You’ve heard that phrase and it is often accompanied by someone clapping, tapping their foot, or some other show of impatience.

Chop chop, time is money.

In our world of Time, Energy and Resources as separate entities, they are saying time is resources, aren’t they?

But it’s actually more accurate to same time is energy.

Let’s discuss, and see if you agree. This just might help you plan your time in a way that makes more sense.

How do you have time for this? Like, how do you have time to listen to this podcast? I know. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. It’s only 10 minutesish, so it’s really not that long, right? But have you ever heard that phrase? Has anyone said that to you or have you thought or said that to anyone else? How do you have time for that? And that’s typically accompanied by or it follows a statement about someone doing something that seems like a big project, a monumental endeavor, or just something that’s very repetitive and apparently timeconsuming, right?

I for one have gotten that a number of times, no pun intended, for the things that I’ve done, you know, the a couple of the things that I accomplished, you know, writing a bunch of books and getting a certain kind of license and and just a bunch of other stuff, right? I mean, I’ve even had people just justify and expand on that and say, “Oh, that’s because you’re this or that or the other thing.” You know, they they want to explain it away. And what they’re really doing is they’re just saying, “Well, your life is different than mine. I couldn’t do that because I don’t have the time for it. That’s fair. That’s understandable. But they do. And I’m not saying they should do those things because they do. How dare you not do the things that I’m interested in, right? But I simply want to take a step back and say they’re using the wrong element.

What do you mean by elephant, Mark? Well, you know, life is made of three things: time, energy, and resources, right? And when people say, “How do you have time for that?” What they really mean is, “How do you have the energy for that?” And you can say, “Well, well, not everything takes a huge amount of energy, right?” And and here’s an example.

Someone that I know who is relatively accomplished and active was just mentioning a bunch of old movies that they had like rented and were watching and they’re always talking about like these movies that they’re going through and I’m thinking you know they’re burning up a couple hours and that and my immediate reaction was how do you have oh and I caught myself I mean I have the time to do that. I certainly have the time to go and watch a movie. You know, I could watch a movie like every night if I wanted to, but I don’t want to and I don’t have the energy for it. I don’t have the interest, the dedication, or the energy for it, right? And interest and dedication basically are forms of energy. They’re not forms of time.

I mean, marking off your time is is easy because it’s an external thing. It’s basically you saying, “I’m going to put these stakes in the ground temporally.” Don’t you love that word? That’s so cool. I’m going to put these temporal stakes in the ground and I am going to say this time is marked for that. And you can say, “Well, Mark, what if something comes up?” Like, what if you have little kids and you say, “Okay, I’m going to put my little kid down for a nap and I’m going to do this.” And the kid wakes up early. Well, yeah. Well, then obviously reality has encroached on your on your stakes that you put down. They kind of trampled through the little wires you put up and and there you go. But you can’t use an exception as as a reason, right? So that particular time you didn’t have the time.

But again again you’re thinking about energy but you’re labeling it time. Think about that. Because if you say, “I’m going to put my kid down for an hour nap and I’m going to go and I’m going to sit down and I’m going to I’m going to do that thing. I’m going to concentrate. I’m going to try to write a book. I’m going to try to do this, that, or the other thing.” Right? And the kid wakes up 10 minutes into it and you get up and you’re like, and then you’re like, “Well, should I put them back to sleep?” And, you know, did their little nookie thing just fall out or what? And you’re just you and you do get them back to sleep. And it only takes like a minute or two to get them back to sleep by some miracle. No, now I don’t feel like doing this. I lost my concentration. You look at the clock, you still have 45 minutes, but you lost your concentration. Or now you don’t feel like it. Or now you’re worried about your child waking up again.

Do you see how all of this has to do with your energy and none of it has to do with the with the clock, which it moves at exactly the same pace for everyone. and you’re misleading yourself into thinking I just don’t have the time for it. No, no, no. You don’t have the energy for it. And you’re having difficulty in in in in mustering and controlling the energy for it, which is acceptable, which is fine. And I’m not faulting you for that. You’re a human being. You only have so much concentration. We even talk about this in people multitasking and how there’s a glue that holds that together. that is is an additional energy that you have to account for. Right? But I hope you’re having kind of an aha moment right now. I hope while I’m talking, you’re starting to think of other things in your life where you’re like, “Oh, well, I guess it’s not about time.”

