TIME
“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.”
Michael Altshuler
Time can feel like an eternity. Time can feel like we never have enough,
and we must rush, rush, rush. Time is our most precious resource.
Time is our most squandered resource. We measure time in seconds,
minutes, hours, and years. Time is what we make of it. We sell our
time for money at our jobs. We give it away. We choose how we want
to “spend our time.” We only have so much time in the bank, but the
problem is we do not know what the balance is. So, we should act like
our balance is almost at zero and we should be guided accordingly
in how we choose to live our lives. Spending time where we want to
spend it. Maybe it is work. Maybe it is exercising, walking, reading,
family, alone, together. Maybe it’s all of these. Make no mistake, time
is too precious to give away to other people where we are not getting
something in return that we want. What that is we get to decide but
no one else has the right to decide time for us.
The author Robert Greene (48 Laws of Power, Mastery, The Laws
of Human Nature) talks about alive time v. dead time. I like to think
of it more as it is go time, or it is quiet time, or down time, time to
re-charge. Alive time is go-time! Go time is when we focus, our adrenaline
kicks up and we just do it. We get started, get going and find our
flow. Whatever the task is at hand, work, exercise, reading, creating.
For me, it is always tough to get started, but like a cold plunge, just
dive in and start paddling. I can usually sustain a focused effort for
about 90 minutes, so I usually try to take my breaks, accordingly, walk
break, snack break, yoga or stretching break, whatever. No emails or
distractions during go-time, just focus on the task at hand. The flip side
is down time. We all need to shut our minds or bodies down for a little
while, otherwise it can be counterproductive. Quiet time. Usually after
a burst of productive go-time, I try to shut it off a little and re-charge.
Then do it all over again, and again.
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