Here’s Why You Have Absolutely No Time In Your Life.

Time is our most precious and rare commodity. Yet we treat it like we have it in abundance. Each moment that goes by is a moment we won’t see again. If there is anything we should prioritise, it makes sense for that to be our time. However, we don’t.

So instead, what if we could manufacture more time?

Here’s the problem.

We think everything matters more than it actually does…

…and we don’t have a strategy to separate what does matter, with what doesn’t.

Hence we forgo what is most important to all of us — our time. Because that is the easiest option.

Hopefully by the end of this post, that won’t be the case.

It is in fact extremely easy to create more time,

and by “create” I don’t mean somehow magically having access to 25 hours in a day while everyone has to work with 24.

What I do mean is somehow having access to time that you didn’t know existed.

Like reaching into an old jacket pocket, which you haven’t worn for a while, and pulling out a whole wad of cash!

Doing this with time. It’s possible.

Let me put it in an example

I was doing some marketing work as a freelancer many years ago.

Fun fun…

Anyway.

There was this lady who was kind of a big deal (well to me). She was in-charge of a massive pharmaceutical chain.

I had finally got her on the phone after months and months of trying.

I felt if I could win her account it would make a MASSIVE difference to my life. This one account would be all I need for quite some time.

So after giving her my illustrious pitch over the phone, I got her email address, and she requested I send her a proposal.

A proposal. How exciting.

This was a Friday afternoon.

I spent

• all Saturday,
• all Sunday,
• all Monday,
• most of Tuesday, and,
• then did several re-checks, re-wording, and re-designs on Wednesday.

Before finally pressing

SEND

on Thursday.

And out went my ultra-polished sleek proposal.

It was full of awesome graphics, catchy images, a whole bunch of relevant and meticulously researched stats, graphs, benefits, and the entire VISION of how we would change her world.

It was pretty darn impressive I must say.

It deserved some kind of writing oscar.

And…

Friday came and went.

Weekend came and went.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday even.

No response.

Nothing at all.

A few weeks later after a few phone calls, I got in touch with her to follow up, and she said to send her a bullet-point email of what I was proposing.

She didn’t have time to read any documents.

I put in no effort at all this time around

(because I was angry she hadn’t responded, and didn’t seem like she cared after I invested all those resources into my initial proposal).

I sent her a dry 4-bullet email.

And weeks later, a few meetings and some trial projects done, I ended up winning her account.

But to this day, she hasn’t ever opened that proposal.

The one I spent blood, sweat, and tears creating (mostly tears by the looks of it).

99% of Things Don’t Matter

This is the crazy idea that we find hard to digest.

Pretty much all things don’t REALLY matter.

99% to be precise.

They just don’t matter. We just think they do…

We spend an inordinate amount of time doing things, worrying about things, being involved with things, and creating things that in the big picture of life -

DON’T MATTER.

I spent close to 50 hours on that proposal I sent to the lady in-charge of the pharmaceutical account.

But instead all I could have sent was a 5 minute email.

Which in fact was all that was required to achieve the outcome I intended.

The outcome being — moving one step forward.

I agree that there could be other factors at play that lead to her not responding to my proposal, such as:

1. Bad timing of my email,
2. Not the right subject line to capture her attention,
3. She was away,
4. There was some personal/professional problems at the time, and,
5. The list goes on…

BUT.

The bottom line is, the email did the job right?

So I could have essentially manufactured 49 hours and 55 minutes of more time in my life.

And this isn’t a one-off isolated incident.

I do this consistently.

• I’ll go through and re-read every aspect of each of these posts to make sure there aren’t any spelling errors, or the flow isn’t poor, or something is in the wrong place, or I am being too preachy…yada yada.
• I’ll spend hours obsessing over whether my response to a certain person could affect my relationship with them.
• I’ll drop everything and book in a meeting with someone because it seems critical to resolve some esoteric problem that just popped up.
• I’ll do a whole lot of stuff that just doesn’t matter.

But at the time it seems to do so. And most of it is driven by FEAR of some kind.

- and here is the secret (repetition does wonders).

99% = doesn’t matter.

So when “chaos” strikes, it most likely isn’t chaos.

So when you must answer a “critical” phone-call, it most likely isn’t critical.

So when you snap because of what someone said, they probably didn’t even say what you think they said in the first place. And even if they did, a few hours later it probably doesn’t even matter right?

Honestly even you replay your most recent activities,

The ones which took a big chunk of time away from your life, and look at them now, you’ll realise that most of them, well…

…don’t really matter.

And if despite all of this preaching, if you still think that something

Really

Really

REALLY

does matter.

Try Negative Visualisation

Here is probably one of the most unusual bits of advice.

Advise that you can teach students, and the younger generation. Something that if they embed into their system and practice, they will carry it through their life to give them an edge emotionally, and practically.

(borrowed from Stoic philosophy)

Here it is:

Think negative instead of positive.

“Defining your fears instead of your goals is the key to doing anything uncommon and big”

Doing negative visualisation, or practising strategic pessimism, can help you put things in perspective that no positive thinking, logic-based strategy can. In fact, it can help you take the right action that allows you to spend your time wisely.

Here is how it works:

1. Take a sheet of paper, and draw three columns,
2. Write down your fear, or the thing that you feel is really important which you are considering devoting your time to,
3. In the first column, write down the worst possible outcomes for this fear if you were to take action — what is the absolute worst that can happen, list it all,
4. In the next column, write down all the actions you can take to prevent these worst outcomes from occurring or mitigate the likelihood, and,
5. In the final column, write down everything you can do to help you get back on track if the worst things happen.

That’s it.

At the end of this exercise you will automatically realise how important this particular thing is (to you), and what pain it could cause if you don’t invest your time into it.

Is it worth your time?

Is it one of those really really important things you should do?

You should have your answer.

And, as a positive side effect,

You may be able to make those tough decisions a lot easier on yourself and have immense clarity behind whether you should invest your most precious resource into this

- Your Time.

Instead of some undisclosed fear driving you forward.

Powerful stuff.

And simple enough to add to the arsenal of students in our classrooms.

Teaching them this skill could make a massive impact on their lives.

Showing them how to manufacture more time. Being wise about their decision making. And putting the steering wheel back in their hands.

I’m sure you can see the value in this.

And I’m going to end this post here.

Even though I haven’t spell checked and re-read it that extra few times I normally would.

It makes me feel uncomfortable. And that is the point. Because will doing the above really matter?

Well,

99% likely it won’t.

Jasky Singh — Director (K2 Audiovisual) & Life Hacker