And I will submit to you that when you pull off something in your life, something that you’re like, “I didn’t think I could do this.” And, “Oh, I guess I got that done.” You’ll find that it wasn’t really the marking off of the time. it was the fending off or the sucking it up or the redoubling of your efforts or whatever it is that had to do with energy because like I said and I’ll use the book example again because it’s such a good book and such I’m sorry it’s such a good example and it’s near and dear to my heart and something I’ve gone through many times is that you can earmark a certain amount of time each day or every other Thursday or or whatever in your schedule and it typically isn’t about the fact that you marked the time. It’s about you going, “Okay, time to write and you got to get in a certain frame of mind and you have to let go of reality.” I mean, even if you’re writing a non-fiction, you still have to let go of reality because you’ve immersed yourself into your own reality in which you’re talking to people that don’t exist because that’s what writing a book is, is talking to people that don’t exist yet. You’re talking to people in the future. And so, but it all has to do with the energy. And once you learn that, it’ll make all the difference in the world. Try it just once.

So, let’s do the let’s do let’s do an exercise. Okay, since that point was fairly easily made and hopefully you are having the light bulb moment, let’s either think about or write down. And the cool thing is this is a podcast so you can pause it. I mean, if you’re in your car and you’re like, “Oh, this is good. listen to it again later or pause it if you’re just you’re sitting around or whatever having your coffee and staring ahead. Think about or write down a thing that you’ve been wanting to accomplish. Then think about how much time you think it will take to accomplish this. And when I say how much time, I mean, you know, not like, well, it’ll take about 73 man hours to do this. I’m talking about it’s going to take a while to do this, so I probably want to do this for an hour a day or an hour a week or whatever. Right. Right. Cuz on paper that looks really good and and it’s really simple, but then it never happens because you don’t focus on the energy required.

And this is where it gets smart and this is where it gets good. So once you’ve earmarked the time and you get the amount of time it takes, you have to then reserve and control and deal with the energy which is going to be the biggest variable and really the only variable. And what do we do here all the time? We think ahead and we cheat, right? So if you say I’m going to and again the book example, fine. again. I’m going to either write at a cafe or write it at at home in my office or I’m going to write by the couch or in my bedroom so the kids leave me alone. Whatever it is. And you say it’s going to be this hour. Well then, well, which hour is it going to be? Well, when I have a free hour, nope, not going to happen. Okay, fine. After I put him to bed. Okay. Or it’s going to be my lunch hour. It’s going to be whatever.

What you have to do is you have to look at the bookends around that earmarked time. what’s what happened before it and less importantly what happens after it because those two things are also going to try to encroach on your time. They’re going to squeeze it which is why I called it bookends. They’re going to squeeze your time. The thing before it is either going to run too long and you’re like, “Oh crap, I’m starting this later than I wanted to.” So now you actually have the time element that’s been adjusted. Or more likely, the thing before it was a bit more exhausting, right? You want to drop your kid off for something and then spend that hour doing something, but your kid was really crabby and you had an exhausting emotional time with them and now your mind is racing about how they’re pissed at you. Well, now you have all this energy going into that which is doing absolutely nothing. But I know we’re all human.

And when you sit down to do the thing that you wanted to concentrate on, you can’t concentrate on it because you’re thinking about your kid being upset at you. So that thing bet book end is squeezing you energy-wise. The other one after it if there’s something that you happens after you’re going to do that and it’s something that’s kind of stressful and you worry about well now you’re being stressed and worried about that while you’re trying to carve out your little darn hour, right?

Do you see that? I’m going to go over 10 minutes because this is so important. Do you see that? Do you see Do you see this now? Do you see how important this is? Do you see why it hasn’t been working? It’s not because you’re lazy. It’s not because it’s insurmountable. It’s not because it’s something that you can’t handle. It’s not because you picked the wrong thing. And maybe it’s one of those things, right? But for the most part, it’s not. It’s probably because you’re treating energy like it’s time. It’s not. and you’re forgetting that other things are going to encroach on it and you’re forgetting that other things are going to suck it away or act like a poison and and and and distill your energy while you’re trying to do that thing.

