In a Twitter update, I recently wrote:
“Great time/life management question to ask yourself: ‘Will what I’m doing right now matter in 5 years?’”
This is a challenging way to take a look at what we do from day-to-day because it forces us to focus on our most important activities. You’ll also quickly identify our low value activities. The beauty of this one question is that it doesn’t require a special calendar or fancy time-management system to track time spent. It simply helps you make more calculated choices about what you do and what you don’t do. For example, compare the following two activities:
1. Watching a sporting event or game on TV.
2. Reading a book with your child.
Which of these two activities will matter in five years? At first you might think, “neither.” But as you think about it more, I think you’ll see that reading a book with your child will matter a great deal more than watching a sporting event. You never quite know the impact of the time you spend with others.
Let’s walk through a different comparison together. This time we will focus on work. Which of these two activities will matter more in five years?
1. Attending a home inspection for a home you have under contract.
2. Reading a book about marketing your business.
The marketing book seems as though it would be the better option because the lessons you learn would still be adding value to your career 5 years down the road. The funny thing is that I’ve had to actually stop and think about such choices differently. At first, you might argue with me on this example, saying that the home inspection might prevent a buyer from buying the wrong home. This is definitely true. However, let’s also consider the impact of a great book on marketing. Would the book allow you to help many more buyers rather than just the one?
Since my “tweet” on this matter, I’ve been using this basic question almost every day in order to analyze what I’m doing. I can honestly say that this one question can certainly transform your life. The reason: This question gets you to instantly zero in on what is significant and cuts away the insignificant.
Will writing this article matter in five years?
It will matter if it helps a single person make better choices about how they spend their time. (Maybe you will spend more time with your kids…). What if my answer is “No?” This article won’t matter in 5 years. What then? Well, I shouldn’t have spent the time writing it. I shouldn’t spend my time on things that don’t matter. Neither should you.
This question gets you to apply the 80/20 rule to all areas of life. It helps you focus on the most important 20% of your activities. I’m definitely not perfect with this, not by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve made some downright poor choices with my time in the past. This really doesn’t matter now. What matters is what I do with my time now. What matters is what I do with it tomorrow and next week.
Since adopting this simple time/life management question, I’ve discovered two similarities in my choices…
1. Doing something for someone else or with someone else always seems to trump any other choice of how to use my time. This is simply because we don’t know what the future holds for us, or for the other person or people involved. We tend to worry about our own future, but what about the futures of other people in your life?
Recently, my daughter wanted to volunteer at the Humane Society. She isn’t old enough to do volunteer work on her own, which meant I had to volunteer so that she could come along. We had to attend training classes. I was a little irritated at first because volunteering wasn’t my idea. I wasn’t sure that walking dogs and playing with them were the best uses of my time. Well, after asking myself this little life management question, I quickly realized that the time with my daughter mattered more than just about anything else.
2. Reading, studying and learning activities always seem to outweigh many of the other things we do from day-to-day. For example, I could spend 2 hours tonight watching TV, or I could use the two hours to read Lucius Annaeus Seneca’s book, “On the Shortness of Life.” When you start asking yourself this little questions, you’ll be amazed at how clearly you will see the time we tend to waste on a daily basis.
Speaking of Seneca’s book, I thought I would wrap up this article with a quote from the book, which had a profound impact on me. Here it is…
“…it is the sign of a great man, and one who is above human error, not to allow his time to frittered away: he has the longest possible life simply because whatever time was available he devoted entirely to himself. None of it lay fallow and neglected, none of it under another’s control; for being an extremely thrifty guardian of his time he never found anything for which it was exchanging.”
Time truly is the most important asset we own. This asset depreciates every single day. The problem is we aren’t always paying attention. We freak out when the value of our portfolios drop, but we don’t even bat an eye when our most valuable asset is wasted.
We trade time for the most trivial things. The time/life management question included above will force you to analyze your time as an important asset. It helps you start to see what is important and what isn’t.
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