It’s only because of the direct access we have to distractions.
“The world feels as if it’s moving faster than ever before.
It’s because we have never had more direct access to distractions than we do today.
‘Not having time’ and not being a good steward of time are two completely different things.
Discipline and effort create time.”
-Ray Zingler on X
I remember being on a phone call with one of my mentors years ago and I kept telling him how busy I was.
I was working 7 days a week and 6 of them would start well before sunrise and end well after it set.
“I just don’t have time, man.”
“You aren’t too busy, Elon Musk is too busy” is what he told me.
Then, he asked me to do a PTO (Personal Time Audit).
He told me to start by reviewing the analytics on my phones, ipads, computers, etc, specifically paying attention to the apps I was using.
I found out in the screen area alone, I was wasting a lot of time.
From there, he asked me to pay attention to windows.
“What are you doing directly before and after phone calls, meetings, training sessions, personal workouts, etc.?”
“Are all those phone calls, emails, and texts even necessary? Are there any repetitive processes that could be better streamlined to buy more time?”
In less than a couple hours of working on a PTO, I had all the sudden created more time, even with 70+ of my hours/week booked with work and damn near another 60 sleeping.
I found rather quickly that I did have some time, I just wasn’t using it to the best of my ability.
I’m willing to go out on a limb and say this is probably the case for most people, especially in the modern era.
When I hear this, “I’m too busy” (often) excuse, the question I deeply want to ask them, is “are you sure?”
And certainly not to be a jerk, but to challenge them to think critically about the use of their time.
Cut 2 hours of screen time out of your day.
There’s 2.5 FULL 24 hours days you just bought back in a month.
“Can’t do” a 2-hour reduction?
Start with 30 minutes.
The fact of the matter is that most people have plenty of time, they just don’t know it because the world has (falsely) led them to believe that we must occupy all of our time with something, whether growth oriented or not.
Average people waste time and say they are busy.
The great ones are always looking to best leverage and make use of the finite resource.
