Time – Le KrocK

I don’t have the time

“I don’t have the time”, is a sentence that we hear almost every day. I used to say it too, until I realized what it really meant.

The next time you hear someone say that phrase, or that you say it yourself, just start thinking about what you or that person does that is not essential to life. Watching TV/Netflix, surfing the internet, taking a nap in the middle of the day, taking a car ride, drinking alcoholic beverages, playing video games, etc. And you’ll soon find out that the problem is not a lack of time, but rather from a lack of interest and motivation for the said activity.

Everyone’s day has the same length, we just don’t use this time in the same ways, and this isn’t the problem. The problem is that we convince ourselves and others that we don’t have the time, when in reality, we just don’t care enough to make place in our “schedule”.

It all comes back to something that I talked about in a previous article, that each individual (adult) is responsible for its own current situation, that our choices made us who we are. Having time is also a choice that we make. So you decide to spend all your weekends playing video games, then good for you, but don’t tell me that you don’t have the time to clean your apartment or go to the gym. You have the time to do it, you just don’t care enough to do it.

So, why am I telling you this? Because I used to be that way, I used to think that I didn’t have time to do many things, until I started analyzing how I managed my time and realized that I could make better use of it, and accomplish important things instead of wasting my time being convinced that I am busy. And it started by removing this sentence from my head and vocabulary.

Then, when we realize that we indeed have the time, we have to plan a little. The way I do it is pretty simple, it consists of finding what activities can be reduced/removed and which ones should be added. I make a list of the things I want to do, because having a clear list feels more real than vague ideas. When we know what we want to do and what we want to not do, all that is left to do is to make a small daily schedule and place the activities and tasks that we want to do, this way we know exactly what we have to do and waste less time.

Even though it seems too simple, it actually works, but it requires some ass kicking to doing it.

Happiness is a state of mind

Like a lot of people, I used to think that happiness was a destination, that someday, after working a lot on it, I would reach it. But I now think that it is more of a state of mind than anything else. The difference between those two is pretty subtile, because even if happiness is a state of mind, you will need to work on it for some time before reaching it. Society wants us to think that happiness will be reached at the end of our life after working our asses off for like 50 years and being all worn out if not already dead. I prefer to think that happiness can be reached in a matter of a few years (maybe less) no matter how old we are. It will require that you make big changes in your life, and the time it will take for you to become happy will mostly depend on how long it takes to make those changes. You would probably also need to not be satisfied by being average or else you won’t really care about bettering yourself anyway.

For me, the need for change towards happiness and an overall better life was first triggered by the lost of a girlfriend and later by the loss of a job I hated. So I finally had to face the fact that my life really sucked to decide that I was worth more.

I’ll talk a little bit about my own experience here as a guy on his way to happiness, I’m not there yet, but I can already see that I’m heading in the right direction. A few years ago, I was working as a website programmer, living an ordinary boring life. At some point I had a girlfriend, who left me for a bunch of reasons that are out of the scope of this article, and now that I think about it, my lifestyle was so miserable that there’s no wonder why I was being such an asshole to her. I remember how I used to say to her every morning how much I hated my job (and just working in general). At that time, I was always thinking about earning more money even if I was already earning more than I really needed. My life was basically only revolving around work and money. When my girlfriend left, I finally realized that I was missing something, so I began working on myself to become a better person. But I was still working a job I hated and couldn’t get away from it by myself. About a year later, I was still working that same job, when my boss asked me to have a talk with him to finally hear him say that I was fired. Ok, most people don’t take it really well when they get fired, but for me, it was so much of a release that I literally had difficulties holding my face from smiling in front of my (now former) boss. That is where I really began “living” for real.

From the moment I was free, there was still some work to do, as much as losing that awful job was nice, I wasn’t ready to be happy yet.

I think that there is two sides to happiness, there are things that lower it, and things that increase it. So the solution is pretty simple, eliminate as much as possible of what lowers your happiness, and add as much as you can of what increases it. Simple in theory, hard and long to actually apply, but still workable.

So if you want to be happier, you need to let go of the things that prevent you from reaching it. So maybe it’s your soul-sucking job that takes all of your energy, maybe it’s a bad relationship or bad friends, maybe the place where you’re living keeps you from doing what you really want. It will be hard, but it will be worth it. As an example, I used to work as a programmer, but I found out that it was ruining my life, so I decided to stop doing it. I obviously make less money because I’m not specialized in any other field, but I feel way better about myself now. Sometimes I think about how I could go back to this old way of living and earn much more money to buy more things, but right after I also remember how I felt trapped in a routine leading to nowhere and I know I made the right choice. What I’m personally trying to do is to cut out everything that isn’t essential so I have more time for the fun part. It means to do some sacrifices, I decided to stop working full time, so I find seasonal, temporary and/or part time jobs so I have more free time than the standard (at least here in Quebec) 2 weeks in summer and 2 weeks in winter. But on the downside I need to have an older car (and less fashionable) (I still think that I need a car but I could also decide to get rid of it to become less reliant on money), I have to take better care of what I have so I won’t waste/break what I own so I don’t need to buy more things. I have to live with roommates to make the rent cheaper. I also try to buy food that doesn’t cost too much but this one is hard because I also like weight training which kinds of requires that I eat good food (which is expensive by definition). Some of these things can be annoying, but they allow me the live an overall better and happier life.

