Life is about perspective
Reality is what we perceive it as. The only other thing that matter is the fact that time management is key.
Like many people, my blog posts started with a conversation with a friend. I don’t think everyone can relate in this exact instance, but I definitely believe everyone has been in a situation where they’re super passionate about a topic/thought that it just flows on and if you’re lucky enough the person you’re talking to also believes the same or even better they help you process these thoughts into something even bigger and stronger.
So what is life? ….. Nah that’s not what we’re here for.
I truly believe perspective and time management is key. Those are two words that are usually associated with productivity. For the next few minutes, I want you to try and disconnect those words with work-related productivity. Instead, perceive time management as the way you spend your time, how you want to spend your time and how you prioritise certain aspects of your life. Perspective is how we view everything, the world, our life, other people’s lives.
I want this get this off my chest. Money doesn’t matter. Money is something that we can always find more of. Humans create money by using machines….it’s valued because some of us see it as gateways to happiness, others see it as the gateway to living. Neither of these is wrong, but neither of these is right. Money is something that fuels almost every single human on the planet, we need money to be able to do basic ‘life things’ (eg. Travel, Buy a house, Buy Food), but it’s not something we should value so highly, don’t get me wrong, it is an important part of life, without money we won’t be able to eat then we die (you get the point). There are a few things that you need to value higher than money, there are plenty of obvious things like life itself, the people in your life, relationships, etc. You know what all these things have in common, they can’t be bought with money. They are established and developed by you.
Here’s a secret, from what I have learnt from life (so far) there are two very important factors to life…actually you know what…these factors make up life itself. Guess what they are.
Perspective & Time Management.
Let’s start with perspective or at least the construct of perspective. Perspective is how we view things, no two humans have the same perspective, we might share very similar perspectives as other people, a great example of this is two people go to a music festival, they both love the festival, especially DJ Khalid’s performance, these two people love the artist but they both didn’t share the exact same experience. We physically cannot see things through another person’s eyes, feel exactly what they feel, sense what they sense…it’s exactly what makes us human and individuals. Everybody sees things differently, they hear things differently. We all see different aspects of life differently, and this is actually wonderful because nothing is exactly the same.
As we view aspects of life differently, this means we are able to make calculated decisions based on what our brain tells us what’s important to us. The thing is, perspective goes so much deeper than that, to the point where it actually makes my brain hurt (a lot).
Reality is what we perceive it as.
I’ll let that sink in for a second. All our existence really is, is what we see it as, or should I say what we believe it is. Everybody gives life more meaning by discovering a purpose, some believe we were created by a God (or many Gods). The thing is, we create everything, we give ourselves purpose to life, some of us go off and do things like helping others in third world countries, others defend those who can’t protect themselves, we are all here for a reason. We are the ones that define that reasoning. I personally am a Christian, so don’t get me wrong, I am just as guilty as everyone else, trying to find a purpose to life itself when really I am the only one who defines it. I’m not going to get into what the bible tells me to believe or do, because I know I will start a fight in the comments, but I also don’t want to pull away from the actual meaning of my long-winded tangent (aka, this blog post).
Reality is what we perceive it as, that means you define who you are, who you want to be. Fear is something that creates a barrier between you and what you want from life, money is also another aspect that takes over and stops you from living your best life (yes I cringed too).
I hate “what if statements and questions”, but what if tomorrow you didn’t have any limitations to life, what would you do? I’m not telling you to quit your job, but what is your ideal situation and what’s stopping you from living it?
Nothing is instant, but if you want that something badly enough, then you need to make a plan of action. Whatever it is, I am telling you right now. It is in reach, you’re the only person who can choose how you’re going to make it a reality. Remember, the reality is what we perceive it as.
My second point, which is almost as important, but you need to get your head around the true concept of perspective first. Time management, it’s absolutely vital to everything in life. The sad thing is, there are so many people living on this earth without having very good time management. Right now, you’re probably thinking of that one person who was always late to class or maybe a meeting, then they make up an excuse like the bus was late or, my meeting prior went overtime. Nope. This isn’t what I mean when I’m talking about time management, think of time management more like time prioritisation. It’s more how you spend your time, and what you choose to do with it. After we choose our priorities we then choose which part of our lives we put first, then second then third and so on. This is good, in fact, this is great. But this can also be dangerous if we don’t prioritize the right things. Time is money (said everyone on wall street), but what if you time was valued at $1000 per hour, would you still be doing what you’re doing? Or would you prioritise differently? Here’s the thing, your time is worth more than money, it’s something we can’t buy more of. We are limited to how much time we have, it’s not something a machine can make more of, it’s not something that we can check every day as we do with our bank balance on our iPhones, it’s something that could run out tomorrow, or next week, or next year or whenever. The secret is to manage your priorities which results in how you manage your time to make the most out of life. I’m not saying to drop everything and quit your job because you’re time is more valuable than money, what I am saying is that it might be a good idea to look at how you do spend your time and if you’re actually prioritising the important aspects of your life.
We associate the word ‘investment’ with money, what if we associated it with time. What would investing in time look like? We do it every single day. Much like money investments, there are such things are good and bad time investments. Let’s go through an exercise of how we spend every 15 minutes of every day. I don’t care if you have to write it down on paper and spend half an hour planning it out, trust me, this is an investment worth making as it’ll help your future decision making and time management. Now that we know how we spend our time. My single question for you is, does that time spent doing those activities actually benefit you/your life or the people in your life? This includes the things you are passionate about, your hobbies, your family etc. You will be surprised by how much time you spend that actually isn’t actually benefiting you in any way shape or form. I don’t mean this in a selfish way, we will always have to do things for other people. When I did this process I actually found a lot of activities that don’t benefit me or my life, one of the examples in my life that I found was the amount of time I play video games. It is actually super important for us to let our brains actively shut down, and I don’t mean sleep but to consciously do an activity that doesn’t require a lot of brain power, this helps prevent ‘burn out’. Another example that I know a lot of us to struggle with is how much time we spend on social networking platforms, for those iPhone users out there screentime is a good way to see an indication of how much time we spend on certain social networking platforms, for me on my iPhone alone I spend 6 hours on facebook over the past 7 days, 3 hours on Instagram over the past 7 days. This is dramatically down from what it used to be but I’ve still got a long way to go. The screen time feature will also let you set limitations on certain apps or categories which can help you reach your goals, as a quick FYI Apple announced this week (first week of June 19) that they’ll be bringing screentime to Mac. This is something that’s super exciting if you already use screen time as you will be able to track your usage on there as well.
If you are to take anything away from this, remember that perspective and time management are possibly the two most important factors in life are if you understand these two concepts and re-evaluate yourself often then you will be ahead of the game. Reality is what we perceive it as. Time management/prioritisation is everything. Invest in time as it’s something that everybody is limited to, unlike money.
Be sure to follow along with my journey, I’m actually thinking of making my random thoughts and conversations an actual blog “thing” I guess 🤷🏽♂️
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