“Within time lies the potential for an impoverished life or for a life of fulfillment; properly used, time becomes the keeper of the ultimate treasure.” ~ Tal Ben-Shahar
In my work with my clients, I often hear statements like the following: “buying back my time is the most important thing that I’ve done for myself,” “I finally feel that I’m in control of my life,” and “I feel alive,” as a result of them being intentional with how they use their time. In their voices, I can hear a sense of relief and a feeling of joy, even fulfillment.
Pay attention to how you’re utilizing your time. It’s incredibly precious. Time is one of the few things that we all have the same amount of, however we don’t all use it the same way. When it comes to the world of high achievers and the subject of productivity, what separates the Jeff Bezos’, Richard Bransons, and Ariana Huffingtons from everyday folks, is that they guard their time very wisely, so much so, that even Ariana Huffington and Jeff Bezos have become proponents of maintaining healthy sleep habits. How do they do it, and still have time to run extremely successful organizations!? Gary Keller, the real estate guru, states that, “productive people get more done, achieve better results, and earn far more in their hours than the rest….the people who achieve extraordinary results don’t achieve them by working more hours. They achieve them by getting more done in the hours they work.”
If you conducted an assessment of how you utilize your time, you will come to find that there are things that you engage in that don’t move the needle closer to your ideal destination in life, which significantly impacts your overall quality of life. Some of these items are simply time wasters. In general, they serve to steer us off track, because they feel good in the moment, and allow us to avoid feelings of discomfort that come with things like working on daunting projects that we have been putting off. Despite the incredible satisfaction that comes with completing tasks, large and small, we still feel compelled, at times, to avoid taking action. Why?
Read more on the real cause of procrastination and how to break through, to be sure that you meet necessary responsibilities head on, rather than avoiding them:
I often share with my clients a metaphor: Imagine sitting at the helm of a vehicle. At any point, each one of us has an opportunity to push the throttle forward, in order to accelerate our journey, our path toward success, simply by making a choice for how we utilize our time. Next time you get frustrated about the feeling that the results aren’t coming fast enough, ask yourself, “am I doing everything I possibly can to move me in that direction?”
As an experiment, just pay attention to any particular task that you engage in, throughout the day, and ask yourself how that will move you closer to where you envision yourself to be, down the road. With that, Tony Robbins says that we “cannot manage, what we do not measure,” so consider crunching the numbers in your own life, so you can work toward improving the overall quality of your life.
When considering your calculations, you will likely want to correct for sleep, which is an absolute necessity for us all. Since the
CDC and the American Heart Association strongly recommend a minimum of 7 hours of sleep each night for adults. We’ll consider those 7 hours to be a wash, which leaves virtually everybody with roughly 17 waking hours to dedicate to our lives. How are you utilizing those 17 hours? Common areas of focus, for many people, are relationships (romantic, parent-child, other family, friends, miscellaneous members of your social networks), career, spiritual life, physical health, and miscellaneous necessary daily tasks (life management responsibilities). How this breaks down per category is always a matter of individual personal preference, based on values, priorities, and goals.
Let’s look at some sample data from my life: on a given day, I spend roughly 89% of my waking hours on worthwhile activities, such as quality family time, professional commitments, miscellaneous necessary daily tasks, my spiritual life, and my physical health. The remaining 11% is spent on otherwise meaningless tasks. The ideal would be to completely convert that 11% into time well spent, related to the important areas of my life. I am, of course, only human, and do enjoy a little time to decompress. With that, I have noticed, in my work with my clients, as well as in my own life, when we make an intentional choice to spend our time in trivial ways, in other words when we give ourselves permission to misuse our time, rather than mindlessly being swept away by the impulse, it prevents us from experiencing the guilt, shame and self-flagellation that comes with not using our time in ways that we would consider to be useful. The goal would be to spend 99.9% of our time, if not 100%, on worthwhile activities, in order to feel truly fulfilled.
These figures, of course, fluctuate depending on what I deem to be a priority, on that given day. On certain days, for example, a larger percentage of time is spent dedicated to family, such as on weekends, and on some days more time is dedicated to personal development, and some time is dedicated to miscellaneous life management responsibilities.
When you’re aware of what these time wasting tasks are robbing you of, you begin to be more intentional. In The Richest Man in Babylon, there is a quote that I often return to: “No man willingly permits the thief to rob his bins of grain.” The thief, in this case, is, of course, those actions that don’t contribute to our living of a good life.
Consider the following questions:
- How am I managing my time, on a day-to-day basis?
- Am I focused solely on tasks related to the absolute necessities in life, or the areas of my life that I value most?
- Is everything that I’m doing, moving the needle in the direction of the ideal life that I envision for myself.
After answering these questions, determine what adjustments you’re willing to make, starting right now, in order to improve the overall quality of your life.
