Investment
I was working, half listening to a random podcast. When you’re doing that, you're not fully
paying attention but buzz words or energy in their voice can make you tune in
tighter or rewind because you knew you missed something. It was nothing monumental, but I heard the
host say “that’s a good investment of time,” and it made me pause.
I paused my work, paused the episode and closed my door to
give this a moment to think about.
A good investment of time.
I think we’ve heard hundreds of analogies and lessons of
time. Time flies, take your time, use
your time wisely, time waits for no one, and one of my favorites – Men talk of
killing time, while Time slowly kills them.
The thought of Time can feel like a Steven Pressfield
book. Pressfield wrote about Resistance
(“The War of Art”) as an energy, a noun, a figure, a person to overcome disguised
as a friend pulling you off target. Time
has that quality. You can use it, speed
it up, slow it down, but as the podcaster said, you invest it.
Time and current, Time is money might be the closest 1-1. Ask anyone any hospice. Think they wouldn’t trade all of their purchases
for more time? It’s the thing we want
and need more of and we cannot create it.
We invest it. Like
investments, some are short term, some are along term. Some pay off asap, some years. Some may never pay off. Some keep cashing in years after we’ve turned
to dust. Think of the ancient philosophers
who basically still live. They invested
time, wrote their path, and their influence is felt for hundreds of years. They may not be here to reap any rewards but
the investment continues to roll.
How about hitting the gym?
You go one day, you don’t see any results. You go a week, maybe even a month, you don’t see
any results. Just like small deposits
into a retirement account, you don’t see the interest accumulating in 30 days,
right? It takes Time. Months, years, consistency. The gym is that investment and it pays off in
the long run for those who invest and much more than a flex or ability to press
140lb dumbbells. It pays with mental
growth and the stamina to get after hard, long work. The discipline to keep showing up when you don’t
feel like it. These are additional attributes
you build and obtain via the investment.
How about your education and skills? Only supreme outliers are born with high
level ability, and I bet even most of those had a unique upbringing that one way
or another supported growth to be who they became. So how are you investing in your job
skills? Is it a weekend clinic? Is a weekend enough? Is it a degree? Is it on the job training? Are you investing appropriately? Giving all you can or you making minimum
deposits? If you’re not putting forth a worthy
investment, odds of a big pay are greatly limited. You get out of it, what you put into
it. And thinking of that…
How about relationships?
I bet this is the hard one for people.
You can get a pretty good idea that degree X will result in job Y and salary
Z, but what exactly is the “pay day,” in relationships? How do we invest? Maybe this is where you can sit and think how
I did, about time and how you can invest in relationships, because one way or
another, they will pay off. If its
good, you both/all reap the benefits, but one way or another, there will be
benefits (something to learn).
So how do you use your time? Playing games, watching TV and talking
about people? Or do you read, workout,
study life, spend time w people you care about? Do you lose hours staring at a phone or do
you spend hours hanging out w an old friend?
Do you spend quality time with your husband/wife or are you on auto-pilot
(time flies)? Di you build skill, grow,
adjust and adapt or are you stuck and stuck playing victim to the attacker you
have narrated Life to be.
Since I was very young, I had a weird awareness to
Time. I always knew it was fading. It’s what made me “weird,” and that weird has
made me different. That difference is
why my conversations are different than most you have. I am 100% aware every day that the next
drive, the next cold, the next doctors, the next workout, the next talk, the
next run, the next season, the next meal, the next anything could be the last. It never leaves me. Because of this, things can burn a little
hotter and the dark can get a little darker, “there aint gonna be a middle
anymore.”
It’s all an investment, invest properly
*Excuse any spelling/grammar issues. Wrote this on a small phone with XXL
thumbs.
