Hi All!
As always, here is your weekly On-Track advice, a collection of tips and tricks to keep you on track with your goals.
1. Instead of sacrificing something you value in exchange for initial success, you’re better off prioritizing the efforts that move you forward.
A common theme that arises when it comes to success is that you must make tough sacrifices to free up more time. Perhaps this means quitting your job, ending friendships, deleting your social media, or throwing things out. It means you remove something that “stands in the way” between you and your goal.
Achieving success, in and of itself, is not an easy task and sacrifices just add an unnecessary layer of difficulty. You are already busy enough, so if you clutter your mind with more decisions, you risk abandoning your journey altogether. Sacrifices make things unnecessarily complicated.
It also takes time—time that you often don’t have—to find enough arguments, justifications, and reasoning for a tough decision. Giving up something of value requires deep thought and consideration. You must consider multiple things: What am I missing out on if I give this up? How will my future be affected if I abandon this? How much time will this sacrifice free up? What’s my plan if I give this up, but it turns out I need it back?
Rather than sacrificing something you value, it’s best to prioritizing efforts that deliver results. Prioritizing is straightforward because you’re only considering a single variable: What is the most important thing to do right now (over everything else) that brings me closer to my goal?
Your Weekly Digest: The Value of Time
Time is the most valuable commodity you own. It is the only resource in the world that cannot be recovered or regained. Any amount of time that is expended—wisely or foolishly—is lost and cannot come back. Time can pass fast when we are having fun, it can pass slow when we are bored, but in both cases, it’s gone forever. You can’t go back in time to re-live a moment, claim a missed opportunity, or change a decision.
In a sense, time flows away like water in a river. If you put your hand in the flowing river, you won’t be able to touch the same water particles twice, because the flow that has passed won’t pass again. The water moves forward and, just like time, carries on. The flow doesn’t stop, doesn’t change directions, and doesn’t come back.
How you manage your time makes the difference between success and failure, purpose and aimlessness, or satisfaction and disappointment. It can make you a million dollars, give you legend status, or change thousands of lives forever. In this week’s article, “What Is Time Well Spent? How to Make the Most Out of Your Precious Time”, I discuss what it means to make the most out of the hours you have available.
Until next week,
Mike van der Poel
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