The illusion of time

Suppose you know where you’re heading. Do you know how long it takes to get there? Have you considered any eventual unexpected setbacks on the way there? Are you sure you have the time you need? Are you sure you know how much time you need?

The biggest illusion we have about time is that it’s unlimited. 

Well, yes, in the absolute sense, you may be right. But in relation to you, your life, and your creative projects, it is pretty limited. 

You have a great idea, a project you want to work on, and you believe you have the time you need to realize it, but before you set out to go for it, you make a plan. You think of what you might need, resources of all kinds, money, materials, people, talent, the most deceptive resource, though, is time. 

You need to be able to estimate how much time you need. Can you? in a realistic sense, this is quite difficult to assess. Consulting with other people, estimates, and putting them down on a table with numbers, is advisable. Numbers don’t lie. 

You seem to need to walk the path to know how long it will take. So many unknowns that it’s challenging to plan, really. What to do?

The creation of your life

My father’s method is this: “Everything is urgent.” I used to accept this method and work this way for a few years, but I found it stressed me too much and decided to rethink my priorities in a more specific way that relates better to me. 

It’s an individual thing. We have different priorities, and “we can’t do everything.” I also used to say this all the time: “I can’t do everything,” for whatever reason I thought I am supposed to, but that doesn’t work, I can tell you. Not only do you disappoint yourself, but you also end up disappointing others. 

Better be truthful in the face of reality, as Ray Dalio suggests in his “Principles.” Acknowledge your weaknesses, not being able to do everything is simply human, I clearly don’t consider it a weakness anymore. There are harsher realities than this to acknowledge… Tim Urban tackles this brilliantly in his Wait but Why blog when he speaks about procrastination and human life.

This gives you a graphic picture of just about the amount of time you have for the creation of your life. Including the legacy, you will then be leaving for the world after you’re gone… Assuming nothing goes wrong on the way…This makes it a best-case scenario. 

Roadblocks and setbacks

* Acknowledge what the roadblock/setback is

* Ask yourself – why that happened, and what can I learn from it to avoid this in the future?

* Proceed armed with your new lessons and confidence

So, you may have thought this was a simple question: How much time do you need? It may be the one question you need to think well about before answering.

So what are you up to now and how much time do you need for it? Let me know in the comments below.