Learn how to be effective with the garbage time.
“People are always looking for the ‘right’ time despite the right time not existing.
Use the garbage time.
The 19 minutes here or the 37 minutes there.
Buy more time by leveraging early mornings, late nights, and dead periods of the year.
Accomplishment isn’t pretty.”
-Ray Zingler on X
Time is always precious, but it’s this time of year that I feel it the most as my 3 young children lean into the magic of the holidays.
And it led me to think about how much time we actually have.
We get over 8,700 hours a year, which for all intents and purposes is quite a bit.
Most will tell you “it goes too fast”, but it doesn’t, time always goes the same, it’s only our perception of time that makes it feel fast or slow.
And with iPhones, social media apps, Netflix, & video games vying for every single second of “dead time” it can enhance the perceived speed of time, despite most of it not at all being used judiciously.
Think about it like this.
Most people in the world (America, at least) check out during the last week of the year and usually don’t “crank back up” until the first Monday of the New Year.
I’m not saying there is anything wrong with a break or that you can’t enjoy the holidays, but that can be up to 2 weeks of time.
And then figure in most working class Americans get 2-weeks paid vacation, and a plehotra of other (paid) off days.
That’s literally a month of time this is usually wasted, being unproductive.
Think about it, though. Every 12 years, you get an additional year.
If you work 18-65 and were to leverage time around the holidays and paid off time, you’d gain 4 YEARS of additional time. Talk about substantial.
Teachers? They work 180 (extremely valuable) days.
This means over HALF the calendar year, they own time to personally develop, invent that product, or start that business. They get 2 years of time in 1. With benefits to go on top of it.
But then take it a step further.
Have 17 minutes in the morning? Go for a walk.
34 minutes when the kids go down? Write a couple paragraphs of that book you’ve wanted to write.
We’re always looking for “quality time”, hell many will even go out of their way and try to buy it, but if you can’t make it happen during the garbage time, you’ll never make it happen at the “right” time.
