Today I would like to discuss working and things that waste time. In todays world, everyone has access to all of the information in the world. With the advent of technology, people now have a lot of spare time that would normally be filled performing menial tasks. If technology is used properly, you can free your day up significantly.
People that are fortunate enough to have a job will typically work five days a week, and have two days off on the weekend. On occasion, people with jobs will get a three-day weekend. Those of us with jobs have two weeks off per year in PTO (Paid Time Off/Vacation Days) as well as a variety of paid holidays off. Let’s not forget that we also typically get sick days off as well and, women get paid maternity leave.
When you add up all the time we have, most of us spend relatively little time working, or focusing on our careers/jobs at all. It is possible that people have more time off than actual work days.
In earlier centuries, people use to have work days that lasted 10 or 12 hours and it was not uncommon that they would work six or seven days a week. Wages were only a few dollars a week and vacations were something only the rich received.
When you were growing up (myself included), your parents may have given you a comfortable life as did the school system. I know when I went to school, I was there from 8:00AM to 3:30PM. Outside of having homework to do, the rest of the day was mine to do with as I saw fit. In addition to that, I also had weekends to myself. I also had holidays to myself and if I got sick I had the luxury of staying home and I still got fed.
With this free time for myself for the first 18 years of my life I was always trying to find ways to hustle extra money even before I was legally able to hold a job. Living somewhat close to a golf course I use to wait until the golf course closed, which is also when it was getting dark, and then I would jump in to the creeks where the golfers would lose their golf balls, fish around in the mud, pull them out, clean them up and then sell them to the golfers the next day at a reduced rate of what they would pay for new golf balls at the golf course. I then found a job picking up range golf balls at the golf course. By the time I was in seventh grade I was DJing school dances and I had saved enough to purchase the equipment I needed to get started. When it came to the lighting for the school dances, I built my own mirror ball and acquired lights that were used on old police cars, ambulances and utility vehicles. They had the lights that would spin around and I found a way to acquire them and use them for school dance lighting. If I did not have things then it was off to ask people if there was a way to build things and thus I learned early on about the value of elbow grease and hustle. In short, I had more time than money and so it was time to turn my time in to money and as a result I learned early on about responsibility and working hard.
As kids, some of us would get an allowance however the real world doesn’t work that way. You don’t get paid for doing nothing. If you don’t work you don’t make money. That may sound harsh and if so then so be it. You need to get used to it rather quickly.
Additionally, don’t take vacations. Life is a series of choices. You can do this or you can do that, however, you typically can’t do both at the same time and if you are doing them both at the same time then you are not doing either task well. An example of this is, I can mow the yard or type this article, however I can’t do both at the same time and if I could then I more than likely won’t do both things well.
The reason that I choose to work at my goals and not take vacations is because I don’t deserve anything…I deserve the opportunity to earn everything. Since I have first world issues, I see no reason to waste time playing around and goofing off.
If you take a look at how much spare time you have outside of work you might be surprised at how much free time you have. Let’s be clear, with some basic math you will see how much spare time you have outside of your job. Out of each working week you typically get two days off. When you multiply that by 52 weeks (2×52) you get 104 days off each year. Amazingly enough this does not include your two weeks off for vacation which is 14 days of doing nothing. Then you get holidays, religious and other various time off.
With that amount of free time the big question is what are you doing to improve yourself or your lot in life. Are you working to educate yourself. Are you working at accomplishing your dreams and goals. As my Dad always says, it’s not what you do from 9 to 5 that counts it’s what you do from 5 to 9 that counts. In short, free time is time to work at what you want to accomplish.
You can still take a break once in a while and enjoy yourself and still use that effort to further accomplish your goals. Believe it or not: networking is business, bouncing ideas off of people is business and even gathering contacts is business. If you ever had a basic plan for success, it might look like this…I know mine does. Work. Plan. Network.
The unpleasant part of achieving your goals is periodically you will have to get rid of dead weight. If you have friends that spend their time doing nothing you will find that you are at a fork in the road of choosing to have friends or working towards your goals. Please note, I am not saying that you should have no friends, I am saying that frequently you will have to make choices and they will probably not be the most comfortable ones to make.
For myself, people tell me how lucky I am or how rich I am. What people don’t realize is how much physical work that I do for myself because it saves me spending money unnecessarily on things that I otherwise can learn how to do. Learning to do things to me is an education. When I have the HVAC maintained you will see me right there with the tech asking questions to see what I can learn which will help me be more independent in the future. When the electrician is out to do some work I am asking if they can teach me how to wire an outlet or ask them what is the reason for doing this. In short, people pay for a college education however the minute that someone pays someone to do a job they somehow don’t see paying for that service as the same as paying for a college education. I see the world as a constant opportunity to learn something even if I struggle with the subject matter.
All overtime that I work is for myself and to achieve my goals. Nothing more…nothing less. To me it is that simple.
- On 09/07/2024
