It's About Time: Use Time to Create a More Meaningful Life

INTRODUCTION

When I applied for admission to the MBA program at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), I was asked to respond to an essay question about what means most to me and why. This question seemed so vague and trite to me at first. I later learned this is an extremely popular and well-known question on the GSB application. Stanford is home to one of the world’s top business schools and has one of the lowest acceptance rates of any business school in the world. The GSB could ask applicants any question it wants, yet this is one of only two or three questions it has used for decades. It was only after being admitted to the program that I came to understand and appreciate why MBA applicants would be asked to dig deep into their personal motivations and how this question could differentiate and distinguish who is admitted to this prestigious program and who is turned away.

Stanford’s MBA program is an educational experience that expects to produce graduates who will change lives, change organizations, and change the world. If the GSB is truly serious about providing a transformative experience for individuals who would go on to make significant impacts, it would be necessary to understand and confirm that those admitted to the student body would comprise men and women with strong character, noble values, and the resolve to make a difference in the world. An important indication of what these graduates might do in the future is the foundation they had built before admission and leading up to this point in their lives. Whether you are applying to the MBA program at Stanford or not, I believe taking the time to answer this question can provide valuable insights into your life’s purpose, values, and beliefs. What means most to you and why? I assume any reader of this book is a growth-minded person who wants to excel personally, professionally, relationally, intellectually, and spiritually. Just as the GSB believes this question will aid them in determining who will be successful in its program, I believe this question will aid and guide you in the success you seek throughout your life.

Once we have determined what means most to us and why, we can turn our attention to the question of how. How will we spend our time accomplishing the most essential and worthwhile purposes we have determined to be meaningful to us? Time is a fascinating construct to consider and one we often gloss over in our hurried and busy lives. As it turns out, time is really all we have. And how we use our time is more telling about each of us individually than any other aspect of our lives. What does our use of time say about us as people? How can I more effectively use my time to accomplish those things that are most meaningful? How do we reconcile our understanding of time today with the way time has been defined during other periods of history? It would be impossible to answer every question about time in a book like this one. But I hope It’s about Time will encourage you to reflect on how you might make the most of the time allotted to you.

Socrates understood that The unexamined life is not worth living. Few people take enough time for reflection and self-examination. Reflective thinking can take a good experience and make it a truly valuable experience. Pondering and reflection can give us a critically important perspective on the happenings of our lives. The power of reflection manifests itself in personal growth and insightful discoveries.

After high school, I worked on an assignment in which training involved regular role play, sometimes while being video recorded. As we watched back the recordings of our practice, we could assess our performance more objectively and learn from another perspective. From time to time, we need to do the same in our personal lives. By stepping outside of ourselves, we can distance ourselves from the constant busyness of life to evaluate and reflect on how things are going and what in our lives could use adjustments. This process of thinking deeply and reflecting supports greater self-awareness so progress can be made.

And that leads me to It’s about Time. Here, we’ll cover several important subjects related to time. You’ll find this book to be part philosophy, part selfhelp, and part motivational speech. If you are reading it, you likely already have some appreciation for the concept of time and a desire to use your time wisely. This book is for anyone who, like me, thinks life is your most important project. The ideas, perspectives, and recommendations presented come from my life experiences as well as personal involvement in the lives of many professionals and friends whom I respect and with whom I have had the privilege to associate.

I am grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to put these thoughts to paper as they have provided a space for me to share my experience and insights with you—but they have also served as therapy to my soul as I embarked on a period of change and transition in my life. I hope you enjoy the content and find it enlightening and insightful. I encourage you to take notes and journal as you go and as you have thoughts or promptings that are motivating or inspiring to you. Nobody knows your life circumstances as well as you do, and only you can determine how to apply those learnings best in your circumstances. I believe, that by the end of the book, you will see yourself, your allotted time, your relationships, and the world very differently. I know I have enjoyed writing it and believe the message within has the potential to be life-changing.

PART I

Sett ing the Stage

1.

THE ISSUE OF TIME

Almost half of the country is obese.¹ About one-third of marriages fail.² Hundreds of thousands of people file for bankruptcy every year.³ More people struggle with anxiety, depression, chronic stress, and other mental illnesses than ever before.⁴ Suicide rates are on the rise.⁵ Reported levels of happiness and life satisfaction are on the decline.⁶ Nobody sets out to become part of these statistics, yet most of us are affected by these challenges. Many of us have accepted that a life of burnout and stress is a normal way of life, just the way things are.

Why is it that despite all the progress, all the advancements, and all the developments we have made as a society, we are becoming less healthy, less content, less happy, and less satisfied than ever before? How many of us feel like we lack proper balance in our lives or feel insignificant? I would submit that, in large part, the state of our decline is an issue of time and how we are using our time. Too often, we are distracted from what truly matters and look for fulfillment in things that ultimately don’t satisfy.