The other thing you have to do is to start doing what you like (or more of it), it seems easy but it isn’t that much for most of us, we still have to work, eat, sleep and do tons of others things before even thinking of having fun. I’m passionate about music, and I hardly play more than 30 minutes a week on my bass guitar. I need to make place for it in my life. Like I often say, “you don’t need to have the time, you have to take the time”, in others words, if you wait for the day you’ll have free time to do something, you’ll never do it, so just take the time you need and do what you really want with it. My happiness level is directly proportional to how much I have been working on things that I’m passionate about in the last few days. For instance, in the last three weeks before when I started writing this article, the first one was depressing because I had a really busy work week. I didn’t have much time to do anything else other than working and I was feeling down. The other two weeks I was on vacation, so I did some weight training, wrote a few things, played music and did other fun things, and I also was in a much better mood.

You probably have already heard somewhere that happiness is living the present moment, not the past or the future. And I’m also convinced that it is true, but what it doesn’t say is that if you live the ordinary life, you won’t be able to do it because the present will be awful. If you’re not already a happy person, you’ll have to change your life to make the present enjoyable. It’s up to you to find what lowers and what increases your happiness, once it’s done, you’ll need to grow some balls and make the necessary changes. Another thing worth saying is that if you really go towards a better life, most people won’t be able to understand what you do, so if you are the kind of person that needs to “fit in” and be accepted, happiness is probably not for you.

I really like the next phrase and I think it sums up most of the article: “If you want something you’ve never had, you’ve got to do something you’ve never done.”. Of course if you’re not satisfied with your life now, there’s got to be things to add and/or to remove or else you’ll keep the same boring routine that you hate.

Pass the time

Today I heard something sad, while eating at the restaurant I heard someone say “it passes the time” to someone else.

It seems like an harmless comment but it made me think a little. Because “making the time pass”, means that you’re looking for ways of “wasting” it. Like if you were saying “I have too much of it so I need to find ways of making it disappear”. Let’s take another example so you know where I’m going with this: some people just make too much money, so they are trying to fill a void by buying a bigger house, a better car, a bigger boat, new clothes, etc. In short, they are wasting their money because they have so much of it that they don’t care anymore.

So when someone feels that he/she has too much time, he/she has the same kind of behaviour. Finding meaningless ways of using the excess. And while it’s not much of a problem with money because it’s just about material things, wasting your time has a lot more consequences in my opinion.

And why is it worse to waste time? When you’ll get near the end of your money, you’ll be aware of it, and you’ll be able to take measures to avoid hitting the bottom of the tank. So you’ll either stop wasting it, make better investments or sell some stuff. But it’s not possible to earn more time nor can you get some of it back either, what is gone is gone forever. And this is the reason why “passing the time” is sad.

Personally, I can’t even understand how someone can have too much time, because I’m always doing something, so I’m rarely bored. I always keep my mind filled with ideas and projects, and I spend my time working on them. So I don’t consider my time wasted because what I do with it is fulfilling me in some way or another. And I also feel like every day is too short. But when you can genuinely say that you “pass the time”, it means that you’re not fulfilling yourself with activities, hobbies or any other tasks. And this is where it gets sad, because it means that you’re just waiting to die. You’re not investing that time in something or someone, you’re just letting it disappear before you eyes. You’re not making the world better or worst, you’re just being an observer.

I’ve been an observer in our world for many years, I’ve wasted a lot of time and today I regret it. And I don’t see why anyone else wouldn’t regret it either, I don’t think anybody likes to waste things, so why would we do it with one of our most precious resource, time itself?

Don’t take this article the wrong way by thinking that all your time must be filled with work. I’m not saying that we should all stop playing video games, watching TV and browsing social media, but the thing is to not go overboard with it and use your free time in a way that you won’t regret once you’re old.

If you already know what you passions are, devote more time to them. If you don’t know yet what is meaningful to you, open your mind, try new things and get out of your confort zone, so you have the chance of finding what you love.

A short time VS no time at all

Society seems to have taught us to do things by sessions mesured in hours. We work 8 (or even more) hours a day on the same tasks at our job, so why would it be different when we want to work on our own projects at home? Simply because after work, we don’t have the time and energy to do that, and for some, we can’t manage do the same thing for so long.

What I’m trying to say here is that even if you can’t/don’t want to amputate a full day of your already too short weekend, you can still manage to progress in something that matters to you.

My bass guitar teacher once said: “You’re better praticing only 15 minutes a day than not a all”. 15 minutes doesn’t seem like a big deal, but at the end of the week I would still have practiced for an hour and 45 minutes. And that’s a lot better than 0 minute.

It doesn’t only apply to music, I’m currently building a website using this method, I work for about 30 minutes then go to something else, sometimes I’m in a good mood for more and I can work for an hour or two. My website is growing slowy, but at least it’s not left to rot somewhere on my computer’s hard drive. Slow progress is still better than no progress at all. Sometimes it can take up to 4 days to write an article for this blog (by their length you could think that I write them in 5 minutes but it’s not the case) because I write for some time and then stop when I don’t feel it anymore and I come back the next day to write a few more lines and add new ideas.

I like this method because I can see some progression while keeping away from the feeling of lacking time to do all the things I have to do in a week. I also think that the slow progress makes a more “mature” result in the end. The multiple sessions help keep the project in my head so I’m always thinking about ways to improve it.

I agree that you can’t apply this to everything because some activities are long by nature but for the ones that can be splited in multiple sessions, it could be nice to give it a try. It doesn’t matter how long it takes to achieve something as long as you keep working on it.