The way I look at it, there are three ways to spend your time productively:

–Working towards a paycheck

–Working on your craft

–Working on balance

When starting out, to do any of the three at the highest level, it usually takes 5-8 hours (there are exceptions to this I’m sure, but it’s what I’ve found works for me).

Paycheck — Most people would agree with this to hold down a regular job.
Craft — Although it’s an enormously simplified approach, if we look at the 10,000 hour rule, 5-6 hours a day (the upper limit of ‘deliberate practice’ we can get out of a day), this would give us a 3–6 year path to ‘Mastery’
Daily Practice — This most people might not agree with (which is why I might argue they’re so ‘stressed‘), but I’ve really found it to be the case. To steal a line from my friend Daiyaan, “for every hour you spend on making money, spend an hour working on yourself”.

–What does ‘working on yourself’ look like?

Read James Altucher’s Choose Yourself for a full overview (or the bottom of this post for a brief outline), but essentially doing something Physical, Mental, Emotional and Spiritual every single day to grow in each of these areas.

The Breakthrough I’ve Had…

When I look at some of my most inspiring role models, they’re people who have been able to get in some sort of ‘daily practice’ (although unless they’ve read Altucher’s book I’m sure they wouldn’t think of what they do in those terms), AS WELL as their hours on the path to Mastery.

–For Rich Froning, 3-time CrossFit Games Champion, “fitness comes third” (after ‘faith’ and ‘family’). If you read his book, you’ll really see he means it when he says it.

–For Ryan Holiday, ‘media manipulator’, bestselling author and marketing whizz, work is put on pause for a run/bike/swim, a BJJ class, as well as time with his girlfriend (interview well worth watching with him on this here).

–And for Owen Cooke, owner/founder of multi-million dollar company Real Social Dynamics, and master of human dynamics (watch enough of him and you’ll see he’s the real deal), the focused time on growing the company stops every day so that he can 1) meditate, 2) exercise, 3) sleep well, 4) read books, 5) write, 6) record an inordinate number of youtube videos (which are some of the very best I’ve come across if they resonate with you).

–How have they done this?

By making their path to Mastery their profession.

And with that, I’ve come to the conclusion that to get the most out of life, your ‘paycheck’ hours have to overlap with your ‘Mastery’ hours.

They have to be one and the same.

You shouldn’t confuse ‘Mastery’ with things in your ‘Daily Practice’. Don’t blend the two as they’re very different concepts.

One is your purpose — the engine of the ship. The other is keeping you in balance — plunging holes, sweeping the deck, and bailing water out where necessary.

Although you want to get really good at the four areas (Mental, Emotional, Physical, Spiritual), you’re not doing them in the hopes of one day earning a living through them.

To get to where you want to be as fast as possible (someone who CRUSHES IT at work, lives in balance, and loves what they do), your path to Mastery has to produce (or at least be likely to produce in the not too distant future) some form of revenue to keep you afloat (and thus double up your time).

This could come in the form of apprenticing under people doing what you eventually want to do, teaching the craft to people once you’ve reached a certain level, writing about it, creating digital programs, getting sponsorship… or any of the million other ways out there to monetize what you love to do in the 21st Century.

If we’re only able to take on two of the three areas…

> Paycheck + Mastery (without a Daily Practice) = a sure-fire way to burnout and depression. This gives no solid foundation to what you’re doing, and we all know that a tree is only as strong as its roots.

> Paycheck + Practice (without Mastery) = someone who’s getting by, doing okay, living ‘in-balance’, but who lacks purpose and who will never leave their mark on the world.

> Mastery + Practice (without a Paycheck) = a struggling artist who’ll likely go broke before they ever make it.

Now there is a route running with all 3 separately (doing 3-4 hours a day of each). It’ll just take a lot longer, it won’t have the same view, and quite frankly I don’t think it would be near as much fun.

If you want the fastest route to the top of the mountain, you have to combine two of the areas and make them one and the same.

–How can you do this on your path to Mastery?

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If you do nothing else after this post, buy and read both Mastery and Choose Yourself (audiobook on the latter highly recommended). Both will change your thinking and your mental ‘blueprint’ for how you see your future.

(Photo: Paul Townsend)