During these periods, when we are overwhelmed by stress, worry, and the demands of life, we find ourselves thinking or even commenting out loud: There isn’t enough time in the day . . . If only I had more time . . . Life is too short. In reality, there has never been a time in history when we could live longer than we do today or accomplish as much in a day as is possible for us now. The next time you feel you don’t have enough time to do what you want to do, remember that you have just as much time in the day as the likes of Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, William Shakespeare, Mother Teresa, and Mahatma Gandhi. Business icons, such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, receive no greater allotment of time than you or me.

While we complain about how little time we have, the issue is that we function as if our time is limitless. We waste more precious time than we care to admit. And when we are not blatantly wasting time, we find ourselves moving from one activity to the next on autopilot, constantly trying to keep up, and never questioning if our time is being spent well or whether we have been steered off course from that which brings the joy and satisfaction we seek. William Penn, a writer and influential thinker during the British colonial era, accurately observed, Time is what we want most but what we use worst. And Seneca, a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, said long ago, People are frugal in guarding their personal property, but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are more wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.

It has been said that if the devil can’t make you sin, he will make you busy. It has been my observation that he has been incredibly successful in this endeavor. Most of you likely describe your days, your schedule, and your life as extremely busy. Being too busy can cut off our connection to the people and initiatives most important to us. Life is moving at a faster and faster pace. Busyness prevents us from living the good life, characterized by balance, reflection, and meaningful impact. Over-scheduling and over-committing are harming our relationships and lessening the amount of gratitude, love, joy, and uplift we feel in our lives. I am convinced we all have adequate time and space for what matters. If we found more time in our day, we would likely fill it with more of the same things we are spending our time on now, and the results we are currently experiencing in our lives would only be magnified.

Being too busy can cut off our connection to the people and initiatives most important to us.

THE SPEED OF TIME

There was a time when life was much slower. There were no planes to catch, business meetings to hurry to, streams of alerts on our phones or devices, and endless entertainment options in our queues. In recent years, our world has sped up to a frantic pace. Time used to be a much more natural part of our lives, linked to the rotation of the earth on its axis and the four seasons. There was a rhythm to the day and even to the year. The clock and many other technological advances changed all of that. Innovations and advancements have allowed us to make progress but have also created in our lives an artificial time. We stopped listening to our bodies and started watching the clocks and listening to the alarms. We have become more efficient but also more machine-like and less human. In experiments where the clock and other external stimuli are removed, people have a difficult time gauging how much time has passed or what hour of the day it is.

History has seen many iterations of ways to measure time. Ancient civilizations kept time by observing astronomical objects as they moved across the sky. Since those days, there have been advancements in the process and technologies for keeping time, from sundials and water clocks to oscillating and mechanical timekeepers. The hourglass was invented in Europe in the fourteenth century. The pendulum shortly after that. The electric clock was invented in 1840. The modern-day wristwatch became popular after World War I, and since the early 2010s, smartphones and smartwatches have become the most common timekeeping devices. Today, clocks all over the world are based on seconds, minutes, and hours, and it is hard to imagine people living at a time when this was not the case. We eat, sleep, work, and play as prompted by the clock. I find it interesting, for example, that for much of society, the current workday has been defined as nine-to-five. Does every job in every business in every industry require (and lend itself ) to the same eight-hour workday? In more ways than one, the clock rules the day.

Today, our smart devices make it easier than ever to measure time and impact almost every aspect of our daily lives, not just the way we keep time. We receive real-time reminders and notifications, measurements of our heart rates and counts on our steps; we track our sleep, receive our news, communicate with friends, family, and colleagues, and even take pictures. You may be reading this on a smart device! With all of these technological advances, we have become more cognizant of the passing of time than ever before.

Before Thomas Edison and the invention of electric power, most people woke up with and retired with the sun. The average night’s sleep over the last few hundred years has decreased from approximately eleven hours to just shy of seven hours. Businesses used to be closed on weekends and in the evenings. As the pace of life speeds up, business hours scramble to keep pace, and in some cases, business never closes.

Technology has drastically changed our relationship with time. We used to walk everywhere. Now we have cars, planes, and computers. We used to make food from scratch. Now we have takeout and fast food. We used to write books and letters by hand. Now we have writing software and AI. Now there are smart refrigerators, dishwashers, and laundry machines. Yet, despite all the advancements to make life more efficient, we feel like we have less time, not more. Labor-saving devices save time, but we have been conditioned to spend that time on other things.

Personal computers were introduced in the 1970s. The global internet presented itself in the 1990s. The year 2007 was more historic and life-changing than any of us realize; it was the year the first smartphone was released into production. Our minds are now expected to take in and act on information at a rate nowhere close to years gone by. The world has radically changed in just a few decades.

For many of us, time spent at work continues to increase. Leisure time continues to decrease. Leisure used to be a sign of wealth. Now, busyness is a sign of wealth, status, and prestige.

We all experience time, but the way we think about time today, like the ticking of a clock or the turning of the pages on the calendar, would be foreign concepts to our ancestors. Most modern-day societies perceive historical time as linear and unidirectional, but some cultures view time as cyclical and continuous. Looking beyond our surface-level understanding of time, we discover our sense of time has much more to do with how we relate to one another and understand our place in the universe than it does with the minute hand on our watch. Perhaps the way we operate within time has something to do with the growing discontent we feel as a human race, and there is something we can learn from history and our ancestors’ ways of living.

