How cool is this? Someone actually made a video demonstrating my favorite time metaphor (or at least close it), first postulated by Robert Ringer. The quickie, abbreviated version is that you have about 20,000 days of life as an adult before you die, but those 20,000 days are more like 6,000 days when you factor in things like sleeping and nonproductive life essentials (going to the bathroom, dressing, shaving, etc). Worse, those 6,000 days are only if you’re 25 years old and you’re guaranteed to stay within perfect health all the way to age 70.

This means most people have way less than 6,000 days left. That probably includes you.

This is the reason I’m such a time management freak. Every other resource in my life can be replaced if I lose it. My house. My car. My business. Money, friends, love, companionship, career. While it’s not very pleasant or romantic to think about, everything you can think of, including the things I just listed, can be replaced if you lose it. You can always go get more.

Everything except time. If you waste a day, month, or year, it’s gone, and you can never get it back, no matter how amazing, smart, or rich you are.

One way to offset some of the horror that video describes is to get your income high enough where you can outsource most or all of the drudgery work in your life. You can’t oursource things like going to the bathroom or brushing your hair, but you can outsource other areas described in the video, such as:

• Preparing food (as well as cleanup)
• Household chores (cleaning, etc)
• Shopping

You can also construct your lifestyle to dramatically reduce other areas it mentioned.

For example, you can structure your work life the way I have, Alpha Male 2.0 style, so that instead of working 40-60 hours a week for most of your life, you’re working 30 hours a week or less. That will save you literally years of work in your life. Of course if you really like your work, you may not want or need to reduce your work hours, but my opinion has always been that there are other parts of my life outside of work that are extremely important, and these areas require time regardless of how much I love my work (which I do).

Commuting is another thing I don’t do. I work from my home, by choice. Another several years saved.

I also watch very little television, perhaps five hours a month at most. There are too many other important or exciting things in my life for me to spend time watching TV (99.9% of which sucks anyway).

If you add all those things up, you can knock many years off the wasted time in your life the video accurately describes. True, the video is pretty scary, but it describes the average person.

You don’t have to be average.

 

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