Time

“Money is not the prime commodity of our lives… Time is”
-Gordon Geko – 

We are 20 days into 2015, how are you doing on those goals, resolutions, and plans?
Are you leveling up?
Did you take immediate action?
Did you take account for the roles circumstance, providence, and action?

Excellent. Now, lets talk about time.

We are 3 weeks into 2015 and the jazzy feel-good zeal of the new years vibe has faded. Now its all about the work. Whatever new habits you have wanted to establish now need to become part of regular life. Whatever new goals you have, you need to carve out the time to make room for them to manifest. This seems really obvious, but its something I see people miss over and over again.

Want to meditate for 20 minutes every morning? So do I. You have to make time for it or its not gonna happen. In my book I suggest “stealing from sleep” in the morning and that 20 minutes of meditation in the morning will do more for you than the 20 minutes of sleep. This is true, but only if you are able to get to bed at a decent hour. If you are working till midnight and have to get up at 7 to take the kids to school you need every second of sleep you can get. If your kids are like mine, they are all over you from the moment you wake up anyway, so that ideal morning routine is not gonna happen.

Maybe you can’t steal from sleep, but if it’s important you can steal from somewhere. Maybe its watching Doctor Who, maybe its facebook. If it’s prioritize it and make the time. For me this means that after I drop the kids off at school meditation is my next priority. Not facebook, or e-mail, or work. I go home and hit the cushion or, if its nice I hit the park on the way home.

Apart from making time for new habits you have to look at the time needed for goals to manifest. You may have heard business people complain about growing to fast. It can sound like bragging, but its not, it’s a real problem. One that I have faced several times. There is only so much time in the day, and unless you are going to give up spending any time with family and friends, it cannot all be work.

Let’s say that you make your living as a card reader and have the same rates that I do: $75 for 30 minutes, and $200 for 90 minutes. New Year’s comes along and you get all wrapped up in the goal-setting, leveling up, jazz and decide that this year you want to make $200k reading tarot. Let’s assume that you have a good audience, and that this is something that your Jupiterian Sorcery can manifest.

You will need 1000 90 minute sessions throughout the year to hit $200k.
That is 1500 hours. Almost 29 hours a week. That is a lot of card reading.
If you are also maintaining a blog, doing marketing, and other things necessary for a business you are going to have a 60 hour work week. This is about average for an entrepreneur, but requires sacrifices.

It also represents the cap for what you can do with that business model. To make any more than that and not work around the clock, you will have to raise prices or come up with a more scalable product. I have a consult a few weeks ago to someone who did consultations with similar rates and wanted to make $500k this year. When I pointed out that this would require 72 hours a week of billable hours, he was shocked. He never even considered it.

If you want a new habit or process to stick you have to first do it, so that you can enjoy some of the results. This will spur you on to wanting to continue, which means that you will need to make the time for it to happen. It’s that simple.

Once you have the time set aside for it, and the results feeding your desire for it, it just requires your effort.

I myself am still locked in constant conflict with chronos. Some tips I have found useful for my ongoing struggle.

• Realize that you are always missing something. You cannot do everything. By choosing one thing, you are not choosing another. Be decisive, and let go of what you chose to abandon.
• All Jupiter and no Saturn makes Jack an overwhelmed Sorcerer. Realize the role of Saturn and boundaries in your work. Meaningful expansion requires boundaries.
• Multi-tasking is so 2002. Stop it. You cannot be on facebook, write a blog post, and watch House Of Cards at the same time. I have tried.
• Enjoy your down-time. Shut off your notifications. Be with the person you are with. Enjoy the show you are watching. Know that whatever challenges work presents can be dealt with during work time.
• Work during your work time. I am not saying you can’t goof off at work, but make sure that you get what needs to be done, done.
• Eliminate those times when you are not really being productive, but not really enjoying yourself fully. I have spend entire days in this sort of limbo where I am ostensibly “working” but distracted by facebook or youtube. Kill these moments. Choose a path.
• Realize that calendars, pomodoros, and other time management tools are there not just to boost productivity, but to make sure that you have down time.
• Be fluid. Remember, circumstance and providence will not always work in harmony with your desired actions. When your wife comes down stairs during work time and asks you to come to bed – you go. When your kids are sick – you take care of them. When your best friend shows up unannounced and asks you to go skydiving – you go. Adjust and recover.

More on this later. For now just look at how you are spending your time and how you are going to make time for the things that matter. Strike a balance. You may love video games, but if you are spending 15 hours a week playing video games then you know where you need to steal from in order to make room for more meaningful things.