Having Time For Growth
Being able to do what you love while working in a full-time job is easier said and done.
We’re awake an average of 16 hours a day. Eight of those hours we dedicate to work, around three hours spent on the humdrum like quick gossip and transportation, and around five hours of what I call “life time”.
But what do we do with this little life we have each day? What tasks can we squeeze in our meager 300 minutes per day?
“I deserve a break.”
It’s easy to say that you’d slip a passion or two. Perhaps you could use it to learn dancing or play the guitar. You’d think you could work eight hours per day and spend 4–5 hours on that self-paced online course…
Until of course life happens. You come home from a long day of work feeling like you deserve a break. You won’t have time to pick that guitar up or learn that skill — you just need to rest. Besides, you just spent the majority of your day on a demanding job, dodging bullets in the form of deadlines. One episode won’t hurt.
We can’t delay our gratifications because we feel that we deserve a break. Even if it hampers our growth. Even if our future is on the line.
And after that one episode you realize you haven’t spent quality time with family. You haven’t even had to to hit the gym. A dream project has been sitting on your desk for too long.
Maybe next weekend.
Maybe during the holidays.
Maybe I need to spend my annual leave on this thing.
You need more time.
Have you ever thought that maybe you can’t extend your “time” because you have not stretched your potential?
Perhaps you feel you don’t have energy because you really aren’t energized, and not because there’s an imaginary indicator floating above your head saying your “batt is low”? Could it be that you are limited because you haven’t gone beyond your comfort zone, weak because you ate the wrong food or feeling toxic because you’re working at the wrong company?
True, we have the same 24 hours a day as Einstein and Nelson Mandela, but we don’t have the same makings and habits as them. We don’t sleep just as deeply, we don’t organize our life placing our purpose on the pedestal and we definitely don’t have the same idea of time as theirs. While time for most people is a measurement, other people consider time and energy the same. If you lean more on the latter, then I’d like to thank you for spending your energy reading this post.
Not everyone is worth your time.
Not everything is worth your energy.
It’s not about the number of hours…
The funny thing I found out about growth is that you don’t need to put too much time per day into it. Cultivating your skills takes time. You can spend either one hour or fifteen minutes studying something but it still boils down to the long term practice that determines the quality of your learning.
It’s never about the number of hours you spend learning something that aids your development. It’s the quality of focus that determines the quality of your life.
To take this idea deeper into an analogy: it’s not about the time you spend tending the beans that gets them to sprout quicker. It’s about the quality of care you put into nourishing it.
You can find satisfaction in learning how to play guitar for a couple of hours if you put your whole mind and soul into it, rather than studying chords half-mindedly in an entire day. The five minutes you spent listening to your son say something that is very important to him is as good as spending an entire day with him at the park. The 20% of time spent on planning your day can bring in 80% the productivity, if you do it right.
It’s the skillful management of attention and mindfulness that makes a difference. If you want to grow, you only need to spend a little time each day focusing on your progress.
Having a little progress each day towards your goal is better than waiting for the right time and conditions to come.
