wealthy with time, mortgaged to the hilt
Nov. 11th, 2005 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darren_strangerI read an interesting article yesterday, with a couple of points that caught my attention as relevant to my own life at the moment, and want to jot down some of the relevant bits for future reference.
(from a Blitz magazine interview with writer/martial artist Geoff Thompson)
"In the last issue, we left off with your comment 'if you don't like the life you're in, you have the choice to change it'. What about those people who say, you have to be born with a gift?
That's not true: you can delevop it. There are some great people out there who have developed fantastic talent from a tiny little spark.
What about when they say 'i haven't got time'?
They're mistaken. You have 24 hours each day to invest. You have the same amount of hours as Bill Gates, as Ghandi or as Branson. In fact, you're very wealthy with time. It's down to how you invest it. If you're working in a place for two pence an hour, don't complain because that's your choice. You have to make yourself worth more in the workplace and you do that by investing your 24 hours into making you worth pounds instead of pence. Relationships are another one. If you're not happy, again invest some time into making yourself a better person, because believe me, when you get yourself right, your relationships will improve. Stop looking on the outside, look on the inside and work on that first.
People will say you're not being realistic. They have to work, they have obligations: they don't have spare time to invest in self-improvement.
Listen, everybody has 24 hours, what they do with that is up to them. If they feel they don't have enough spare time, they have to find some; swap some of the things they're doing - going to the pub, watching tv etc - for the things they need (or want) to do to improve themselves. Their minutes and hours are full up with something. They're either full of work, or sleep, or eating. They're perhaps full of laziness or procrastination, perhaps an unsatisfying job. Mostly things that are neither satisfying or profitable. The successful people have forged a habit of filling their time with things that bring both satisfaction and profit. They swapped the old for the new and changed their lives for the better.
One of the things i did to create more time for myself was to get up earlier in the morning and go to bed later at night. I created thousands of hours a year like this and those hours i invested in writing, which is what gives me such a great life today. If you spend six hours down the pub, why not spend just three hours and use the other three to become a professor or a great martial artist or a writer? Actually, why not kill the pub or just go at the weekend? If you can find one hour a day, that's 365 hours a year invested. Just two and a half hours every day is something like 1000 hours invested a year. Imagine investing 1000 hours. I think you can become a pilot in about 30 hours of flying. So anything is posible, just get up at five or six. Go to bed at 12. You can find the hours if you really want it. When i was in the factory, i spent all my dinner times hitting a punch bag, that's why i became a great puncher. So it's a mistake to think you can't change all that. Stop moaning and invest your time to achieve great things.."
Now, i didn't like everything this guy had to say, here or in the rest of the article, and got a distinct whiff of the 'if you're not rich/successful/famous, it's your own fault' attitude that is one of my pet hates in life, but some of the comments on making use of time, or the need to *find* time, seem especially relevant and bear further thought (albeit weighed against having consideration for other people, which always tends to be the missing element of this sort of discussion).
Food for thought. Season to taste.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-11-10 11:09 pm (UTC)yeah sure :P
just ignore the detrimental effect this can have on your mental and physical health.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-10 11:15 pm (UTC)Heh, i already get up at 6 and go to bed at 12 most nights and it's frigging killing me.
I was going to cut that bit out, but figured the bits that aren't useful to me might be of interest to someone else, so i left it in.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 12:10 am (UTC)Hell, I used to do 6am to 1-2am for most of the week, then not sleep much on Friday or Saturday at all.
Um... then I hit 27.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 09:34 am (UTC)You can still get up at 6 and not go to bet till 2. It just hurts more. :)
no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 02:45 am (UTC)Depends on the person...I'm healthy and 30.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-10 11:09 pm (UTC)The problem with that "1 hour" is that it's never just one hour. There's prep time, there's the time devoted to making mistakes, there are always resources to budget for and buy, there may be transport to organise and pay for, and scene politics to navigate. If you're going to get the resources at second-hand prices then there's the time and effort in tracking down those very good prices which is just a different sort of price.
What a spoilt selfish git!
no subject
Date: 2005-11-10 11:45 pm (UTC)Well, yeah. That was my impression too.
Reading some of his comments (such as the pence and pounds angle in the bit i quoted) pushed some of my buttons and touched on one of my favourite pet hates. There seems to be a certain personality type of people in the world who get ahead by being so driven by their own single-minded, self-centred ambition, and think that everyone can do the same. The trouble is that they have no understanding or sympathy for people who don't share that drive, and can easily fall into the attitude that if other people don't succeed as they've done then they've only got themselves to blame, which absolves them of giving a fuck about anyone who's not so well off. That's pretty much what i'm talking about whenever i rant about 'right-wing' attitudes, and why i'm always suspicious of 'self-made' millionaires like Arnie Schwarzenegger getting into politics.
In this particular case, i was comparing it to my own life and the things that perhaps restrict my own ambitions, and realised that nowhere in what he wrote did he as much as touch on the idea that consideration for other people comes into the equation. Maybe it does in his real life, but what he was discussing was all from the angle of 'me, me, me' without the other side to balance it.
Still, points like making an effort to find time, or about embracing discomfort for self-improvement (mentioned later in the article), did make a bit of sense, even if i was a case of "i don't think i like this guy, but i can see his point" most of the time.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 08:35 am (UTC)And besides, it takes a lot more than 3 hours of work a day to become a professor of anything. To get to that level in academia you have eat, breathe, and dream the subject. So frankly, he's just crapping on for the sake of his ego.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-10 11:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-10 11:54 pm (UTC)Well, he is English..
no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 08:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-10 11:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-10 11:52 pm (UTC)Ah - one paragraph and you've summed up what i just spent five trying to express. I think we're on a similar wavelength.
Thinking more on it, one of my key beliefs is in the importance of balance, including that between consideration for other people and consideration for yourself. The 'self-improvement' angle covered by things like the above falls into the latter half (well, pretty much by definition) but has to be kept in balance with the former.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 08:37 am (UTC)