Its About Time

I have spent much of my life living and thinking in 6-minute intervals. Every 0.1 had a financial value to it and for the most part some opposing force was always competing with me for it. I am healed from that to some degree but there is a metronome under the layers in my subconscious that is just looking to measure and compare. I spent years not looking at time but have become seduced again by the almighty Fitbit and its excellent features to help in fitness and life management.

It started with curiosity as to how many steps I did in a day as the number ten thousand was floating in the air and I had no idea where I measured up as a competitor in the steps per day personal challenge. It was fun seeing how I would be accumulating 12K-15K steps per day walking back and forth to my service truck during a day. I was exercising and really didn’t know it until I measured it. Then I learned that it is important to manage your heart rate and how a resting heart rate could tell you many tales. Along comes a new Fitbit and with it a sleep monitor, oxygenation, trends, and trackers. Super cool.

I like analytics, they showed me efficiencies and ultimately how productive I am when I’m not even thinking about it. Looking at a 15-minute interval to track your life and be honest about accountability is enough to be annoyingly mindful of how productive a person can be, or alternatively how wasteful one can be in that time frame. I believe 15 minutes can hold a tremendous amount of work or focus and if leveraged is very powerful. Four choices per hour and then days come into sight.

I used to spend most of Saturday cutting grass in my yard and that translated to 8-9 hours of cutting. I did that for 5 years and then started to understand a few things about finance and smart uses of money against time. I bought a tractor; I admit after thinking I really didn’t need one. This new tool took 1 hour to cut my grass reducing my time to 4 hours a month instead of 32. I gained over a full day of life per month from this efficiency, and it was a powerful lesson. To date my friend John Deere has given me an additional 80 + days of freedom to do other things instead of cutting grass. The hour meter on the machine mocks me as it counts in 0.1 of an hour ticking away in six-minute intervals. Looking at it now as time gained in life, shows that perspective and awareness are critical in time management.