“We can no more afford to spend major time on minor things than we can to spend minor time on major things.” — Jim Rohn
Jim Rohn, a prolific lifestyle coach once said we have to spend major time on major things. I could not agree more, because time is so valuable you have to use it in the most efficient way possible.
In people’s lives there are Major Things and there are Minor Things. As I have been thinking through this concept, I have yet to come up with a good definition of what is a Major Thing. The best way I can classify a Major Thing is the following: By completing this task, you will have moved the dial on the quality of your life upwards.
I guess that is not the greatest definition. But if I think about it important tasks are different for everyone. What will move the dial for an aspiring singer will not move the dial for me, a young professional.
The opposite of Major Things is Minor Things. For Minor Things I also do not have a great definition. By best definition is the follow: Minor Things are tasks or events that will not move the dial for your life in near or far future.
It seems like it’s pretty logical that we should always avoid Minor Things and only do Major Things. But the problem is we MUST DO Minor Things at certain points in time.
Here are things a few things that I have classified as Minor Things in my life:
· Checking social media updates
· Checking work email
· Checking the news
· Idle Conversation
· Work meetings with unidentified agendas
Yet, I MUST DO all these things some of the time:
· Social media updates: If I do not check them, I cannot stay in the lives of my friends or to co-ordinate hangouts.
· Work email: I have to check them to reply to things people need of me or to remove any decision bottle necks.
· News: I will have to be informed of major headlines at times. And especially if the news impacts my stock holdings.
· Idle conversation: You need to have some or else you would come off at extremely rude to everyone.
· Work meetings with unidentified agendas: You’ll have to attend at some times or else many people at work will be unhappy with you.
Therefore, I think we must do Minor Things to make sure that the dial of our lifestyle stays at its current level.
What we can control though is the type of time that we spend on Minor Things. This is the second thing that Jim Rohn talks about the concept of Major Time.
Like with Things, there is Major Time and there is Minor Time. I think with time things are easier to define.
I define Major Time as the following: A block of time that is uninterrupted, fully concentrated onto completing, analyzing, and/or thinking about the task at hand. A block of time should be at least one hour.
I define Minor Time as the following: A block of time that is full of interruptions, where one is partially concentrated on analyzing, and/or thinking about the task at hand.
Personally, I think we should spend as much time as possible in Major Time each day. I would say that we are losing the colour in our lives because we spend so much of it in Minor Time and doing Minor Things. Doing Minor Things or being Minor Time does not give us a sense of accomplishment. Minor Time as more stress to our lives, it makes us think feel overwhelmed because we feel talking a longer time to complete a task than it should take. Or we feel that we are being pulled in many different directions. Minor Things hurt gives us a sense of spinning our wheels in mud. There is no sense of accomplishment because we have not done anything that moves the dial.
I believe this is why some many executives say they get their important work done after 5 p.m. or that many people get up at 5 a.m. to strategize about their lives.
It is because that is the only time in their day where they have Major Time to do Major Things.
It is because with the technology advances of today Minor Time is becoming more prevalent. People can reach you at any time, and at anywhere. Try devoting one hour to write a blog post while having to answer four separate emails at random minute intervals. I am sure it will not be as good as writing a blog post where your one hour was uninterrupted. Major Time versus Minor Time.
Therefore, we need to spend our Major Time doing Major Things. Because spending Minor Time doing Major Things will take the colour out of the painting that is the Major Thing.
Yet, I believe we can save ourselves from disrupting our Major Time by using the concept of ‘Stacking.’ I was introduced to this concept by reading Tim Ferriss’ book The 4-hour Work Week. The concept of ‘Stacking’ is that we should wait to complete the same type of tasks all at the same time. For example, instead of answering each email as it comes in, we should answer the emails after 10 of them have arrived in our inbox.
This is the best way I have found to protect my Major Time, so that I can do Major Things at work. I have tried this for the past few months where I check my inbox for possible replies at 9 a.m., 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 4p.m. At the same time I do these inbox checks and replies, I will also reply to any social media messages.
This gives me pockets of time throughout the work day where I can have Major Time to accomplish Major Things. At times meetings will shorten some of these times, but that is unavoidable.
In summary, there are more and more things today that eat away at our Major Time. A lack of Major Time will negatively impact our ability to produce complete high-quality Major Things. And without the production of high-quality Major Things our lives will stall at its current levels.