The one ingredient that is absolutely required for success is time. You cannot avoid it, time is required. You must put in the time in order to be successful. How much time probably depends on the quality of the time you commit, but in reality, the more time that you spend on a thing the better you get. The quality that you commit gets better over time. So really, you should not worry about the quality of the time that you commit, you mainly just need to worry that you actually do put in the time. Putting in the time is the single most effective element that you can do that will lead to your success, but it is also the greatest stumbling block.
You can plan, worry, stress out, and contemplate doing something that will improve your life but at the end of the day if you do not put in the time then nothing is going to happen. First and foremost you need to commit time toward your new effort. If you are not willing to put in the time, then forget the success. You can talk about it ad nausea, but if you do not commit a certain amount of time daily, weekly, monthly, annually then you are just not going to go anywhere. Many a philosopher has stood on the sidelines talking about a practice that they will just simply never engage in, because they will not commit the time.
Simply stated, if you want to get better then you must spend time. Time is your single currency in the market of self improvement. You cannot buy your way to success with any other means. Even if you have faith in a third party, which you will believe will provide you aid, you will still end up with nothing if you do not put the time in. Even God expects you to commit time as the one and perhaps only prerequisite for assistance. You have very little that is worthy of sacrifice that might grant you some small boon, the one thing you have that is of value is your time and what you choose to do with it. Everyday you are making a choice as to where you spend this precious resource. You are going to spend it no matter what, you cannot bank it, save it, mature it, or even collect it. Time rolls on with or without your active involvement. Since you are always spending a fixed amount of time everyday, wouldn’t it be wise to make sure that is spent on something most efficacious for your personal improvement?
In the year 2020, you will spend 8,760 hours. There is no way to alter that, the time is going to pass and you will either be an improved version of yourself or not. Roughly 2,920 of that will be spend sleeping which provides you with 5,840 hours to spend at the primary ingredient for your future success. What are you going to spend your time doing? I think it is very wise to be prescriptive about where you commit the time. If it is your only real currency, then you must choose very wisely in where you spend the time necessary for improvement.
Guy Reams
