Life is a game of time tradeoffs.
You can’t have everything you want. And that’s okay, especially if you know exactly what you want in life.
However you plan your year, month or day, you will miss out on something significant because you can’t be everywhere you want at the same time.
“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once,” Albert Einstein once said.
When you spend time on anything, you are literally paying with some of the little time you have left to live.
A successful, better and good life begins with great time perception.
People who think time is an asset invest it differently from people who are not intentional about time.
When you say yes to anything worth your time, you are investing time or better still; you are investing your life or, better or worse.
A significant investment of time is a commitment to your future or the provision of value for others.
Everything we choose to do is an investment of time.
How you use time is how you spend time. When you commit enough time to lay a better foundation for your life, you will build a better and more meaningful life.
Every time you make thinking forward and backwards about your life is an investment into your future self.
Time is not unlimited. “Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away,” says Ben Hecht. Knowledge of time as a finite resource makes it easier to question how you use it.
How do you distribute your 24 hours? Have you made quality time for your work, social life, meaningful activities outside work and intellectual growth? Which area of your life is suffering? And how can you change that?
Use time like a great investor — pick your investments wisely
Time = Life, Therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life. — Alan Lakein
The quality of your life is determined by how you distribute time daily, weekly, monthly or annually.
Putting a value on time encourages us to demand more of ourselves. What you are doing with your time today is shaping the trajectory of your life.
Money has value. It’s common knowledge. It’s a shame many people don’t perceive time the same way.
“People are frugal guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy”, Seneca said in his book, On The Shortness Of Life.
When you waste time, you destroy the potential to change your life for the better. You throw away a free and valuable resource that can turn you into a peak performer, successful person and valuable asset.
You lose the opportunity to put time to work in your favour. And miss out on time’s most important reward: compound growth.
If you aim to become excellent at what you do, make time to master your craft consistently. Time reveals how we spend it.
If you invest in gathering better knowledge, you will become wiser over time. If you invest money and allow it to leverage time and put compound interest to work, you will reap massive gains.
If you make time for your social connections, you will improve your relationships. A healthy body means making time for exercise and meaningful activities outside work.
Knowing how to use time wisely is the only difference between the peak performers and average people.
“There’s time enough, but none to spare,” Charles W. Chesnutt once observed.
Time can be put to great use in all areas of your life — learning to distribute the greatest asset changes everything.
If you feel you don’t have enough time to improve any area of your life, notice where your attention leaks the most and put that time to good use.
“Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it,” Leonardo da Vinci said.
Whilst you have time right now, put it to good use. Think about how present time can impact your future self and do what’s really necessary now to move closer to the future you want.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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