start valuing your time more than you ever have before. Remember, your time is always coming to an end. You just don't know when that end point is. I hope for you that it's still 100 years away. But there's a good chance it's less than that. Much less! So make every minute count. Save as much time as you can and spend your life doing something meaningful to you. Good luck.
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