This post was originally published on this site
https://cdn2.psychologytoday.com/assets/styles/manual_crop_1_91_1_1528x800/public/field_blog_entry_images/2024-10/pocket-watch-3156771_1280.jpg?itok=tkcsfPo4
There are many things we place importance on in our lives: our health, our relationships, our careers and our material assets, to name a few. However, our most important currency is none of these things. It is time. This is because everything depends on time.
If we want to cultivate a close personal relationship, it can only happen by two people getting to know each other over a long period of time to establish love and trust. If we want to improve our health and fitness level, it takes weeks to months to develop strength, flexibility, and endurance through various exercises. If we want to become financially wealthy, we need to invest our money over years and, usually, decades.
So, you see, everything depends on time, which is why it is our most important currency. The problem is that we don’t use this currency wisely.
Think about it. How many countless hours do we waste daily on superficial social media, aimlessly surfing the internet, watching mind-numbing movies and shows, socializing with alcohol on the weekends, and other meaningless pursuits? Most people waste this currency because they don’t realize its true value.
We’re all given 24 hours in a day. So why does one person build a billion-dollar business that changes the world while another person stays stuck in an unfulfilling job that they dread? They both are given the same quantity of this valuable resource called time. However, the difference is how each person chooses to spend this resource.
If you have goals, dreams, and ambitions and wonder, year after year, why you get nowhere close to achieving them, there may be numerous reasons for this. The first thing you need to look at, however, is how you are spending your most important currency.
What I encourage you to do is to list the top three goals that you have not yet accomplished but desire to achieve. How long have you wanted to achieve these goals? It is likely not months but rather years that have gone by with you not even getting close to them.
Now that you have identified the goals that have eluded you, take a typical 24-hour period in your day. Make a detailed list of everything you do in that 24-hour period, including the activities of daily living, such as driving the children to school, doing the groceries, paying the bills, earning a living, keeping up with fitness and exercise, personal development such as reading, courses, seminars, and podcasts, cultivating your personal relationships, enjoying entertainment, including social media, Netflix, and socializing with friends, eating, toileting, and sleeping.
For the purposes of illustration, let’s say that sleep takes out seven hours of your time, and another eight hours is spent working in a job. If you live in a busy urban area, add at least another hour of commuting time, and you have just lost 16 hours of your day, which leaves about eight hours of time. Take out one hour for the activities of daily living and another two hours for toileting and preparing and eating meals, and you are now left with five hours.
The question is, how do you spend those five hours? Do you spend them surfing the internet, checking texts, answering emails, checking social media, and watching Netflix? This is how the majority of people spend their spare time.
Now, imagine what you could accomplish if you spent those five hours differently. What if you used that time to learn how to invest your money, start an online business, volunteer for a worthy cause, or engage in a creative pursuit, such as playing an instrument, creating a painting, or writing a book?
Imagine what you could accomplish. Imagine how much closer you could get to your childhood dreams and ambitions. Imagine how your life would utterly transform.
The fact is that we like to believe that people who accomplish great things have some special talent or ability that we lack. Now, this may be true to a certain extent. However, there is only one thing that truly separates those who live extraordinary lives from those who live mundane lives. How they spend their time.
This is why time is your most important currency and needs to be scrutinized if you truly care about the quality of your life and want to reach your true potential and accomplish great things. Time is our most precious commodity; however, most of us don’t treat it as such.