How to Spend Your Time Today to Get the Future You Want
In life, you’re not guaranteed happiness or success. You’re not guaranteed a great marriage or the house of your dreams. You’re not even guaranteed your next breath. Get over it.
Because while there are very few guarantees on planet Earth, there are some things that you can be sure of. One is the fact that every decision you make today turns you into the person you’ll be tomorrow.
That’s why the most successful people are always focused on the future and never let their guards down. They’re consistent — the same people day after day, whether they’re on stage in front of thousands of people or at the dinner table with their family.
They don’t skip the gym or sleep in when they don’t have important meetings.
They have routines and they stick to them.
They pay their dues every day, because they have to if they want to remain relevant and on top of their industry.
What’s this got to do with you?
Business is input, output
No matter how much natural talent or charisma you have, your business is in a death spiral if you’re not putting everything you have into it. If you think it’s fun or easy to turn a few bucks into a million, buckle your seatbelt. This is going to get rough.
Here’s reality. Most of what you do to grow your empire isn’t sexy. It isn’t slick or exciting, it can’t be reduced to a cute catchphrase, and no one would want to watch if you live-streamed it.
What does it look like to grow your empire? Grunt work.
What changes your business’s trajectory is you sitting down, intensely locked in on your vision and your mission. This focus drives you to do the work that has to be done, no matter what gets in the way.
You work this way day after day, month after month. You put in the time over the weekends and during holidays. But massive growth isn’t the result of gross time. Net time is what matters. It doesn’t matter how many hours you’re at the office if you spend those hours surfing the web or wandering the halls aimlessly.
So when you’re at work, you’re working like a madman. You’re not punching a clock and screwing around. And you don’t do this to make good on some 30-day Instagram challenge. You do it for a decade straight when nobody is looking or cares. You do it when everything in your mind is telling you to stop. You do it when your loved ones tell you you’re crazy.
The need to keep the grind going
The only thing that turns people into superstars is the grind. Want to have an impact and change the world? It’s not going to happen on accident. You’ve got to be purposeful with how you use your time, each and every day.
That means when everyone else is sitting around eating junk food and talking about sports scores, the weather, and politics, you’re not even listening. Instead, you’re laser focused on the business at hand and ignore the noise.
And you keep grinding.
If you really want to know how crazy wealth is amassed, that’s how it’s done: by grinding. It’s grueling and painful, and it’ll push you beyond every boundary you drew for yourself. But it’ll take you where you want to be.
The road to wealth ain’t sexy — until it is. Because when you finally get to live the life you want, when you get to put a giant smile on your kid’s face with an amazing vacation, and when you get recognized as the top donor to your favorite charity, the grind comes into focus.
Then everyone can see what you’ve seen all along. You don’t put in time because you like suffering. You do it because it has a purpose.
The grind scrapes the weakness and mediocrity from your psyche. The pain it causes helps you build scars that make you immune to haters and upside-down economies. The ends make all the pain and hardships pale in comparison.
Using time wisely starts now
Still struggling to use your time wisely? You’re not alone. And if you stay on the path of least resistance, you’ll have plenty of company. But is that the company you want to keep? Do you want to hang around crop dusters who are satisfied to putt through life with a rustled muffler or do you want to be surrounded with high-flying fighter jets?
If you want to make it to the top of your industry, own the competition, and build a legacy that will change the world for generations, you can’t let anyone else control your time. You can’t afford to waste a minute of your life on anything that doesn’t push you toward your goals.
I know it’s hard to focus, but let me make something abundantly clear.
You don’t own the sports team.
You ain’t running for Congress or Senate.
And there’s nothing you can do about the weather.
So why are you burning up so much time thinking, talking, and worrying about these things? All the while, your business sits idle, waiting for a leader to take control. Or more likely, someone else is starting a business with the goal of eating yours.
If you cared as much about your business and your future as you do about sports, the weather, and politics, then you’d get what you wanted out of life.
But maybe you ARE getting what you want — attention. The only problem is that by settling for attention now, you’re going to get nothing but regret later in life.
But if you’re looking for something that makes you leap out of bed with excitement, you’re on the verge of something great. If you’re sick of wasting your time, I’ve got good news. You don’t have to waste your life with mundane conversations that have no consequence. You can take back your time and start building your business empire.
Once you get a taste of success, you’ll never tolerate another minute of wasted time.
