How many times have you felt like there was a gap between your goals and dreams, and your daily decisions?
That gap represents the number of choices you make every day. How and what choices you make determine whether the gap is a crack in the pavement or a gaping black hole. To quote self-discipline coach Rory Vaden: “Anytime you say yes to one thing, you are simultaneously saying no to an infinite number of others.”
You see, dear reader, there is almost nothing in the world as potent as a dream and scarcely anything else that matches the potential of the human being. But potential doesn’t always equate to success, and people say there are more dreams than corpses in a graveyard.
Let me ask you this. Why are you still here, and by here, I mean, why are you still reading this? Is it worth your time? This is a question we ought to be asking ourselves 24/7.
But we don’t.
Because we always forget that our time is our life, that is to say, the habitual manner in which we spend our time is quite telling of how we spend our lives.
Now, Time is quite a tricky little thing. Many would argue that it’s an abstract concept, save for the relentless ticking of the clock. The seemingly perpetual noise meant to tether the abstractness of time to something physical, something the human being can recognize.
Hence, the creation of the sundials which turned mechanical and eventually, digital clocks. You’d think we’d have figured out how to buy ourselves more Time. Though now, more than ever, it feels like there’s a crippling shortage of it.
Dating back to the 1800s, an acceptable genius of his time conceived the popular construct of Time Management. Which really is, in the core of it, the same as saying, “I’m going to put the ocean in a jar.”
Unless you have Dr. Strange’s Time Stone at your disposal, I’d have to go as far as to say Time Management isn’t real.
In any other instance, this would be the opening act for our demise as a species.
But this blog is one of hope.
All our efforts towards Time Management still falls squarely on how we manage our actions, our thoughts, our genius (everybody has it) or simply, Self-Management.
What Time Management does is the opposite of what we want. Imagine you were in a foot race against a hundred-feet tall giant. By the time you take one step, the giant is already way ahead of you. It seems rather pointless to go on, doesn’t it? This is a visual representation of how it feels when you’re racing against Time.
Say we took the giant out of the race, made it a relay with no clear finish line, and you’re playing with a version of yourself from yesterday. We’ve shifted the entire momentum of the race. Now, it doesn’t really matter how far the finish line is because you could always guarantee how far you’ve come. And isn’t the essence of all that we do a way to be better than who we were yesterday and the day before?
Instead of measuring your days by the minutes and the hours, what if you began measuring it by how much meaningful work you’ve accomplished? Isn’t that an idea?
Before you do anything, try asking yourself these:
- Does this activity support my [immediate] goals?
- Does this activity make me a better person/language connoisseur/athlete/artist or whatever you’re striving to become?
- Does this bring genuine happiness without the gut-wrenching guilt?
Let’s face it; not everyone gets the same number of hours at their expenditure. Some have more, while others have to juggle. But it’s not about how much time we have, but what we do with our time that makes all the difference.
What are you going to do next?
