One of, if not the, most important things that we can decide is how we spend our time. What we spend our time doing, the places that we spend it, and the people that spend our time around. Time is our most valuable resource, it’s one resource that we can’t get more of and that goes the same for everyone. Technically a rich person has the same amount of time each day as a poor person.
Though the rich person can leverage his money so he has more time. But then there are also some poor people who have more time than rich. But I’m getting off topic, how we spend our time tells us what we value. If we say we value working out, eating right, and living a healthy life yet most of our free time is spent watching TV, eating fast food, and binging shows late into the night then we’re lying to ourselves.
Actions speak louder than words. And how we spend our time is an action that speaks louder than any other. It’s sort of like a reflection into the heart of a person. What we spend our time doing is what we value. And what we value determines where we end up in life. In our quest to develop ourselves to the best of our ability so that we may live lives of fulfillment and impact. To become warrior poets, it pays to put some thought into how to best spend your time.
Which many of us do, which can actually lead to a problem…
How To Determine Where To Spend Your Time
When we look at where it’s best to spend our time one of the first things we look for is results. Meaning that if we spend our time doing X what does that produce? This is a wise decision, after all, why spend your time doing something that will get you nothing and has no other value? However, here’s where the problem comes in. In life there are many things that are worth doing and are valuable, however they don’t give you immediate results, as a matter of fact results are often delayed and take years to reap.
So while you certainly want to see if whatever you’re doing is going to get you what you want from life, at the same time, you have to look at what the long term effect of something is. In mastering any skill or building anything that takes time and is worthy, there will be long stretches of time when it feels like what you’re doing is useless. You won’t be getting any results and it’ll feel like you’re doing nothing but wasting your time.
This become even worse when you’re purely results oriented. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you’re writing a book. Being results oriented would be focusing on how the book is going to make you money, how its going to bring new customers in, how it’s going to establish you as the authority in a hot new space. However there is no guarantee that any of this is going to happen, it’s beyond your control.
All you can do is write the best book possible and market it through the right channels and in the proper way and hope that it does well.
Process Oriented Versus Results Oriented
If all you’re focused on is results you’ll end up passing over some very important and productive ways to spend your time. Whereas instead of your process oriented and focus on doing what you know to be right to get you where you need to go you’ll see a couple things happen. First you’ll have a lot more motivation to get things done and won’t be discouraged when you don’t get the result that you want. Barely anyone writes a best seller out of the gate, however by book thirty that might be a different story.
You’ll find that in the long run you become more productive. Things take time to develop, especially worthy things. And you’ll have to keep putting in the work even when it seems like nothing is coming of it. Every “overnight success” has come from years of hard work and being process oriented. Looking at the process that they know could get them success and putting in the work day in and day out, until they hit the results that they wanted to hit. If they focused on being big shots then that’d never work.
Whether its a musician who’s had to write ten thousand songs to find that one that worked better than all the rest or the novelist with a backlist of fifty books before that one really took off or a guy putting in work on the amateur circuit and in the gym every day finally getting a call up to professional promotion. Be process oriented not just results oriented. Obviously you don’t want to get stuck using an effective process but at the same time understand what it takes.
Nose On The Grind Stone
You have control over process. You have control over how many words you write every day, over how many lines of song you write, over if you went to the gym or not. What you don’t have control over is results. You can’t control whether you are going to become the next Stephen King or one hit wonder. You can’t control whether the promotion you want is going to give you the call. Focus on the process, focus on what you can control, that where the power lies. And that’s where the path to success lies.
If anything I said here interests you I’d highly recommend you check out The Ultimate Alpha Collection which is a compilation of 16 of my books for the price of 5. It covers everything from being a man to making money to getting the right mindset to getting girls to fighting and more and is a resource no man should be without. Pick up your copy today!
-Charles Sledge
