Don’t Waste Your Time – Make Every Day Count

0:00Few things are as uplifting as the greatest moments in sports, and nothing brings us together quite like Team USA at the Olympic Winter Games. From NBC Universal's iconic storytelling to the innovative technology across Xfinity and Peacock, Comcast brings the Olympic Games home to America, sharing every moment with millions. When Team USA steps onto the world stage, we're not just watching, we're cheering together. This winter, we're all on the same team. Comcast, proud partner of Team USA. Music Pick up a pack today, Angel Saft.

1:00If I can only accomplish one goal on this list, which one goal would have the greatest positive impact on my life? If you could only accomplish one goal in life, which one goal would have the greatest positive impact on your life? Now for most people, especially when you're maturing in your career, when you're growing up, the biggest goal is money. If you had money, then you could buy a household car or a family lifestyle and so on. So that's quite normal. For other people, it may be a health goal. For business owners, it may be a business goal. For people with relationship problems, it may be a relationship goal. But ask yourself, if you could achieve one goal or resolve one problem, and remember, a problem unsolved is merely a goal on achieve. Which one would it be? And write that down and make it that the major, definite purpose of your life. When you begin to define your intention and you couple it with a sponsoring thought, now you're giving your body a taste.

2:03Emotionally, what that future's going to be like. Now, the next step is to plan your actions. Master your day, one day at a time. So now you've already dismantled an old part of yourself. Let me say, today, the thought I'm going to have is that I'm a genius and I accomplish everything. Or I live in no time. The universe provides from the universe lives in my favor. Let's let's write down the feelings of how you would feel. If that future happened and you're going to have to feel that feeling before it occurs. So now, okay, what does a abundant person feel? Pretty much free. In love with life, grateful to be alive, abundant. Okay, now, let's practice. But once you manage that, then things open up. And virtually everything you learn of value is like that's very, very, very difficult to learn to write.

3:03And there's arbitrary, arbitrary rules that you have to follow and bind yourself to. And while you're learning those rules, the probability that you have any creative freedom to speak of, or any facility with the rules is very low. You're a rank beginner. And even to some degree, whatever creativity you have is going to have to be stifled. Well, you're passing through that, that keyhole. But if you pass through it, then something massive opens up on the other side. And that's part of the process of maturation. You gotta get to a place where you recognize that I'm not just here passing time. I'm not just here, just having fun. But I'm here to build legacy. I'm here to make things happen. And when you look at your life right now, what you gotta realize is that you don't have a fittest product. What you have is ingredients. And it is your responsibility to work the ingredients that you have to make the cake that you really want.

4:11Too many people are saying, when am I gonna get my cake? And God is saying, hey, look what's in your hands. You've got enough milk. You got the eggs, you got the sugar, you got the flour. It's your responsibility now to mix the things in your life together to produce the legacy that you really want. When it comes to legacy, you have to recognize that you have enough right now to build the legacy that you really want. You need to be in a big damn hurry. Time is running out on you. And we want to make a conscious, deliberate, determined effort to start living life with a sense of urgency and using what we've got, using ourselves, sharing what we brought into the universe to share. Because if we don't, nobody else will stop wasting valuable time. If we begin to live our lives as if each day were our last, our lives will take on a whole new me. When you die, when life is over for you, I don't want you to have one idea left in you. I don't want one dream left in you.

5:15When you die, I want you to go pro. Every seed that you are supposed to do, every book you are supposed to write, I want you to get everything out your system. And you're too slow. You're too casual. You think too much. You need to get in a hurry because there's an end to your life. And it's coming sooner than you think. It goes by in a flicker. And at some point, it's going to be over. There's 86,400 seconds in a day. The separator between me and you and people that win and lose is what we do with those seconds. Quit wasting time. Buy your own definition. It's like people shake their heads. Why don't you thought about it that way? It's like, yeah, think about it that way. Don't waste your damn life. And then you think, well, why would people be resistant to that message? It's like, well, you really want to wake up and figure out that you're wasting half your life. And you know, when people do that kind of wasting, they actually hate it. So it's painful. It's painful to recognize that. Then it's painful to think, oh, my God, look how undisciplined I am. I don't know anything. I can't use a schedule. I can't stick to a calendar. I don't have any aims.

