86,000 Seconds in a Day

"The only difference between a rich person and a poor person is how they spend their time." -Robert Kiyosaki

There are 86,000 seconds, 1,440 minutes and 24 hours in a day. How we spend those 86,000 seconds determine our quality of life, wealth, health and success/failure in our careers and businesses. We all get the same amount of time, so why is it that some people have and others don't? I was working with a colleague at the end of last week before the holiday and I came across this week's quote and it was like a combination uppercut and right hook to the face. Reading the quote physically caused pain in my body. It reminded of why I have yet to reach some of the goals I made for myself that need to be finished before this year concludes. The list of activities and tasks that sucks us of valuable time is endless in this day and age. Social media, the internet, mindless entertainment, and email to name a few. I'm not saying that these things are not all needed within the course of the day, but when you're spending too much of your seconds on unproductive activities, you can't be surprised when you eventually begin to see the results of your time management or lack thereof.

Time management is an important skill to develop if you want to be successful in anything in life. I've had to audit my time lately to see just where the hours, minutes and seconds were going throughout my day. Often times it's something we aren't able to really pinpoint until we really pay attention and track it. I use a program that sends me an email at the end of everyday asking me what I did over the course of my day. As a double accountability measure, instead of making daily to-do lists,  instead I take each hour and log in my calendar what I spent the hour doing. Let me worn you in advance it's painful to look over at the end of the day. Facts are facts. If you spent the day doing meaningless tasks, it will stare you back in the face and it makes you feel sick to your stomach. 

Personally, I found it's taken a certain level of maturity (see last week's post) to even face the fact that I was wasting a lot of valuable seconds on randomness. Time I needed to be spending writing and perfecting my craft or reading or researching or doing something fun. If you're going to waste any time at all, it might as well be on something you enjoy, not on random-ish you could care less about in real life. As I study successful people and their habits, they take each hour of the day very seriously and are strict about getting the priorities done in their core hours, so they can use the remainder of their time doing things they enjoy. If you spend the time you have designated for what needs to be done, you won't have to sacrifice your fun time doing work. Successful people don't spend a lot of time on administrative duties, they focus their time on production and tasks that feed them, make them money or bring them pleasure. 

Challenge yourself to do a time audit this week to see if you can eliminate time sucks, which are slowing down your productivity and success. You can use my system or research other successful methods online. Either way, you don't need to wait until the new year to change bad habits and begin getting the better results. Start today! You've got 37,567 seconds left today depending on when you read this! :-) 

~C. Nzingha