While reading the book “Getting There” I found a common line of worry among successful people. They lacked time to do everything that held meaning for them. It could be developing hobbies, traveling the world, spending time with family or friends, having a greater impact at work, etc. And the people interviewed in the book have abundant out worldly success -- money, recognition, and impact. They want to do more of the above-mentioned things, but it’s the time that is budgeted. And by budget, I don’t mean that they are older, so they have less time in the world. I mean it in the same way time is budgeted for everyone -- mere 24 hours a day.
And while I understand the value of time in theory, my actions would say otherwise. It’s only when I have scrolled reels for 2 hrs that the guilt pops up. It’s when I have done nothing productive the whole day that I start having negative thoughts. I try to think of the time I have spent in an unhealthy or wasteful way over the past years.
Hours spent self-loathing, doubting myself, crying, or lying awake at night. Hours spent scrolling the internet, particularly social media. Hours spent reading self-improvement articles which have become an addiction now. Hours spent waiting for something to happen -- a notification, a call, a message. Hours spent overthinking, daydreaming, and ruminating. Hours invested in people who don’t reciprocate. Hours spent talking about things or people that hold little importance in my life. Hours spent idle. Hours spent inefficiently slogging at something. Hours wasted procrastinating.
Why does wasting time feel so easy and natural at this moment? Why I don’t have the same sense of urgency about time that these people are feeling. Because having urgency and intentionality about time would fix many of the problems I struggle with. If someone told me I had only a year to live, I would stop scrolling the internet and spend time with family. This means there are two things at play here -- first, that internet addiction is tough to break, but another thing is how much you value the time spent in this activity. If I truly understood the value of time and its importance, it would be easy to break these addictions. As our respect for time increases, the activities we consider drains of time would automatically decrease.
That time will come in the life of most people when there will be an abundance of everything. They would have a happy family, a job they enjoy, hobbies or things they like to do, and enough money to buy things or travel the world. All the primary needs would be satisfied to the brim. And at that moment, the only thing that would not feel abundant would be time. Time would be finite -- the same 24 hours. All the things that bring you joy would be in trade-off with each other, fighting for your same time quota. You would want to spend more time with family and kids. You would want to relax more. You would want to have a greater impact on the world through your work. You would want to talk more to your friends. But you’ll have to moderate between everything by dividing your time. When this moment is realized, time becomes valuable automatically.
But then I try to think backward. The day we become fit, our first thought would be, why didn’t I start exercising earlier? Similarly, when we reach this point of abundance in our lives and realize how valuable time is, we would look back and think, “I wish I had spent time more meaningfully before. I was fretting over things that don’t hold much value now. I was worried whether I would have a good job, I was worried whether I would find a good partner, I was worried what others think of me, I was envious of the lives others are living, etc.” A lot of problems of now would disappear at the point of abundance. Hopefully, visualizing this abundant future will make us more mindful of how we spend our time now.