Rules for Living: Be Serious About Your Time

Quiet desperation is overrated.

“No such thing as spare time. No such thing as free time. No such thing as downtime. All you got is lifetime. Go.”

-Henry Rollins

That is in my top ten quotes of all time.  Today’s topic is in my top three most frequent conversations. I may get heated.

Grammarly did question my tone.

I am serious about my time. I don’t apologize for this anymore.

I have wasted a lot of time over the years. I don't know that I could even guess how much time I spent being drunk, being high, playing video games, or on more subtle ways of wasting time like being angry at other people or thinking that life was unfair to me.

Look.

It's OK to relax and do the things you enjoy.

It’s OK to have hobbies.

It's OK to take time off.

It's OK to have a drink if it doesn’t get out of hand for you.

It’s OK to play video games, watch Netflix, and scroll TikTok.

But.

But.

But.

These things should not be the focus of your life. They should not take up more than a tiny percentage of your time.

I'm going to advocate for a pretty militant perspective on being serious about your time in this post, but it’s not about beating yourself up or running yourself into the ground. It is about recognizing that time is the most precious thing you have and that you be serious about it.

I am militant about my time these days, but that's because I have so many things I want to do. I view my time the way I view sobriety. I don't avoid drugs and alcohol because I feel guilty about them or because I need to flee from them. I avoid them because they chip away at my mindset and attitude. I have so many things I want to do that they cannot have a place of priority in my life.

I avoid wasting my time because it's the most important gift God has given me, and I have a lot of cool shit I want to do. I enjoy doing things that help other people and creating things that help other people. I like the work I do, and I like dedicating time to being better at it.

I am happiest when I'm getting up at 4:00 in the morning.

I'm happiest when I'm reading and learning.

I'm happiest when I'm creating and doing something with my time.

I protect my time because of those things.

I hate how I see people spend their time. Between video games, pornography, alcohol, cannabis, and our phones, I don't know how we're ever going to accomplish the things that we accomplished as a species in the past. I read something that said that most of us will spend between 12 and 20 years of our lives on our phones now.

On the higher end, that is us spending 25% of the time we have on this planet looking at dumbass things that nobody in the world could ever need to look at. What we consume on social media is not neutral. There are plenty of studies and surveys that indicate that many of us are now spending 25% of our lives consuming things that are harmful to us.

This isn’t an all-or-nothing thing.

I’m on social media. I like sending people funny videos. I send one person at least five cat videos a day. I play video games sometimes. I'm rewatching Boardwalk Empire. I make time to play Magic the Gathering. I don’t work on things all day, every day, but I am intentional about how I spend downtime.

There's nothing wrong with having hobbies.

There's nothing wrong with enjoying things and being passionate about them.

But these things were never supposed to be the main thing in our life.

If you have 4 hours a day to scroll TikTok, you have time to learn a skill that might actually be useful in the real world.

If you have time for video games, you have time to clean your house and make sure your kids don’t smell bad.

If you have hours to watch movies about imaginary heroes helping imaginary people, you have time to help real people in some way.

The real world needs to take precedence over virtual and fantasy worlds, and real people need to take precedence over imaginary people.

We are here to make things better for everybody else.

We are here to grow and evolve and to know how to do things.

We cannot do that if we aren’t serious about our time.

Try this:

·      Don't have addictive hobbies. This includes drinking, drugs, video games, and pornography. I'm sure there are a bunch I am missing. If you already have an addictive hobby and you can’t quit, get help.

·      Tell people no, especially if you are only doing something out of guilt.

·      Go to bed at a decent time and get up at a decent time. Don’t sleep your life away.

·      Review your day to see what most often wrecks your time. Eliminate those things.

·      Do a time audit and have a time budget. If something is good enough for money, it’s definitely good enough for your one irreplaceable resource.

·      Prioritize your life. Don’t accept things as they come and then act like you don’t have time.

·      Pay attention to shame over how you spend your time. Shame, in its proper place, is a sign that we are not fulfilling our potential or doing what we need to be doing. Please make note of the bold, underlined italics before emailing me about shame having no place in our modern culture. Spend that time elsewhere.

You have this one short ride on this awesome planet.

Be serious about it.

Do something with it.

Learn a skill.

Help someone.

Help a bunch of people.

Understand how the world works.

Leave it better than you found it.

Don't let the distractions and soul-degrading nonsense steal your most valuable resource.

Take care,

James