EVOLUTION OF TIME USE

It isn’t just our concept of time that has evolved over the centuries, but just about every aspect of living has changed. In ancient times, almost all of one’s time was required to secure the basic needs of life. The now simple task of eating a meal, for example, was an all-day and all-encompassing event. Early humans spent much of their time constructing handmade weapons and tools to hunt and gather food, searching for nourishing food to eat, carrying food home with them, and creating methods to cook or consume food safely. All this time and effort was necessary to fill their stomachs for the day. Compare that to how easily and quickly we can get ourselves a fast-food meal in a time crunch today.

The evolution of specialization has significantly increased the amount of time we have at our disposal. Early in human history, an individual or a family was also required to build and maintain their shelter, make their clothing, and protect themselves against wild animals or enemies. Over time, communities of people realized different individuals had different skills and talents. If you were more skilled in constructing shelter and I was better at bringing in food, it only made sense for you to focus on one thing and me to focus on the other. Then we would trade, barter, or share. As we learned to specialize and trade specialties with one another, it freed up more and more of our time. Today, only a portion of our resources or time spent working is needed to cover the basic needs of sustaining life—something that required closer to 100 percent of humans’ time in earlier history. In ancient civilizations, any spare time was largely spent socializing and enjoying the company of family and community.

Another aspect of time that has evolved is the reason for our use of time. Historically, most of our decisions were immediately rewarded; whereas today, much of what we do is intended to bring about a reward sometime in the future. Most of what we spend our time doing today isn’t required to meet the basic needs of the day but is done to improve our position in the future; we spend as much time as we can find to improve our financial and social status. Technological advancements coupled with a changing perspective about time have transformed the way we live our lives. Because the world is moving at a faster and faster pace, we see an intense focus on efficiency and productivity almost everywhere we turn. And what is stunning is that we feel like if we are busier, with less and less time in the day, the more efficient we become. As it turns out, the more there is available for us to do, the more we feel we must do those things.

We are getting more done in less time but somehow still feel a lack of time to get everything done. In this way, many of our problems stem from having too much, not too little. The opportunities available to us exceed the time we have available, and as we pile more and more on, we realize the lives we live are not sustainable.

As it turns out, the more there is available for us to do, the more we feel we must do those things.

COURSE CORRECTIONS WILL BE NECESSARY

My pilot friends tell me a plane in flight is off course over 90 percent of the time. Various factors and forces at work on the plane keep it from going in the exact direction it intends to go. Some of us may feel similarly about our paths and the way our lives are headed. The key for a pilot is to constantly make those minor but critical course corrections that keep the plane coming back toward the flight plan and staying as close to the charted course as possible.

I have experienced the same need for constant course correction in my life. None of us will achieve our goals and maintain the desired path with no deviations or mistakes along the way. The key is to recognize when such a deviation has occurred and return to the intended course as quickly as possible. We lose time when we travel in the wrong direction for an extended period and don’t realize it until it’s far too late and we have a lot of backtracking to do to live the kind of life we intended. Direction is more important than speed.

I have not always been a perfect steward of my time but have diligently looked to make course corrections quickly and regularly along the way. I have had an amazing career, working as an advisor and consultant to employer groups of all shapes and sizes. I have been fortunate to represent hundreds of clients and hundreds of thousands of those clients’ employees across the country. Eight years after starting our employee benefits and brokerage firm, we had built from scratch a multi-million-dollar business with a great growth trajectory. Another eight years after that, the company had more than tripled in size. As part of my journey, I have also had the privilege and opportunity to start numerous other companies and serve as an advisor and board member to several other organizations in the industry. One of the companies we acquired was a small boutique reinsurance underwriting firm in Franklin, Tennessee, which was on the verge of bankruptcy and at risk of closing its doors. When we sold the company almost six years later, the company had grown by nearly fifteen times and was profitable again. More recently, the scope of my consulting has broadened, and I have had the opportunity to invest in, advise, and assist entrepreneurs and business owners in many unique industries across the country.

I count it a blessing to have been so fortunate and to have had the chance to build these and other companies alongside amazing friends, trusted colleagues, and some beloved family members. My family and faith have carried me through more times than I can count. Any professional success I have achieved has not been solely my own. I have been blessed with an amazing mentor—a father who raised me well and was kind and selfless enough to hold my hand and show me the ropes in those early years of working. I’ve been blessed with amazing partners and employees, including three of my brothers and my only sister, along with countless devoted individuals who gave their all to growing these companies alongside me. My wife has been more supportive than I could have ever asked.

Admittedly, there have been several points along the way where I had to take a step back and evaluate how things were going, then make necessary course corrections. Several years ago, I stared at a hotel room ceiling, feeling stressed, burned out, and overwhelmed. I was sprinting from one thing to the next, with my