Time well spent November 28, 2006
Posted by Chris Oosthuizen in Life, Time management.trackback
Every once in a while you get hit by an eye opening idea, the moment you wake up, after a good nights’ sleep. It is then that your mind is crystal clear and things make perfect sense. There must be a word for this state but I’m not sure what it’s called.
This morning it struck me how valuable my/our time is. 1hour a day amounts to 15.2 days a year or 1216.67 days/173.8 weeks/40 months/3.33 years a life time if you grow to be 80 years old.
The numbers get even worse when you consider that most people spend 6-8 hours sleeping. This means that our days are shortened to 18 hours and every hour becomes even more valuable.
So what does this all boil down to? For me being a successful person is all about making the correct choices all the time. When I decide what to do in the next 15 minutes it pretty much boils down to what I would want to do for 5 days out of a year, every year. Thinking of my time in this way really motivates me.
It puts things in perspective doesn’t it? Take your day one step at a time and become the person you want or ought to be. Because we are defined by the choices we make.
PS! Another way to interpret this: when I do push-ups for 15 minutes today and I manage 50 push-ups, it’s like I’ve done 18,250 push-ups this year. Now doesn’t that seem like an accomplishment?
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the comment on my goal writing article.
I agree — we are all defined by the choices (or decisions) we make. In fact, I believe that the more decisions we make directly correlates with the quality of our life. As you continue to make effective decisions, your life will directly improve as a result of those decisions. Where you choose to spend your time is another decision in life, and an important one at that.
Hi Chris,
Live life to the fullest!
I agree entirely with your view. Life pass before we realize it and we have to make an effort to ensure that we fully enjoy the gift.
Regarding the lighter comment you made about your daily exercise, I think it is a point very vulnerable to interpretation. You can obviously be the absolute optimist and tell yourself that you committed to 18250 pushups. The reality is that initial commitment will only bring you to a choice…
If you compare your 15 minutes of exercise to the 700800 hours you have to live, you can calculate that you have been doing pushups for a total of 3.56 e-7 % of your life.
The choice you are facing is to use this seemingly insignificant piece of time, or to let it slip by.
Hi Marius,
If I was the absolute optimist and we wanted to compare apples with apples I would commit to doing push-ups over my life time and not just over one year. Witch encourages me even more because then I’m looking at 1,460,000 push-ups.
This brings up an entirely different issue altogether: If I did make the choice to do the exercise, probabilities are that I will live longer than if I didn’t do the exercise. This means that I’ll live longer than the assumed 80 years; witch in turn gives me the opportunity to do even more push-ups.
For the purpose of illustration I’ll assume that doing exercise lengthens my life by 10%. Accordingly I will live to become 88 years old. This will enable me to do 146 000 push-ups more in the extra 8 years. Again this will add 10% onto the 8 years and so on and so on. If we iterate this into infinity I’ll become 88.888888 years old.
So in reality when I decide to do 50 push-ups everyday for fifteen minutes over my life time I’m looking at 1,622,222 push-ups. Why wouldn’t I be optimistic?
The flipside is that because I’m going to live an extra 77866.67 hours the next 15 minutes will become diluted and will be even more insignificant. So if I decide to do 50 push-ups in the next 15 minutes, time looses value and it becomes less important what I do with it. Now that’s a paradox for you.
Just surviving 15 minutes will increase the value of your next 15 minutes because you’ll have 15 minutes less to live.
It becomes clear that if you want to increase the value of your precious time the decisions that you make should actually shorten your life. In short deciding to smoke, drink or not to exercise in the next 15 minutes adds value to your time. Ultimately, if I iterate this into infinity, killing yourself will become the most valuable thing you can do at any given moment.
Obviously this is extreme and puts thing right back into perspective for me. Is my time really the most valuable commodity I have?
Personally I’d prefer my glass half full. Do your exercises: who knows what experiences you’ll have in the other 77055 hours 33 minutes and 36 seconds you could gain.
By the way thanks for your comment
Very extreme.
Strange perspecive.
Excellent viewpoint.
One problem…
As you have stated, time does become so much more valuable the less there is to spend. That has been proven over and over in history as many “adrenaline junkies” will confess.
Again there is a choice lying before us. Now that we have established exactly what the future would hold we know that we can do 1,622,222 pushups and at 88.88887 years we can look back and reflect on that 1,6 million pushups that we did and beam of pride about the life we had. I would just like to mention that pushups now took up 1% of your 88 year life. If you generalized your “healthy” lifestile and planned the rest of your day just as meticulously as your excersize and still keep in mind that you sleep 25% of your life there is room for a total of 74 other activities in that precious life of yours.
Personally I think I will rather have my 3.56 e-7 % of moderately enjoyable excersize and trade the rest of my time for “something different” – even if my life is shortend somewhat. I would definately take that business risk, jump from a plane and have a shot of Jack Daniels during a game of poker.
You also mentioned as your time is decreased into infinity it gets more precious and that personal sacrifice would be the ultimate act. This is however not true in the sense that by decreasing your time to zero (killing yourself) you have an equation with a divisor of zero. This is a mathematical dilemma and the only instance where your assumptions falter.
To conclude – I am not trying to imply that living a healthy lifestyle is taboo, neither that you should “live for the end”. I am merely stating that (keeping in mind that I am still young and in a position to make the biggest mistake of my life) I would trade a life of 90 for one to remember.
PS
Love the blog
Hope there is lots to come
Thanks again for a very insightful comment.
Ultimately assuming that the value of time is derived from the time left until we kick the bucket is not satisfactory at all. Actually I don’t think time should carry any value what so ever.
It’s not the time spent on our experiences but the experiences themselves that makes it worth while.
To conclude if this stream put even a little smile on your face, placing this post was time well spent.
Hi you guys,
While both of your perspectives were quite interesting and, to a point, comical, think about the time you both took to figure out how many pushups you could do in relavance to your life span. LOL. May you both have a long, and fulfilled life with many more blogs to come. Live life for the moment, not for the pushup or for that fact, the Jack. I look forward to learning more about you all.
P.S., ever tried Bookers instead of Jack?