Pull out your calendar. However you keep one. Maybe it’s on your phone, maybe pencil on paper. Wherever you keep the most detailed list of both your past and planned activities. Flip back a few pages to last week or last month and pick a period of seven days. Then take a long hard stare at all that is contained within those 168 hours.
Divide a sheet of paper into three separate columns. Label the first “love”, the second “indifferent”, and the third “loathe”. Now take all the activities in the calendar for those seven days and put them in the correct columns. What do you notice? What is the ratio of love to loathe? How many hours do you do things that are meh at best?
The point I am trying to make here is that you can think of time as a commodity if you want, but it can’t be commoditized. You can’t buy or sell it. You can’t trade it. You can’t create or waste it. You see, time passes no matter what any of us do. And, one way or another, we are all given a tiny allotment of it. The only control we have, as measly as it sounds, is to control what activities we are involved in as time passes.
Winning the game, it turns out, thus becomes simple. We simply want to pass as much time doing things we love as possible and eliminate as many things we loathe as possible. Why is something so straightforward goofed up by so many?
It’s a good question that often brings us back to the concept of enough, meaning, and purpose. We think that if we just fill our time with these big P type of activities, we will finally feel enough and be happy. The problem, of course, is usually these are extremely goal oriented pursuits that we often loathe the work it takes to achieve them. Getting six-pack abs is so hard, many put off going to the gym. Becoming a billionaire is so time consuming, many burn out. Becoming a world class athlete often leaves people feeling isolated when they confront fears of failure.
So many of these things don’t even light us up. They are versions of purpose we have co-opted from social media, our parents, or the marketing agencies created to sell us things. Society has told us what we should strive for. and how to prove that we are enough in an overly self-centered world bent on selling us something.
Don’t fall for it.
Go back to your calendar. Map out what you love and what you loathe. Create a life of little P purpose in which you love the majority, loathe the minority, and rarely feel meh!
Today’s Poll
Did you catch this week’s episode of Earn & Invest (Click to listen)?
Path to Purpose Coaching
Over the last year, writing my new book The Purpose Code, I have spent a huge amount of time thinking about, writing about, and discussing purpose. I have offered one-on-one and group coaching to my mastermind group, Wealth With Purpose. These discussions stem from my real life encounters with dying hospice patients as well as the numerous interactions I have had with people after reading Taking Stock.
What I've found is that most of us who listen to the Earn & Invest Podcast struggle with three basic issues:
How do I define purpose in my life?
How do I transition to a more fulfilling career?
What is enough money look like? Enough life?
To help navigate these waters, I have decided to offer the Path to Purpose coaching program. This is one-on-one coaching with me to help you further define purpose, direction, and career. Sessions will be spread over five weeks with a goal to provide a more concrete and enjoyable path to crack the purpose code and start living your life now whether you are broke, pre financial independence, financially independent, or beyond.
https://www.earnandinvest.com/coaching
Good framing. I’ve thought about it as:
“The purpose is in the process.”
As in, it’s the doing that is worthwhile, not the outcome.