Have the Time of Your Life

by Jeremiah Jones

Many of us wake up every day and let our busy schedules dictate our decisions. We try to keep up, but time marches on with or without us. We make plans to complete house projects, take family trips, get that promotion, work out, eat better, work less, and relax, yet we forget one simple fact. We don’t have enough time for our overly ambitious plans. We are not Duncan MacLeod and don't have all the time in the world. Author Oliver Burkeman illustrates the power of reframing the average lifespan of 76 years to the equivalent of 4,000 weeks. Burkeman states, “All that we ever dreamed of achieving, all our joys and heartache, all our ever-fleeting moments of experiencing existence occur within this “absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short” reserve of time” (Burkeman, 2022). Now, if you’re close to middle age, that puts 2,000 weeks on the clock and counting! That doesn’t seem like enough time to get good at pickleball, much less everything on your list!

We assume that a day will come when everything on our to-do list is completed and we’ve achieved a work-life balance, but unfortunately, that day will not come. However, that is good news! Admit you lost the endless productivity trap game against time, and go live the life you want. This requires letting go of your illusions of control. “Just keep in mind: the more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.” — Epictetus.

The human mind is full of blind spots preventing us from living a happy and fulfilled life, especially regarding how we envision time. Stephen R. Covey states, “The key is not spending time, but investing it.” Many people choose time investments equivalent to putting their money into Enron. When you view time as an investment, it frames your mind to be more likely to “invest” in activities that have meaning and importance to you. Therefore, the time spent on your goals becomes an investment, not an expense. Why do we purposely avoid doing what we care about the most when we only have a 4,000-week stay on Earth? Therefore, manage time by prioritizing what you love while neglecting the right things. What we choose to ignore is equally valuable to our well-being as what you acknowledge.

The way we frame time is essential to the health choices we make in the present moment. For instance, researchers Neil Lewis Jr. and Daphna Oyserman performed a study attempting to get people to focus on retirement goals that were 30 years in the future. The individuals told retirement was 11,000 days away were more likely to be concerned with investing than those told they have 30 years. Of course, this is the same amount of time, but 11,000 days seem closer and more relevant. Lastly, our fickle minds tend to prefer the smaller immediate reward in favor of a larger delayed reward. This concept was mentioned in the Future’s Guys Problem blog post. Economists and psychologists call this temporal discounting or discounting the value of future rewards relative to present ones. Our immediate pleasure wins out, even if the prize is smaller, and we will suffer more later (Patt, et al., 2023).

Top 5 Take-a-ways

1. End the productivity trap. “Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again” (Burkeman, 2022).

2. Do what you care about most while neglecting the right things.

3. Invest your time the same way you would your hard-earned money. Wisely and diligently.

4. Understand the power of temporal discounting. Don’t be seduced by lesser immediate gains.

5. When setting goals or making health choices, reframe your mind to think about your life in terms of days and weeks instead of years. You will be less likely to procrastinate on doing what you really love! I have less than 2,000 weeks left, how about you? Tick, Tick, Tick

Additional References

Green Day Time of Your Life

https://youtu.be/CnQ8N1KacJc?feature=shared

Four Thousand Weeks book by Oliver Burkeman

https://a.co/d/7o3MeDk

Four Thousand Weeks Overview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHro9Xl5EYg

References

Burkeman, Oliver. Four Thousand Weeks. Random House Uk, 2022.

Patt, V. M., Hunsberger, R., Jones, D. A., & Verfaellie, M. (2023). The Hippocampus Contributes to Temporal Discounting When Delays and Rewards Are Experienced in the Moment. The Journal of Neuroscience : The Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 43(31), 5710–5722. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2250-22.2023