05 Jan The Time Illusion

By Danny Vega

“I want do X, but I just don’t have the time.”

There are people in this world stumbling through life like zombies. No direction, no introspection, action or after action reviews. No clue about how to spend their money, their time, or relate to those around them. They have never spent time thinking about what their legacy will be, or what their purpose is. This article is not for them. This article is for those of us who have a deep desire to do something significant with our lives. We have all these ideas in our heads; the desire is there, but half of them never come to fruition, because we are usually so busy that we are reacting to life vs. taking charge of our lives. Life is an awesome game. There are so many areas to master, and the process is so rewarding. But, it’s easy to get stressed out if you aren’t living with intention. If you aren’t managing your time well, you will lose. It’s just not possible to be awesome without prioritizing how you will spend your time on a daily basis. I have had severe anxiety at times because what I wanted to do was seemingly at odds with the time I had. That is a bad case of cognitive dissonance. In reality, there is time. You just have to find it. When I finally learned how to manage my money, one of the main things I learned was that every dollar has to have a name on it. This means that if you don’t tell your money where to go, it will be spent—simple as that. Every expense must be accounted for, and the extra stuff? Put it in savings. Period. I realized recently that the same can be said about time.

I have a solid morning routine, and my work day is planned out a week ahead of time. Then there are the last 5 hours of my day. Those have never been planned. I usually get home, eat at some point, interact with my boys and my wife (unless I am “too tired” or “stressed”), watch some TV and go to bed. This is ok. But it’s not great. I realized that I need to plan my evening routine as well. If you can’t relate to this, or think it’s too regimented, stop reading. But if you are interested in doing more, and at least trying to figure out how to better yourself and finally take action on some of the ideas in your head, read on.

[wa-wps]

I have learned a lot in the past year alone. One thing that blew my mind at 35 years old was that if I really want something, I have to decide that it will be mine. It’s that simple. I should have known this years ago, because I have done it several times in the past 15-20 years, but never really thought about it. For instance, in high school, they told me I needed to be fast and strong to play in college. I got the gym key from my athletic director and would come lift before school every day. I filmed my running form and worked on speed. I went to every camp I could go to. This led to me running a 4.49 and a 4.51 in the 40 yard dash, and I was the fastest man on the team as a freshman. In grad school, when I wanted to intern and learn from the strength coaches at UF, I just walked into the weight room and asked if I could be a fly on the wall and help in whatever way possible. There are several examples of this in my life. However, at work, even though I won rookie of the year at two companies, I never thought I was good enough to win the Pinnacle Award. Those were self-imposed limits I placed on myself. This year at my national meeting, my company announced next year’s Pinnacle Award trip. This award is given to the top 7.5% of performers in sales, and on top of the extra money, you get a 5 day all expenses paid trip to Turks & Caicos. I decided at that meeting that this would be my year. I set this as my lock screen on my phone:

Every day I went to work with the intention of winning that award. Every Friday afternoon there was a sigh of relief. Every quarter, I thought to myself, “One quarter down, time to start over and keep it going.” At the end of the year, I am currently 7^th in the nation and as long as I don’t drop under 13, this award is mine. Even if I don’t win, I proved to myself that it is not impossible. This took an extreme amount of focus, and I battled adversity. I survived a layoff and got a whole new territory the second half of the year after crushing it the first half. I had to come back from being 40% to plan in the first month in my new territory (and I was even flagged by my area sales director and asked for my plan of how I was going to turn this around) to ending up over 100% to plan in all my products. I now understand what executives mean when they present these awards and they say, “This person got it done, regardless of the challenges.” No one cares about your circumstances. There are no asterisks. You either solve the problem and succeed, or you don’t. And if you don’t decide to win, you just won’t. Contrary to what many people believe nowadays, you are responsible for your successes and failures, not your external circumstances.

Once you know what your mission is, you need to know how to get there. For me, this year is pretty simple. Here is my mission:

1. Think less, do more.
2. Do more of what you love, do less of what you don’t love.
3. Become a better husband, father and leader.

Each of these can be expanded upon. For instance, #2. I have decided that this year, I will not waste my time with people or activities that just aren’t in line with what my goals are. This means saying no to certain social engagements and activities to make room for those people and activities that I really value. But it needs to be deeper than this. I need to decide how my time will be spent to help me accomplish these goals. The way I am doing it is starting with 30 day challenges. For the month of January, for instance, here is my challenge for every afternoon:

1. Spend at least 20 minutes playing with the boys
2. Spend at least 10 minutes talking with my wife (more than just “how was your day”)
3. Spend 30 minutes reading
4. Spend 30 minutes writing

That is only 90 minutes. Seems simple enough, but it won’t be at first. Nothing meaningful ever is. I think this will bring a lot of value, and if it works for me I will continue it. If it doesn’t, then I will change it up next month.

The only other goal that I added, knowing that I am a type A personality, is 2 scheduled vacations. These must be booked early on, and the time set apart, or it just won’t happen. We already booked an April trip, and will be booking a December trip as well. That way, I know that every 5-6 months, I have some scheduled time off to look forward to. If I don’t book it, I know that I won’t do it; I lost 4 vacation days this year because I never took them.

I will leave you with this statement: you have exactly the same amount of hours in the day as Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, and Bill Gates. How will you spend that time?

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Danny Vega

Danny Vega is a 220lb raw powerlifter with meet bests of 640 squat in wraps (610 raw), 400 bench, and 700 deadlift. A native of Miami, Florida, Vega received his bachelor’s degree in political science from Columbia University in 2004, where he was a member of the football team and a three-time Dean’s List recipient. Vega earned his masters of science in human performance from the University of Florida, where he worked with the national championship men’s basketball team along with women’s basketball, tennis, and golf programs. He then went on to become the Strength & Conditioning coordinator for VCU basketball. The Rams were 2007 conference champions and made it to the second round of the NCAA tournament.

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