You Do Not Live Twice, Live Accordingly
Anyone who’s ever worked with me has heard me say this truism at least 10 times: we are dying. I know it seems pessimistic, but it’s the brutal truth. However, knowing we won’t be around forever isn’t the issue; that’s the circle of life and most of us are fully capable of accepting it. The real problem is that we don’t know how long we have. You could have another 80 years on this earth or it could all end tomorrow. And that’s why you need to take advantage of the moment.
You Only Live Once
For years I was waking up at 7 AM. Why 7? Honestly, I didn’t have any real reason other than it seemed to be the standard time to start your day. And then I came across this simple fact: if you wake up at 5 AM, you’re up and running faster than 99% of the world. This means you gain 2 extra hours in your day, 10 extra hours to your work week, and 40 extra hours per month. That’s a lot of additional time to plan your day, motivate yourself, exercise, and prepare for problems that could arise so you’ll be able to otherwise troublesome issues to your advantage.
Mark Twain said it best when he said the two most important days in your life are the one when you’re born and the one when you understand why. Once you realize this, you’ll start to view your life and the time you have quite differently. That we don’t have forever to fulfill our potential and that every day that goes by is a day less we have on this planet to accomplish our goals, develop new skills or make our dreams come true.
There’s No Such Thing As Not Having Enough Time
A while back, one of my best friends signed up to run the New York marathon. He’s the president of a wine import company that he owns and he lives by the belief that there’s no such thing as not having enough time. When he understood that he’d have to fit in at least 7 hours of training into his busy schedule per week, my friend didn’t stress out or start coming up with excuses, he simply adjusted his sleeping schedule so he’d wake up 2 hours earlier each day.
Now this might seem like an obvious thing to do, but most people are so locked into their own self-created time frames that they’d never think to simply set the alarm to go off a little earlier.
And that’s the illusion of time, you’re never as busy as you think and you’re capable of accomplishing way more than you realize. If you sleep for the recommended 8 hours, you have 16 hours per day to get things done. That’s 60 minutes per hour and 60 seconds per minute. Break that down into 5 minute segments and you get 192 5 minute timeframes in your day.
A lot can be accomplished in just five minutes:
You can get a quick circuit workout in.
You can jot down ideas for a book you want to write.
You can study a new language.
So the lesson here about time is clear; we might not know when our time on this planet will be up, but with a little self-reflection and scheduling adjustment we can discover plenty of new time in the present to make ourselves smarter, stronger, and to improve our lives in general.
We’re perishable items, live accordingly
