THE ECONOMICS OF LIFE
SPEND YOUR "GOLD" WELL, FOR "LIFE VALUE", OR KEEP SQUANDERING IT?
NOT ME!
In reaction to the title of this piece, one might say "not me!"
But, unless you actually are the fictional Rational Man, I'll bet that you are squandering a shocking amount of your life once you tally it all up. Alot of it is just leaking away, alot of it is "directed" but toward nothing of life value, and alot of it is blown in cycles of problem creation needing to be dealt with over and over and over.
THE DISORGANIZED, WASTED LIFE
I was struck by an ad "More Space...More Organized", as it was a metaphor, or analogy, for what we do with our lives. I have been fascinated with how we waste space (and life), and have written a little about it (The Compact Living Space).
It seems that we spend alot on our houses because we think we need lots of "space", but fail to see that we could use that space much more smartly (and maybe buy a smaller house in order to save alot of life from the commuting sinkhole).
We Americans have a whole guestroom sitting there idly most of the time, instead of just installing a Murphy bed in the wall with a nice desk and shelves on the side (or a, yikes, convertible sofa...) and having one less room!
We leave our "front rooms" empty most of the time or our kitchen nook.
Yet we spend a part of our lives on earning the money to pay for the unused space (not only upfront, but ongoingly in terms of property taxes and upkeep).
And we even find the law of life and time called Parkinson's Law takes effect in our house, where we pile up things just because we have space...and they sit there unused.
And some of us even let our rooms fill up with crappola, just as we do in life where we let the elephants in the room of life tromp all over, in the form of anxiety, fear, self criticism, etc. - things that are clearly solvable and removable, so that they no longer push aside other things in our lives.
WHAT DOES "ECONOMICS" HAVE TO DO WITH IT?
Economics is the smart allocation of scarce resources (money, time, physical things like oil or food) for the greatest benefit of humans! It is scientific in its methodology but ultimately it is a true social science, for the "social good".
Yet we are dishonoring our very lives by not using the economics of life to get the best out of life. We waste, for no net benefit, approximately 50% of our time. That means, since time is life, that we are flushing 50% of our life down the drain. We worry about having enough life but then we waste it. How nonsensical is that?
In economics, one recognizes that not all time is equal. The realities of life are that there are times where we are given figurative "gold" (alertness, energy, clear thinking) with which we could buy things of the highest value. Usually those gold times are in the first 3, 4, or 5 hours of the day, yet we allow those to be spent buying low value items of tin or some cheap metal - imagine that, we spend gold to buy tin! Incredible. Somehow we have not engaged our higher brain to see that we are blowing what is of the utmost higher value. The whole rest of the day one does not have the total buying power to equal those few, precious golden hours.
This is one of the most foolish things we do in life - and not guarding that time from interuptions and pollutants is one of the most egregious violations of the laws of economics!!!!! Please don't let this slip back into obscurity, as it is the most important thing to keep "top of the mind" and to operate from EVERY day!
A close second worst is to invest any time and energy into something that you won't get anything out of (or very little out of). Yes, somehow, people don't seem to get this, yet we see it all the time. People go to seminars, get good feelings and get all fired up, and then, soon, let any possible value dissipate into nothingness, whereas they could have done the harvesting and added something of value to life, one at a time, into a huge pile. One of the most egregious violations of economics is that a person reads a book to learn about something important and then gets to the end only to pick up another book to learn from, without learning (harvesting fully) and implementing what was in the first book.
One of the best books the last 30 years is The Seven Habits Of High Effective People, by Stephen Covey. Many have read it, spending perhaps 3 to 6 hours, but few harvested and implemented every piece, which would have taken, I would guess, about 40 hours (but saved thousands of hours over time)!
Throughout this site I will cite again and again the value of Completion and of avoiding "stopping short". Heed that advice!
BECOME A MASTER, NO LESS!
We stop far short of becoming the master of our time - in fact we are very amateurish and even reactionary in most of it. The "sign" is there when people say "I am too busy" - they don't realize that is the same as saying "well, I don't have enough skill and care to assure that I have managed my life well enough to have down what is of the most value so that I have plenty of time left over to choose what to do with!"
We let ourselves be the victim of our emotions and spend huge amounts of time seeking "relief" from them (especially needless anxiety, fear, and stress. Instead, we must, as one our top priority in life, become masters of our emotions. And since beliefs/thoughts are the instigators of your emotions, we need to become masters of our beliefs, examining and auditing them for correctness and workability and installing the new ones so that are life blows smoothly with high workability! How can we continue to allow any emotional obstacles and bad beliefs ruin our lives (or any part of it, anyway)?
Our role of being an excellent time manager and of being an excellent manager of emotions and beliefs are essential parts which, together with a few other parts, comprise our most vital role: to be a true master of your life. Why should you allow yourself to be a doofus or even only half good at, when you have the capability and the time (if you get rid of what else fills the space) to become a true master of life, living life at the highest level?
It is the very most valuable use of your time and should be given the highest priority in your life, doing only what is necessary to sustain the basics of your life while dumping all low value activities (you know what those are). Don't leave any obstacles dominating your life - do not tolerate them! Follow the examples/models of those who have succeeded by following their paths (but be sure you pick the best models of living life well, as that is the only true success) and/or The Only Sure Path To The Greatest Life.
Do not, please, stop short of gaining the greatest benefits from living this one superprecious life! Do not settle for any mediocrity in life. Do not settle for becoming, as fast as possible, anything less than a Master Of Life.
