*a 3-minute read*
Thinking about the future can be scary, but the uncertainty of it all always intrigues me. As we have now entered into the year 2024, I think about how life looked five years ago and what it could look like five years in the future.
Can you believe five years ago the following things happened?
Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame” became the most financially successful movie of all time.
On July 21st 2019, the movie had grossed an incredible $2.79 billion!
The Disney+ streaming service was launched on November 12th 2019.
As this is Timeless Thoughts, we only write articles that age gracefully so you know we had to come up with something exceptional for the start of the year. Hold your applause until the end and be ready for more, thank you in advance for your cooperation (Happy New Year and God bless you!).
Since five years from now, kid(s) may be a strong part of my life (Lord have mercy on my soul I’m getting old…), the idea of writing this piece was ideal for myself today while also being a guideline for my future self. Hopefully, it has the same impact on you.
The Breakdown
The concept of time can be complex in itself, but I wanted to break it down so that generations after me can understand it, then proactively make the most of the time they have on this earth. Since time is the ultimate currency in making anything of importance happen in this world, it’s vital to consider how we can use this tool to maximize our efforts.
Coming from the angle of “how would I explain time to a nine-year-old without overwhelming their young brain?”, there are a couple of avenues you can choose for the best course of action. Ideally, you look to keep it simple with a calm approach—I came up with the following:
“Time is something that everyone has but what you do with your time is either managed effectively, poorly or somewhere in between.“
Case in point, in the earliest stages of your life, everything is planned out for you, all the way from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night. Your free time as a child is mostly controlled by video games, athletics, learning an instrument and other routine activities.
You know what people always say—keep the kids interested from young, put them in a sport or music lessons, whatever it may be, so they fall in love with it early and make it a priority later down the line. This recipe will always be successful and this formula should never, ever die out (emphasis on the never).
Can It Be That Simple?
If we are being real with ourselves, the distractions of the world are at an all-time high with the advancement of technology and the internet opening up near endless avenues for us to explore. Staying focused on one thing naturally comes with its challenges, but now with access to even more things, there’s a fine line between managing your time effectively and being unproductive.
If we use the same statement above as a guideline, we can still keep things simple to help explain the value of time. When we focus on/practice something for long enough, the investment of time is either effective, disappointing or somewhere in between.
There are things you do for the experience and nostalgia, for the faith and investment, and simply just for the money when it comes to time. Think about a getaway trip to the Caribbean for nostalgia, an investment into a skill/trade for five years, and working straight cash jobs to secure money. All of these examples take time and should not be looked down upon but recognized as the different ways to spend your time to gain a greater perspective. It all adds up and there’s no escaping it at the end of the day.
So in this game we call life, if you want to have the advantage, you need to use your time wisely if you are going to end up at the top.
The top for you will be specific to your needs and the same goes for a child who wants to have a better understanding of what they need to do to succeed. Offering them as many opportunities to learn and develop is important, but having the right understanding of time from a young age is the extra step we all know can have incredible benefits further on down the line.
Remember time has no friends. This isn’t one of your homies you can become friends with and they’ll always have your best interest at heart. It’s crazy how time acts like it has no ops (standard abbreviation for enemies) when all of us want to fight time on the daily.
What do you mean I’ve lived 23 years on this earth already? It was just yesterday I was 16 years old playing NBA2K16 with the guys and asking my mum for $20 so I could take a girl to the movies on the weekend. Now I’m 23 and that same $20 can’t even buy both of us a meal at the movie theatre (treacherous times we are living in).
One thing you should keep in mind is how you can manipulate time. When you allocate more things for yourself, you’ll see the results and see time as being on your side. Examples of this include waking up earlier to get more tasks done, mapping out your priorities, or using a daily/weekly checklist of what you need to accomplish for said period.
But if you misuse the minutes, hours, and weeks over a certain period, you will never get that time back. Sometimes you can make up for it, but most of the time you can’t. You would be surprised what you can accomplish over a month of dedicated hard work, so be mindful of the minutes and hours you spend towards tasks that are not your priorities.
Lay the Foundation
It’s all incremental work, but the comprehension of something in a basic form can create the domino effect needed to make things better down the line. In past articles we have discussed the importance of delayed gratification, waiting your turn, and being prepared for when the moment comes. You do this by doing the work constantly, even when no one is around, so when the time comes, you are now prepared for the opportunity before you. You deserve the chance to see what you can achieve when you apply yourself. Give this same template to the young ones and see how it can change their mindset for the better. Now you can’t say Timeless Thoughts never helped you or someone younger than yourself out—we do it for the kids too!
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this article. Be sure to check out some of the other reads and stay tuned for what’s to follow. You may now un-hold your applause. Feel free to share the article with a friend and answer the question below!
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