This is one of the reasons why a long time ago and if you take my class online about writing, I say you have to give yourself a license to write. Because even though everything’s great and you’re carved out all the time and you’re super excited to write, if you feel like you’re screwing around, if you feel like you don’t deserve to write, if you feel like, well, I have no business doing this. What am I doing? Oh my god, I should be doing this productive thing. I should be doing this other thing. Oh my god. You know, like, oh my god. So, if you can’t even give yourself the license to write, none of this other stuff is going to happen. You see? And then once you do that and you’re like, okay, my big self gave gave my little self the ability to go ahead and write. And then, like I said, and I’m repeating myself, but you’re stressed about this other thing, and you carry that forward into it. Or you’re stressed about the thing that’s going to happen. And so you worry about that. Okay.

So what’s the defense against this? Well, let me give you at least one tool as a defense against this because first of all, you have to have the mental fortitude and wherewithal to do this anyway, right? If you’re just going to give in and cave in and say, “Well, then who cares, right? It doesn’t it’s nothing’s going to work. But if you really want to do this, which I’m assuming you do, I’m assuming there’s at least one thing in your life you want to do this with. Whether it’s cleaning out the garage or writing a novel or whatever, it’s something, right?

The first tool I will draw from my talk, do it to a fault. And let’s pick the L location. Think about that. And again, let’s let’s talk about the writing thing. You could, you know, you could say, well, I can write anywhere. I just need my little laptop or whatever. But if you say, “No, I’m going to go to the cafe and it’s a it’s it’s a long hall from here.” Well, it’s far away because then that way even though people can reach you electronically, they’re not going to just show up. Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom. That’s that’s not going to happen at the cafe, right? And if something does come up, well, it’s a long drive, so everyone has their expectations set. Well, even if I bother mom and I get her to come back, it’s still going to be like a half hour. So, maybe we’ll just wait for her to get back.

And as I’ve said in another podcast, if you carve out a certain hour in the day and you repeatedly do that, everyone else will adjust to it. If you say, “Look, Sunday afternoons are mom time.” Or, “I spend an hour on a Tuesday night and that’s my thing, and I turn my phone off.” Or, you know, Sunday night, like for me, is sort of a a tea time and disconnecting time. So, you ain’t going to reach me. That sort of thing. People will just say, “Oh, okay.” And they’ll get it. They’ll just get it because they don’t want to deal with that. They’re not going to argue with you and say, “Can you not do this on a Tuesday? Can you not do that on a Sunday?” They they have no business and they they typically aren’t going to do that. They’re just going to adjust.

And even if you’re a parent with little kids, the little kids will adjust surprisingly easy because what kids want all the way up till adulthood is they want those they want solid lines. They want them so bad they will push and shove at you to find those lines. And if you don’t provide the lines to them, it’s not good for them. They And I know that this creates conflict, but this is what they want. They want lines. And if they go, “Okay, that’s that.” Then their psyche will say, “Oh, it’s okay for me to carve out a certain amount of time where I can do something for myself.” Which then gets back to the self-care and the self-love and all that stuff.

Cool. You know, and as a quick example, too, obviously, if you’re going to try to lose weight and you’re going to try to be more healthy, you go to the gym. That’s different than working out in your living room where someone can interrupt you or you feel silly or or or or you hear the refrigerator calling you. You know, there’s the there’s these things in our lives that we can use as tools to keep that energy where it belongs.

So, just give this a chance. This is a big thing. And uh let me know how this goes for you. I would love to hear from you. Thank you. Hey there. Thanks for listening. You know, I always enjoy your feedback. The prequel to The Sword and the Sunflower duet called Upside Down is now available. The Sword and the Sunflower is available as Kindle, paperback, and audiobook with the other two, Amira, and Upside Down being available as Kindle and paperback. Well, actually, all three books are now available in hardcover.

👂If you would like to delve deeper, consider a quick 15 minute call with me. You can tell me what you are up against, and I can tell you about how the coaching system can help, and how I can help you.