6:20I don't know anything about the world, right? And maybe there's a part of me that's bitter because I haven't got everything already. And I'd like just like to say to hell with it. That's the recognition of the Jungian shadow. It's like, that's what makes you vicious and untrustworthy. All of that. No one wants to look at that and no bloody wonder. But, hey, the alternative is worse. Respect time. As a rookie for the New York Knicks, a young Phil Jackson mostly rode the bench. One night toward the end of a game, Jackson was in the middle of a conversation with another backup when the coach, red holesman, caught him by surprise. How much time is left, Jackson? He demanded. One minute and 28 seconds, he answered.

7:25No, how much time is on the shot clock? Red replied, and of course, Jackson didn't know. Well, you've got to know the disgusted coach told him. You may be going into the game. And if you don't know the time, you could get us in trouble. Don't let me catch you doing that again. We are all given the same 24 hours each day. Just as each basketball team is given 24 seconds per possession on the court. To not be aware of it. To not respect it. To not know how to use and manage it. It is not just sloppy. It's stupid. You're in the game. Always. You've got to know the time precisely because you will never know when it's going to run out on you. That's what the reminder memento Mori means. No one can take time or life for granted as it runs out for all of us. The pursuit of discipline means being disciplined in all things, especially little things.

8:30And time, how we spend it, its tiny increments, is something small that actually amounts to something very large. Some people claim that time is just a construct. If that is true, it is perhaps humanity's greatest creation. Because time is the way we measure the only truly non-renewable resource we have. No one is making more of it. Once lost, it cannot be recovered. It is also an incredibly powerful force as anyone who has ever watched small amounts of interest applied over a long enough period can attest. You see, time that is wasted is also wasting us. When we kill time, we are killing ourselves. We have to learn how to use time or else it will use us. Up. That is why we do our work promptly. Why we get to the point. Why we stick to the agenda.

9:32Why we don't drone on. Don't tolerate digressions or indulge distractions. It's why we keep our desk clean. So we don't waste time looking for stuff. It's why we get up early. So we have more time uninterrupted time at the freshest part of the day. It's why we are deliberate about what we say yes and no to because we understand that time is a gift and what we give it to matters. More practically, the poet Wiston Hugh Orden said that the modern stoic knows that the surest way to discipline passion is to discipline time. Decide what you want or ought to do during the day then always do it exactly the same moment every day and passion will give you no trouble. Now one doesn't have to follow this advice literally to still see the deeper message. Routine is an essential tool in the management of time and the suppression of those negative forces of distraction, procrastination and laziness.

10:35The person who wakes up whenever wakes up and does whatever orders their day however. This is a person who will never have enough time who will always be behind. But the more disciplined person the Tony Morrison who gets up when they ought to. The person like William Stafford who tackles the hard projects first who like Booker Ted Washington says no to what is not essential. This is a person who makes full use of their time. Take a minute to think about how you spent the last year, the last month, the last week, the last day. Think about how much of it was wasted, how much of it was half-assed, how much of it was spent in reaction to things out of your control. And even if you have decent results to show for this time, still you could have done better, we all could have. The moments between the moments we let pass us by, the things we did lazily and had to do again, the things we agreed to that we shouldn't have.

11:38We could have done all those things better, except we can't. There is simply no escaping the fact that those moments are gone forever, that you will never get that time back. You missed opportunities to get better. You missed opportunities to make progress. You didn't let patients work to your advantage. You disrespected other people who you made wait. You disrespected your cause, which you deprived of your presence. But the silver lining of this tragedy is that life has given you a second chance. At least for now, because you have today, you have the present moment. How will you spend it? What will you make of it? What will it amount to? And let's be clear, that doesn't just mean hurrying along. Queen Elizabeth's mother was once rushed along at a public event by an aide who claimed they were out of time.

12:39Time is not my dictator. The queen mother said, as she stopped and shook hands with each person who had waited to see her. I dictate to time, while time is ultimately the dictator of our presence here on this earth. We do dictate how we spend it, as long as we are aware of it, aware of its value and the importance of managing it well. As long as we are putting it to work for us, even as it is working against us in the mortal sense. Now is the time, because now is the only time you have. Freight rail does more than move goods.

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