PERSONAL /2016 SPECIAL ...............2016: The Year of 24 Hour Days

2016: The Year of 24 Hour Days

When you wake up, the day stretches out in front of you. Infinite minutes

 with an equal number of possibilities. There is so much you will do with

 it. Today you will read some of that book you've been carrying around

since that airport bookstore. You will finish that puzzle you started with

 your three-year old. Then you'll do some research into that new business

 idea you had a few weeks ago; it sure seems viable... It's going to be

a productive day!

Next thing you know, you're looking back at the day, exhausted of its

possibilities. You did a lot... You were quite busy, actually. You have a

few hours of the day left, but you're tired from all the busyness.

You note with a mild headache and tension in your back that you didn't

actually do the things you were thinking about that morning. All you want

to do now is sink into your comfy sofa and eat something comforting

until sleep overcomes you... Tomorrow is a new day.

And so it goes. Tomorrow will be a new day. A new week. A new month

... A new year.

And you are busy, every day. You work hard. You do a lot. You never seem

 to have enough time. Man, time flies. ‘

Time flies... But you can control it.

But here's the thing. As Michael Altshuler says, 'The bad news is time flies.

The good news is you're the pilot.'

Instead of letting time take off in whatever direction it wants, while all

you do is watch it fly by on an increasingly higher definition TV...take

control of it, and point it in the direction you want.

No means yes... 

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus

on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred

other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually

as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done.

Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.

- Steve Jobs

Your time is your greatest asset. If you spend all of it doing things for

others, or doing things you 'should' be doing instead of what you

want to do, you will find that there doesn't seem to be enough of it.

Paulo Coelho said, 'When you are saying yes to others, make sure you

are not saying no to yourself.' When it comes to your time, sometimes

saying no to others means saying yes to you.

Get rid of clutter...

Not just in the things you do, but also in the things around you. The

more things you have, the more of your time is sucked into your things.

The more clothes you have, the more time you waste picking out clothes.

The more foods you eat, the more time you spend figuring out what

you want to eat. The more gadgets you have, the more time you spend

charging, syncing, checking, and using. The more 'friends' you have,

the more time you spend socialising fruitlessly.

You are who your friends are, and not all of them lift you up. Figure out

who and what matters...hold on tighter to them, and a little looser to

everything else. 

If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you'll die a lot

of times.

- Dean Smith

So declutter. If you were on a boat that was sinking, what would you

throw overboard so that it would sink slower? Your boat is sinking,

by the way. We're all running out of time. Lighten your load, and you'll

get more time. As Bruce Lee said, 'It is not a daily increase, but a daily

decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.'

Plan time to stretch it...

Remember all those ideas you had about your day when you woke up...?

 I will do this and that and the other...only to realise at the end of the day

 that none of those got done because you didn't have time for them?

You didn't have time for them because you didn't put them in your schedule.

Time is funny like that. There is no structure to it whatsoever.

It's abstract and fluid. Until you put a structure around it...like

putting water in a container.

According to Parkinson's Law, work expands to fit the time allotted to it.

 So if you give yourself two weeks to complete a two-hour job, the work

will expand to take that much time. Maybe not physically, but mentally.

All the stress of having to do that work will fill up your time until you are

at your deadline.

To get control of your time, plan it well, give it the shape you want and

 watch your dreams take shape with it.

I have been meaning to start reading 'a book a week' ever since my boss

 told me he does that a year and a half ago. I love the concept and talk

about it to everyone. But it just wouldn't get started.

So I gave myself a deadline: I refuse to enter 2016 without getting this

thing sorted. To make my deadline harder I drew up an Excel sheet

where I collect lists of the books I will read each week. Finally, to make

myself accountable I have already announced to the Wealth Builders Club

 members that I will be starting a book club in the month of January

where we will discuss ideas from these books. 

It's still a few weeks away from the new year, and I'm already a month

into my new endeavour. Deadlines work. Give yourself some.

Find your focus...

There's no point taking control of your time if you don't know where

you want to go with it. 

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we

have rushed through life trying to save.

- American writer Yale Richmond

Instead of rushing around pointlessly trying to get somewhere by aiming nowhere...pause to take stock. Install a pause button...in your day, your

week, your month. And your year...but most people do that anyway.

When you turn to look back at your year, you shouldn't find, to your

surprise, the path littered with abandoned dreams. You should find

yourself at the peak of a mountain you have been climbing all year.

To walk that path, you need to map it out. You need to have a direction

you head in, making progress every day.

So make a plan. Make a master plan, in fact. Read The Pledge to learn

how to make a master plan like Mark Ford's.

And slow down... 

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from a horse master.

He told me to go slow to go fast. I think that applies to everything in life.

We live as though there aren't enough hours in the day, but if we do

each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with

much less stress.

- Viggo Mortensen

We all have the same 24 hours to make a difference. You can either

stretch that out to as many hours as you need, or shrink it down to

never enough. If you slow down, focus, and prioritise, you can make

your days much longer, and your 2016 more productive.