Note to God

1 Keep me safe, my God,     for in you I take refuge. 2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;     apart from you I have no good thing.” [...] 5 Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;     you make my lot secure. [...] 7 I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;     even at night my heart instructs me. 8 I keep my eyes always on the Lord.     With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. 9 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;     my body also will rest secure, 10 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,     nor will you let your faithful[b] one see decay. 11 You make known to me the path of life;     you will fill me with joy in your presence,     with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

While his piece was intended as a humorous critique of bureaucratic inefficiency, the principle is applicable to a range of situations, from personal time management to large-scale projects. The generalized insight rings true: Have all day to process email and you end up emailing for the entire day. Have thirty minutes to process email and you crank through your entire inbox in a flash. Have months to complete an assignment and you procrastinate enough for the assignment to take months. Have two days to complete an assignment and you work efficiently and get it done. Open time frames lead to a lot of movement and very little progress—the rocking-horse phenomenon of busywork culture. We tend to be more efficient and productive when constraints come into play. We also tend to focus on the important when pressed for time. You can leverage Parkinson’s law to be more efficient and effective in your professional and personal life:  -  Establish time blocks that are shorter than yo...

The three pillars of Time Wealth—awareness, attention, and control—are individually important, but are best thought of as a progression: awareness first, attention next, control last. Each pillar builds on and is a by-product of the foundation established by the others. From awareness (developing an understanding of the fleeting time remaining) to attention (narrowing the aperture to focus on the things that truly matter) to control (allocating time according to goals and values), Dave Prout cultivated his Time Wealth—and you can too. As you measure Time Wealth, the three pillars provide a blueprint for the right action to build it. By developing an understanding of these pillars and the high-leverage systems that affect them, you can begin to create the right outcomes.

When using rest and recreation inappropriately, dissipation can happen. You slave in your senses and facilities in whatever pool you meet on your way. The result is scattered attention, deaden will and quickened concupiscence.  Subject yourself once again to a serious plan of life. 

Like king Pyrrhus, he won the battles but at all cost. Ultimately he lost the war.  If all the battles you’re fighting are exclusively about money, you may win these battles, but you will lose the war. The warning signs on the path don’t involve loss of life and limb like they did for King Pyrrhus, but they aren’t pretty:   - You hit another quarterly profit target but miss another anniversary dinner. - You earn a record bonus but fail to make it to a single one of your child’s sports games.  -You say yes to every single work call but can’t find time to reconnect with an old friend.  - You stay in a job for the security but allow your higher-order purpose to wither and die.  - You host five client dinners per week but can’t walk up the stairs without feeling winded.  -You never leave money on the table but won’t think twice about leaving your peace of mind there.   If you march ahead, eyes fixed on the financial horizon, the Pyrrhic victory a...