“When you invest your time, you make a goal and a decision of something that you want to accomplish. Whether it’s make good grades in school, be a good athlete, be a good person, go down and do some community service and help somebody who’s in need, whatever it is you choose to do, you’re investing your time in that.”–Nick Saban
On payday, what is the first thing you do? I suspect, if you are a responsible person, you pay your bills, perhaps set a tithe or offering aside for your church, and set some aside for savings and investment. Every morning, you wake up to a payday of time. Most of us have 16-18 hours to spend. How do you manage this?
Most people start the day with little to no thought about how they are going to spend it. Can you imagine spending your paycheck with the same lack of concern? If we think of our time like money, we might spend it differently. Our time falls under the principle of “opportunity cost”—just like our financial plan (assuming one has a plan), we need a plan for our time.
Herein, lies the need for a morning routine and growth plan. What we decide to do with our time comes at a cost of some other use of time. Thus, we need to consider:
- What is most important?
- What is consistent with our goals?
- What is consistent with our mission and values?
- Who benefits from the time spent?
- What is the return on our “investment”?
- Does the action/activity meet the criteria of urgency, importance, and significance?
What is most important? Certainly, there are things we cannot avoid, such as work—we gotta pay the bills! But, beyond our scheduled work, how do we prioritize importance? I like to begin with consideration for the five dimensions of “well-centered fitness”—Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, and Social. I want to make sure that the majority of my time is spent having an affect on these.
What is consistent with our goals? Our mission and values? Having clearly defined goals, values, and mission will further refine what is important. For me, I begin with my values—faith, family, friends, growth, health, and impacting others. These guide my mission and inspire my goals. Therefore, these define how my time is prioritized. Prayer/meditation and consideration of the opportunities that are before me, getting my mind focused and framing a positive attitude, journaling, and goal-setting are important elements of my morning routine. Exercise is a priority. I look forward to my daily “15-minute check-in” with my wife (which is really more like 30-45 minutes and always delays dinner, but the name is catchier). My children’s activities are also a priority—scheduling sports, etc. get an inflexible block in the daily planner. Reading—a minimum of 30 minutes a day—is also scheduled. These are most important. From here, I can fill the spaces in between.
Who benefits from the time spent? I like to live by Gale Sayers’ creed: “My Lord is first, my family is second, and I am third.” One must take care of one’s self–ideally, for the purposes of benefiting and impacting others. So, ultimately, is our time spent selfishly or selflessly?
What is the return on our “investment”? This might take a bit more thought, but we must consider whether or not what we do with our time has any significant effect on our personal growth and/or the growth of others. Social media, for example, way build our community or it might just be spent scrolling mindless memes and video.
Does the action/activity meet the criteria of urgency, importance, and significance? Rory Vaden (Procrastinate on Purpose) builds off of Stephen Covey’s two-dimensional time-management grid (importance x urgency) by adding the third dimension–significance. We have to consider how long something matters. We also consider if something is urgent and important, can we pass it off to someone else to do. There are other things that, while of lesser “urgency” or “importance”, we must do right away because of its significance—taking time for our children or spouse, for example. These are the carpe momento decisions we make on a regular basis. As often as is possible, our time decisions should be of greater significance. These are the time investments, as the return is great—possible compounding.
They say “time is precious.” Do we live our lives as such?
“My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.”—Steve Jobs