Until somebody cracks physics to the point that time stops being linear, or we achieve immortality, (apparently both are possible according to some futurists) we are all hamstrung by 24 hours a day. About 7 of which we need to be asleep for if want optimal health – about 17 hours a day where we are awake. You can survive on less but it catches up with you in the end.
I’m gonna stick with the retiring at 65 deal too, it won’t be the retirement age when I’m 65 but hey you are probably older than I am. That means we probably start working full time in our early 20’s. Well I did.
So call it 43 years of work (Full time work at 22 – the year after I graduated).
There are about 220 working days a year. That means that 9,460 working days in your life.
That gives us 160,820 working hours in our life, if you are a complete psychopath and work 17 hours a day. More if you decide to work weekends or not sleep. 8 hours a day 75,680 hours.
Besides compromising your quality of life or working into retirement, working weekends or any other generally psychotic behaviour – missing little Timmy’s birthday party to work counts as psychotic/ bad parenting to me.
Anyway we all only got so many hours. And the more we can achieve through leverage the more we gain. I’ve recently spoken to a couple of business owners who ‘can’t afford’ to do a newsletter. Both are looking to build their wealth so they can retire. Both are stuck and probably not going to be able to get any bigger.
One is stuck with terrible customer loyalty and his own delusions about the bulk of his business. Unwilling to invest in order to make it more profitable.
The other can’t afford it – doesn’t have the money. Knows it will work… But…
To me this means he is over-paid.
Both are frittering away their most precious resource, by being stuck. Now if you are the owner of your business and controller of your own destiny and you are making excuses like “I can’t afford it” then you are over-paid. I can get any minimum wage employee to make that excuse. I don’t need a guy who bills himself out at $160 per hour plus to make that excuse.
FIND a way to afford it. You are wasting your life away being stuck, or find a new solution.
I was speaking to a potential client, they asked ‘why we don’t target retail operations?’ I said because “Most don’t get it.” They are happy to make excuses about why they are going broke and losing their customers to ‘the internet’ and ultimately go broke. This potential client got it. They were unsure if they could afford it but they knew 3 ways to get the money so they could afford it if needs be.
These people are the ones who understand their time is finite and that delay costs them at the end of their 75,680 working hours. Speed wins, you arrive sooner or go further in a given period of time – applies in business and it applies in Ultra-marathoning. Ya gotta be ‘too fast, to come last.’