Hey, thanks for hanging out today. If this is your first time here, I’m Misbah Haque. And it’s been a little while, but this 151st episode. Is really special to me and I wanted to make sure what I put out wasn’t garbage. And in fact, that is really what sparked the idea for this episode, reflecting back on the past 150. I’ve been exploring this concept of time is money. This is something that you hear thrown around all the time. And I. Believe it obviously, but there was a different angle that I uncovered as I was doing some writing the other day. Ah, timers, just go off at the wrong time. You know what I’m saying? There’s never a right time, for the timer to go off, I guess you always feel like you want it to keep going. But that one just came out of nowhere. Anyway, everybody says time is money. 

I was doing some journaling and a specific type. There was this type of a writing program, I guess you would call it that I discovered probably about four or five years ago. If you’re familiar with the author and, lecture professor. Dr. Jordan Peterson. He has written a ton of books out there bit of a controversial figure. I’ve come to realize I haven’t consumed just like everything that he has out there, but a lot of great interviews. I haven’t really read any of his books, but I have just enjoyed a lot of his podcast episodes. And he mentioned this writing program that was called self-authoring.

And this goes to show you the power of like podcasting and marketing because he put out a video that was about writing. Using writing to just gain clarity and get ahead and do all those things. I am the prime target because I like that sort of thing. It took me back to this program.

So it took me back to when I originally purchased this program, which basically consists of a couple of different parts, like a past future, and present sections. And you basically do a S autobiography about each of those sections. And it’s broken down into these many parts. The idea is not just like writing an autobiography.

The idea here is to uncover what are. The stories that are automatically running your past, present, and future. And in a very impressive way. The way the prompts are set up and all that. It forces you to. Be honest.

I never ever really look back at my writing as much as I should. I always just recall and try to rewrite it. And that’s something I’m trying to work on. But in this case, what happened was I logged in to my self-authoring program.

Forgot my password, of course, because who doesn’t forget their password. And obviously, I wanted to fill this out from scratch. I’m going through these stories, the way that the prompts are set up, allows you to rewrite certain stories and see how all of your past and future, and present. Stories are all connected to your goals and why you have them.

Just the peer understanding. Of this is just one. Leverage area that I see is often like the things we, when we butt up against change, at least when I do. And I’m trying to force it. If I try to just. Deeply understand a little bit more about why I’m doing what I’m doing and all that stuff.It takes some time for it to get through my fixed skull. But it does eventually. Sink in.

So the understanding that I gained from just writing some of these stories about myself and honestly recalling memories that I never. I haven’t recalled in the years, and this was particularly helpful for doing standup. And when I have shows coming up, when I’m trying to write new jokes, I’m trying to make them personal and, not hacky and all those different things. You’re like, okay, I want some, that was part of my motivation also to write this, but mainly it was to really in an organic way. Develop material that I know I’ll probably use for the content or all sorts of other stuff. And then more importantly than that, just a personal clarity and motivation and focus that I wanted

Now, on one hand, you, we have the leverage with understanding, but on the other is writing. So I heard the stat, which is we, 20% of things that we just read or whatever. We retain. I think 50% when we write things down. And I want to say 70 or 80%. When we teach others. So this really made my ears perk up.

So that was another area. This felt like a deadly combination for me to feel clarity. And what’s the purpose of doing this? I don’t know. I feel like there’s this fundamental, what’s the meaning here? What’s the purpose? What am I doing? Where am I going? Am I doing enough? Am I not?

This constant, search for meaning that I’m sure. You and I can both relate to some degree. And. A lot has changed for me in the past three years. I was looking at. Time. And there is this prompt that comes up. Let me get to the juicy part now. So there is this prompt that comes up. And I’m going to read it to you. Word for word, actually. Okay, so this is Okay, so this is 1.5 section 1.5. 

Your leisure activity in the future, and the prompt was to take a moment to consider the activities you would like to pursue outside of obligations, such as work, family, and school. The activities you choose should be worthwhile and personally meaningful without a plan. People often default to whatever is easiest, such as television watching and wasting their private time. This is where it gets interesting. If you waste four hours a day, which is not uncommon, then you are wasting 1400 hours a year. That is equivalent to 35 40-hour workweeks. Now it goes on to where a, it tells you like a 50 year period over a 50 year period. 

That is $1.8 million not counting interest or any increase in the value of your time as you develop. Now that part is pretty crazy and alarming, but without even reading that, if I was Steven cut that paragraph early and just knowing that, okay, 25 bucks an hour adds up. That much, 35, 40-hour workweeks. If I’m wasting four hours a day. 

That comes out to $35,000 per year. And then you can divide that. By 12 and be like that’s about 3000 bucks. That’s 3000 extra dollars that I might be able to have in my pocket. Whether that’s in the form of time or whether that is in the form of actual cash.

