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Time Choices: Decide How you Spend your Time

Friday, August 29th, 2008

Time Choices

Time choices is not so much about somebody looking over your shoulder every day and telling you what to spend your time on is either right or wrong. It’s not about how exactly you allocate each minute with each activity. Time Choices is the idea that at any given moment in time, you have a choice in which direction to go with what you are doing. This concept in itself can get quite big, and have dramatic effects, but for right now I would like to break it down to it’s most simple form, a 24 hour, 86,400 seconds average day.

First let me give away now, why this idea of daily choices with what you do with your time is so important. The reason it’s so important is each tiny decision shapes who you become in the future. It shapes and defines through a journey of steps who you someday will become, or strive to be. Here is how I want to be a little different than everything else you read. I don’t want to be the person you have heard over and over talk about how to clip coupons, or save $2 on some item, and after you save $1 here and $5 there, you will save $500,000 someday many years from now and be able to retire on that.

Please understand me when I tell you, that saving money with your time is better than doing absolutely nothing, but that’s all it is, it’s 1 step up from nothing. Time, and nothing returns on money will eat up your savings faster than you can save it, or make it. You must understand that over time by simply saving and having inflation go up at rates of 5-6% or more every year (it’s probably much more) you will absolutely burn away your 0% return or 1% return you are getting annually on your money while it sits idle.

What I need to teach you is that it’s not just about the money, it’s about how you spend your time. Someday, if your time is wasted, or you make the wrong choices, no amount of money can be thrown to solve your poor choices and deferred way of living. Time is even more of a scarce commodity than you realize. My job will be to prove this to you, no matter how much “time” it takes.

We are all presented with choices every given day, and it’s up to us, not anyone else which direction to go, which road to take, which choice we believe we should go with. One audio CD I would highly suggest on this concept is “The Slight Edge” by Jeff Olson. The idea is that everything we do in life day to day is easy to do, and easy not to do. This theme is repeated over and over, is well presented, easy to follow, and really sinks in. This is a 3-CD set, and I would recommend you to listen to it repeatedly because I think it’s easy to forget, and I believe it’s important to condition your mind, and to create habits based on the concepts taught on this audio.

This CD set leads me to my question for my readers, Is having habits a good thing or a bad thing? The answer is, that it depends on if they are good habits or bad habits. The reasons are obvious, but I think anyone can realize that, good habits done successfully for a long period of time, actually snowball and create momentum. What do I mean by momentum? Momentum means it speeds up, it means that a simple 10 days of successful habits in a row, it does not mean simply 1+1 for 10 days in a row until it equals 10. It’s not just the sum, it’s more of a compounding effect. In other words, it’s contagious. Let me ask you another question. Are things that are contagious good or bad? Again, we are use to hearing contagious being used in the context of being a bad thing, but good things can be contagious as well. We should only be so lucky to be presented with opportunities and to ride the wave of a positive contagious ideas.

It’s time I start to give examples of choices of how you spend your time on a daily basis. Every time you sit down to eat, you can eat vegetables and fruits, or you can eat a well-rounded meal, or you can choose to eat fast food. Why do we eat fast food when we know it’s so bad? Are we rushed? Are we out of time? If that is the case, hopefully I can find you more time in a given day with my writings, so that you don’t feel forced to eat something so bad for you.

Do I myself eat fast food? Sure I do, but far less than I use to, I am not saying you have to quit eating fast food entirely, I am just saying think about it before you do, it’s just as easy to go down a few doors to choose something a little more healthy, you won’t notice enough of a difference today, but over a period of time obviously you will.

How about the example of when you drive to work 5 days per week. Let’s use an average of 45 minutes each way, which is 90 minutes per day, which adds up to 7 ½ hours per week in your car or truck. If you vacation 2 hours per week, then you drive 50 weeks per year. That is 375 hours per year of driving during a regular work week. That doesn’t even include driving for errands, or at night, or on the weekends. Let’s call it an even 500 hours per year for my next example. Many of you drive up to a cabin often, or travel hundreds of miles every year on mini vacations, so 500 hours per year is probably pretty accurate.

What choices are you making with those 500 hours every year you have? Are you talking on the phone about nothing important? Are you listening to gossip on the radio? Are you listening to music from 30 years ago? Are you listening to people on the radio complaining about their lives? Why are you doing any of these things? Why not put in some tapes or CD’s training you to be a more well-rounded person? why not get educated in a few areas of your life? I don’t just mean listen to something boring that makes you hate the entire drive. Mix it up some, listen to some about health, some about investing, some about getting better about your business, learning family values, learning home budgeting. Listening to educational info for your mind 500 hours per year create a huge impact, it’s like getting a degree, or taking college classes.

Many people are already doing this every day, every week, every month, every year, and if you aren’t, and you are listening to gossip radio, you are becoming “dumber” every day. The gap between others and yourself is widening every single day right now as we speak. That’s why the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. It’s because sometimes they are both going in complete opposite directions with their daily choices. I realize poor and middle class people are not able to have access to some things because they don’t have money. Do what you can, and make sure you are at least going in the right direction, make those right choices, hour by hour, day by day. One day the sum of all of those choices, or should I say the compound effect of all of those choices, defines who you will become. It’s a challenging journey, but it’s a journey you’ll be glad you made, when you reflect back.

Are you eating out of a carton of ice cream watching Jerry Springer on television, or are you eating fruits and vegetables, while watching something educational, maybe like “The Big Idea” on CNBC. Are you sitting down eating fatty chips watching gossipy celebrity shows, or are you stretching and doing very easy activity for 25 minutes while you are watching something rewarding.

The choice is yours to make, both are easy to do. If your momentum goes in the wrong direction, the wind is against you, it creates friction, and life gets tougher every single day you wake up. This is the part that amazes me about people about their actions and choices, why would you make daily instant gratification choices, defer what’s most important, when all it will do is just haunt you someday. It’s not like years later when the going gets tough you can step out of your shoes and detach yourself from the ball and chain you have created. At that point, you are now stuck, you are in a ditch that is extremely tough to dig your way out of. In fact it’s the deepest ditch you have ever found yourself in, in your entire life, most likely. For example, why would you smoke when it has been proven to shorten ones life, and increases many health related illnesses. I think people should spend their life’s choices and their time, with the idea in mind that they have something to look forward to someday.

Another very important point about listening to these educational audios on television and in your car, and I can’t emphasize this often enough, this is the ultimate time leverage. You are taking what is a lifetime, or a career of mistakes that others have made before you, and you are getting trained, and getting the highlights of the right things to do, lessening the chance for future mistakes. Other teachers have made it a mission in life to teach you how not to make the mistakes that they have made in the past. Take advantage of this great opportunity, and listen every moment you get. $8 for a used book, or audio, is a small price to pay for this education.

I will have future posts about choices we make in our lives, and our choice on how we spend our time every given day. I would appreciate if you keep reading for many weeks and months to condition yourself towards the goal of bettering yourself, with the idea in mind that someday you can take what you have learned and make that contagious towards others, so that they to can benefit from your education through time leverage.

We need to be very decisive about our selves, our goals, our purpose, and what we really want in life. Don’t waste your life doing nothing at all. We ultimately write the story of our life. We act in our own play as the lead actor. We can choose to be our own hero, or we can be our own worst enemy. It’s up to us to decide who we believe we can truly be!

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