The Problem
You may be reading this because you feel the chaos of your life and your heart races while you’re reminded that you don’t have the time, money, tranquility, and spirit to be at peace. Face it, you don’t have FU money. If you did, you’d have your own blog and you wouldn’t give a F*&% about anything! If this isn’t you, then accept my congratulations and go have a Mai Tai.
When you were a toddler, you didn’t worry about time, finances, or making an appointment. Life was fun. You ate tasty food and desert Mom prepared. Then you played more. At the end of the day, you bathed and went to bed, only to repeat it all over the next day. You knew good food, a good sleep, and play time could be expected. You lived abundantly and securely. Then somewhere along the way, you aged, took on responsibilities, made more money, had kids, maybe a divorce, and things changed in a blink of an eye. You found yourself living under constant duress.
Coincident? Hell no! How could it be when it happens to a majority of the population? Do you realize that with all of the years of schooling you had, there was no curriculum on finances and entrepreneurship? Instead, students were groomed to become workers, tax payers, and consumers. Nothing wrong with that but there’s something wrong when you can’t still be a kid. Aside from ill health or other uncontrollable factors, there really shouldn’t be much reason to be without time, money, and tranquility. But, like sheep, we are herded through school, into the work force, and groomed to pile on debt. You put in 30 to 40 years, and at age 65, your only hope is Medicare, a little Social Security that you start collecting at 62 which is reduced by 25% of the full value you deserve, and you’re hoping Home Depot or Walmart will hire you at the age of 70!
You’re part of an American culture that encourages you to be someone’s bitch. Your happiness is predicated on buying things you can’t afford. So you forever owe other people and is where being someone’s bitch comes in. When black swan events occur (unpredictable events with severe consequences), the 40+ hours you work to buy crap that should cost 100 hours of work to afford disappears the moment you get laid off but the loan you took out to cover the other 60 hours doesn’t go away. The latest black swan event is Covid-19. The housing payment can’t be made, the utilities might get shut off, you can’t pay for Junior’s basketball tournament, and you’re looking at moving onto the streets in 30 to 60 days. Unemployment in Las Vegas where I live is 29% to 35% depending on what media outlet you believe at the time of this writing! Other cities may not be as extreme, but no city is spared.
Have I just described the so called “rat race”? Are you tired of being a rat, being someone’s bitch, and not living with FU money?
Well guess what? You CAN do something about it. Read on!
The Solution – Part 1
Reversing this is completely possible, but it takes time because the attitude instilled over decades is difficult to change in a night. The good news is that doing the first thing only takes minutes.
Greatness comes about when making small easy changes, starting with one and then the next. After a while it becomes a tsunami. How about an example?
Years ago during the Great Recession, a man I know was going through a costly divorce (as though there is any other kind), raising a young daughter, building a new business, squeezing costs to make ends meet, and still trying to have a social life. He found his stress level to be unmanageable. He put on weight, drank more than he should, ate poorly, and avoided the gym. It just seemed insane that what was once an idyllic life had unraveled. He didn’t think he could hold it together. While he was surviving for the time being, he knew it was a matter of time before damages would be irreversible.
One morning during coffee time, he thought about his predicament and he came to a realization. He realized that his biggest problem was TIME, NOT MONEY as he had thought all along. Yeah man, Time! Can’t make money without time right? He was chasing money and didn’t realize the lack of time in his life prohibited him from growing his income. He realized not having time prevented creative and critical thinking. Isn’t it true that big problems need solutions that have plenty of thinking behind them?
This was a huge revelation for the man. He had run his life like he was running on a treadmill at the gym that keeps going faster and faster. If you’re like him, all you can do is focus on keeping the feet moving. Soon you can’t get off without killing yourself! So you keep going. The building could even catch fire with smoke filling the air, but you keep those feet running. Well I was that man. I was running a rat race and I had no clue how to get off the treadmill!
