Time Passages

Time as a Competitive WeaponSuccessful firms and people use time as a weaponquotIf everything you do needs to work on a threeyear time horizon then you39re competing against a lot of people but if you39re willing to invest on a sevenyear time horizon you39re now competing against a fraction of those people because very few companies are willing to do that Just lengthening the time horizon you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue At Amazon we like things to work in five to seven years We39re willing to plant seeds let them grow and we39re very stubborn We say we39re stubborn on vision and flexible on detailsquot Jeff BezosThree behaviorsbeliefs that are common to most successful individuals and firmsThe power of compound interestcompound improvement The most powerful concept in gaining wealth or knowledge is continuous growth over a sustained timeSee early what others see late Almost every successful person or company recognized a trend when it was a little stream rather than a gushing river and then committed to align with itPersistence They just keep on going through adversity and setback and they remember Queen Elizabeth the First who said quotTime dissolves more problems than man solvesquotTime and ProductivityHere are five ways to make time productive1 Eliminate Many people recognizing the limitations of time tend to try to do as much as possible They multitask and run around in a frenzy Usually all they achieve is more multitasking and more frenzy Doing more stuff is not the same as achievement Activity is not productivity Showing how busy you are does not show how important you are2 Focus The key to doing less is to focus The two key filters area Comparative Advantage Spend your time doing things that you can do better than most people Some focus areas are easy like being a spouse or a parent since you should be able to do this better than other folks However for many of the errands you run and the assignments you take on at work it is important to ask if you can outsource or delegate or find a colleague who is better than youb Positive Outcome Where you can choose you should only do things which give you a positive outcome Either you 1 earn a financial reward 2 learn something new 3 help someone else or the team get better or 4 experience feels good If it is not one of those four outcomes and it is avoidable why are you doing it3 Scale You can scale yourself and your impact and therefore save time Two ways to do this is to use quotleveragequotand quotmomentumquotMuch of what we do as whitecollar workers is to think communicate and sell Basically with a few exceptions our success is based on how we are as communicators and sellers of ideas and points of view in building and motivating people and teamsa Leverage Today technology and scheduling allow people to leverage You can use social media good writing and speaking skills to reach many people that you need to communicate and sell your thinking to You are not limited to small meetings and groups You can decide if you are senior to gather folks at the right conference or meeting versus repeating yourself again and againb Momentum The trend is your friend To not waste your time you need to understand the underlying trend that is driving your firm or your business and in most cases align with it The world is going global The world is going digital Every company has a built in DNA If you are going to go against the flow prepare for much loss of time and grief4 Do new things The essence of life is new experiences Often what we remember and which gives time certain elongation and depth are new experiences These do not just have to be travels or new relationships and new jobs but could be as simple as walking down a new street eating at a new place and going to a new cultural event If there is a way to tattoo the moment into your memory you should try to5 Give your time to others One of the best ways to use your time is to use it not on yourself but on others Nothing is as rewarding as helping other people mentoring younger people and forgetting about yourself in your time equationAnd in the end it is the time that you do not measure that is the most meaningful and possibly productive of allTime and SuccessA definition of success is the ability to spend time the way you want to spend it or gives you joy To be free to use your time to pay attention to what matters and what matters to youOr as the late David Foster Wallace said in his mindshifting talk quotThis Is WaterquotquotThe important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty unsexy ways every day That is real freedom That is being educated and understanding how to think The alternative is unconsciousness the default setting the rat race the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thingquotTime and LossIf there are three realities to life they are learning love and loss Not everybody succeeds at learning or love but everybody gets a graduate degree in loss and a doctorate when people very close dieJoan Didion wrote books on the loss of her husband The Year of Magical Thinking and her daughter Blue Nights which are read by many dealing with lossShe wrote of the fragility of life noting that her husband died while eating dinner quotLife changes fast Life changes in the instant You sit down to dinner and life as you know it endsquotAnd on the loneliness afterwards quotA single person is missing for you and the whole world is emptyquotAs time moves forward and people places and hopes come and go people are shaped by what is no more quotWe are imperfect mortal beings aware of that mortality even as we push it away failed by our very complication so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn for better or for worse ourselves As we were As we are no longer As we will one day is not at allquotBut in the end Didion notes we go on by forging new stories and finding new places and to begin forgetting quotWe forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget We forget the loves and the betrayals alike forget what we whispered and what we screamed forget who we werequotBut one must forge ahead amp8230quotDo not whine Do not complain Work harder Spend more time alonequotTo college graduates a few years ago she made the case for living deeply quotI39m not telling you to make the world better because I don39t think that progress is necessarily part of the package I39m just telling you to live in it Not just to endure it not just to suffer it not just to pass through it but to live in it To look at it To try to get the picture To live recklessly To take chances To make your own work and take pride in it To seize the moment And if you ask me why you should bother to do that I could tell you that the grave39s a fine and private place but none I think do there embrace Nor do they sing there or write or argue or see the tidal bore on the Amazon or touch their children And that39s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at itquotTime and LifeFranz Kafka wrote quotThe meaning of life is that it stopsquotMost of us can calculate the robust and healthy days left if we are lucky by subtracting our age from 80 around which much begins to go wrong physically and sometimes also one may see a diminishment in mental faculties leading to a much more constrained life and multiplying it by 365 daysIf you are 60 you have less than 7500 days If you are 40 you have 15000 daysSo when someone asks you to do things without some form of fair compensation it does not have to be money but could be learning experience or the joy of helping or does not respect your time do remember you are the one paying for their disrespect and their cheap valuation of your lifeTime and the quotOrdinary DayquotIn the future the ritual of the ordinary day will be special just as we have come to realize after months of a new way of living that the simple pleasures of free movement meeting friends sitting in a crowded bar and watching a sports game were so specialLife does not have to be lived forward and understood backward if we decide to pay attention Be aware of the fading moments of now Look around you Watch the special quality of light or listen to the hiss of the air duct Treasure the conversations and even the repetition and lack of differentiation of day after dayBecause one day it will not be so amp8230Click the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Time Passages

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Rishad Tobaccowala

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