Weekly Spark #183: Own Your Time
Time is your life. How you spend it is your choice. Every day, you have are faced with one simple, yet complex question: how are you going to spend your time? A daunting task if you aren’t intentional. A couple of themes that I’ve found to be helpful personally or observed in others:
If you don’t make your schedule, someone else will. Sure, there are family, friend, and work obligations, and you have to prioritize accordingly, but limit outsourcing your schedule making to others. Far too many people outsource their schedule, and accordingly, their happiness to others crafting your schedule for what suits them. It’s your time, not theirs. If you don’t build a moat around your time and guard it with your life, you’ll end up spending it in ways you don’t want. Find your priorities. Create the time to take care of yourself; whether it’s sleep, diet, exercise, or other mental/physical wellness initiatives, not having time means it’s not a priority. Spending time with people that you love should be a priority as well. You’ll find that in the long run, that “time sacrifice” is actually the most meaningful investment.
Anecdote on that front. When I was at KPMG (it was a unique time as we were working fully remotely), I would block my calendar every day from 12-1. It was reserved for whatever I wanted; working out, reading, phone call with a friend, or whatever I wanted. It was sacred time. You could schedule a meeting during it, but I wasn’t gonna be there! As I look back, pretty hysterical (and slightly bold) for a 22 year old in the first year of their career, but results speak for themselves. If I was a betting man, I’d put my money on someone who worked 13 hours and spent an hour to themselves Vs. someone who didn’t make the “sacrifice” and worked 14 straight through. Every day of the week. There’s a MASSIVE difference between people that create a moat around their time and people that don’t and again, and the performance actually increases from that investment, as opposed to detracting from it, which the skeptics falsely believe.
If it ain’t a hell yes, it’s a no. That should be simple. There are enough things and opportunities in this world that interest and excite you, don’t waste your time doing things that you’re half into. That really, when you take a step back and think about it, is a colossal waste of time. Surround yourself with people that are hell yes people. If that means you have one or two go-to people, that’s a million times better than 10 that you only hardly want to spend time with. It should be so simple and intuitive, but I just don’t see it happening often. If you build your schedule around hell yes people and opportunities, and limit everything else, your happiness will increase 10 fold.
Underpromise overdeliver. Don’t create expectations. It’s simple laws of supply and demand. People like to believe they have more supply (time) than they do, so they tend to overpromise what they can do, and they realize they have no bandwidth for it. Then they feel guilty and feel like people are mad at them for living their life and that they don’t have time for them. If people are mad at you for living your life in ways that make you happy, then it should be easy to tell how good of a friend they are. As much as it can feel unnatural to have “no” as your default answer outside of a certain subset of people, trust me, it gets easier with time.
How you build your schedule is how you build your life. Every day, you have a choice: what kind of life do I want to build? Who do I want to build my life around? Guard your time. Guard your life. Guard your happiness.
Mental Diet
Quote of the Week:
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time given to us.” - J.R.R. Tolkien
I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing. Until next time… Take care of yourself and take care of each other. 🙏
Nathan