So on that day when I was able to think, I didn’t do anything but rack my brain on how I could possibly get out off the treadmill. I had many thoughts but one of them really stood out. As though I was my own buddy, I asked myself a simple question.
“What if I made one simple change to my life today, knowing it would save me a few minutes every day for the rest of my life?”
What if that change done just once took 5 minutes to implement and saved me 3 minutes daily for the rest of my life?
I found that it would save me 18 hours every year for the rest of my life.
It became a bit exciting to think that if I invested 5 minutes and I could reclaim 18 hours every year, I might be able to invest another 5 minutes to implement another change and reclaim another 18 hours each year. I’d be 10 minutes in and I’d save 36 hours annually. I like that Return-On-Investment (ROI)!! These are arbitrary numbers and as you’ll see later, I saved more time than that.
With this perspective, I examined my habits and searched for opportunities to do them better. Any amount of time that I could reclaim by changing my habits would be a freedom pill that would reduce my stress by just a bit. It might not even be noticeable at first, but after a while, I believed the effects would be compounded. Perhaps it could lead to other good things – better diet, more exercise, better social life, more time for creative thinking so I can work less and earn more? Endless possibilities! Can you find one daily habit in your life that if you did differently would compound and give you a ton of hours back during the year?
Here are some Time Wasters I uncovered from my search of things I repeated throughout my life:
- Turning the house over looking for replacement batteries.
- Digging through my desktop several times a week to find something I saw just a minute ago.
- Driving to the grocery store just to buy coffee creamer.
- Driving myself crazy hunting for missing car keys.
- Feeling depressed staring at the stacks of paper needing to be shredded or filed.
- Forgetting usernames or passwords and where they were written down.
- Going blind manipulating 20 windows on a small 15″ laptop display.
Which one do you think was the #1 time killer?
I determined the worst time waster was hunting for a username or password. Because these things were lost in an Excel file somewhere or written on a lost piece of paper, I was a dog trying to remember where I buried a bone. Clicking “forgot password” and waiting for an email that would come later than sooner was salt on a wound. Between receiving the reset email, coming up with an acceptable password, changing it, and logging back in, a lot more time than you might believe was lost. It was typical for an hour to be wasted! Then there was my girlfriend who had the same issue!! Not only was I giving up valuable time getting nothing done, but there was stress on my cardio. Then there’s the time needed to get back mentally where I was before I started the password hunt.
Eliminating wasted time because of lost passwords was going to be my first change! I had heard of password managers but knew nothing about how they worked. It took 5 minutes to research what a password manager would do for me and what the best one was to choose. Fifteen minutes later, I found the one I felt comfortable with. I entered my credit card and had a password manager in 5 minutes. I entered my three most frequently used login username/password information and marveled at how easy and secure it was to login to these frequently used sites. I installed it on my smart phone next. Same happy experience!
So after a total investment of around 30 minutes, I was set up. I estimated that over the years, I was probably losing an average of 15 minutes daily not being able to login to my accounts or logins. With the password manager, I could login securely and quickly from my laptop, my phone, or public computer without ever needing to remember my username or password! And due to encryption and other forms of security, it was safe. I was filled with gratitude and feeling a lot better about life!
Putting on my math hat again, I calculated that if I save 15 minutes a day not messing around with passwords, I could save 91 hours a year! What would you do if you were given 91 hours back every year?
This is just one example of a simple change I made in my life. Investment: 30 minutes. Benefit: 91 hours annually, less anxiety, more time to be creative or productive, better relationship with friends and family.
To this day, I repeat this exercise and find more ways to eliminate time waste. As I continued the process, over and over, I began to see other facets of my life gradually improve – income, relationships, health. Even my dog liked me better! Quite the Kozy outcome wouldn’t you say?
One final word: I was asked the question “If one decides to apply this solution repeatedly, at some point, wouldn’t so much time be reclaimed that there’s literally nothing to do for an entire year?” Good question! What do you think?
I will next be writing about Solution 2. Stay tuned!