Now time just sounds like this. It’ll valuable thing, but not really that crazy until you actually feel the emotion around it. So when you look at some things that you do, which take up a lot of time and this is what I did, to be honest. And I’ll do an episode on, time-blocking and this concept that Cal Newport talks about. I got the time block planner. I actually have been.

Using the notion to keep a digital version as well since February 24th. So I have over. Three months of data at this point that I want to formulate and share with you on that.

But you find that making time is only really valuable when you feel the pinch of it taking away from things you actually want to do. So whether it’s going away for this. Camping trip or taking off for a vacation or, just taking a leisure day. Or.

Getting home. Before it gets dark and having dinner with your family or kids or whatever it is for you until you are hit with a couple of those instances only then do you see time with a different lens and with a different meaning?

But I thought it was beautiful how it goes to show the power of writing in literally, probably what is that 500 words he described? And showed me the currency and put a value to something where I’m like, wow, if I waste four hours a day, basically that is $3,000 a month. That I could get back. And obviously, you can adjust that.

For your rate, it’s not really about the actual money here, right? It’s more so about how Easily four hours can be wasted. That is what I discovered from doing this time tracking, but I also realized that not everybody is going to actually go through with this level of time tracking that I enjoyed.

The first thing that I did, which I would recommend, which was even before actually doing any form of this time blocking was to get a visual timer. So make sure to get one that is not your phone. I just don’t trust myself. I definitely get lost in my phone. I also don’t like that. It makes my screen time and all that stuff go up. Like it registers the fact that I’m maybe using my phone or I’m just.

Way more likely to get sucked into something else. So basically So I, I found this timer. Actually, my girlfriend did and she uses it for cooking mainly, and she has one in the kitchen. And it’s basically this beautiful baby blue colored. Timer. It’s not very big. It can fit in your hand. But it’s visual enough. Like it’s a red-colored.

Time and you just, twist it and turn it and it counts up to 60 minutes and it basically just has a little beep when the 60 minutes is up and of course, you can turn it up or down based on what you actually want to time now.

We both started using this so much that I had to get a second one. Now, the color that I ended up going with mine is black and it has. Oh, sorry. The color that she has actually, I believe is blue on blue. So it is baby blue. And then I think the actual color, like when it shows you the time is running out is actually blue. She likes that because red is too stressful. And then it’s if the Bluefields like, okay we’re enjoying this. It gives a beachy type vibe. But the color that I ended up going with was the black version with the red color. I do the color red. On mine, I did that. And

I have to say it has been one of the best purchases of probably the past year. And I realized I’m going to do more of these types of recommendations for you that is easily accessible. They’re not hundreds and hundreds of dollars. I’m pretty sure this timer that I got was like, The 10 to 15. You can check it out in the description and it’s one I’ll link it up for Amazon, but it’s the Secura visual timer. I’m pretty sure. It’s called. 

The benefit of having something big in front of you like this and being able to easily carry it around. It doesn’t need to plug into a wall or anything. I usually will bump it up to 30 minutes. I’ll turn it to the halfway mark. And. As I’m just even getting set up for something like recording this podcast, he realized, oh my gosh, 30 minutes have gone by so quickly. I’ve been wasting it. Cleaning out my hard drive en route to pressing record, doing everything I can do.

Avoid the hard stuff. So it’s so funny how, when you turn that timer and you get that beep you get this reset. That allows you to go, okay, let’s reset. Let me try it again. And I did that until I could. For the past couple of days where I just did it purely to see the 30 minutes add up to four hours, could I find four hours in my day where I personally felt like maybe I’m wasting time or I could have replaced it with a funner. More valuable, higher-level activity and I will tell you, it was not very long before the four hours added up.

It is not in a like consecutive. Chunks, for example, it’s usually okay. It’s 30 minutes here, then an hour later, another 30 minutes or okay. Maybe 60 minutes in a row. So it’s good to see that. But once you. Have a visual. And an audio reminder, cause you hear the beeping a little bit. That you have four hours in your day.

I personally think that is probably the most freeing thing of all. It’s depressing too, because you’re like, wow, I could have been doing so much. I could have had 300 or 500 episodes or whatever it is. I’m still happy. I got to do hundreds of other episodes on different shows, but on my personal show, there’s something that makes me as I was reflecting, I’m like 150 is great, but I really, if.

The only difference was time. If I had just kept going in some way. Time passed anyways and, there was so much that I over-thought about this stuff. And it’s if I just did the one a week or even once every couple of weeks maybe I’d be at that 300 or whatever it is. It’s the emotional investment. That we have in different things. For me, it was podcasting. And as time passes, other people grow, and you see your episodes. And, like I said, getting to a higher number of them, purely just showing up and having more of those conversations there were time periods where I was pure, busy and I couldn’t have probably fit this in, or I had to let’s say de-prioritize it.

Not to make any excuses, but time was on my side and I feel like I didn’t. Realize it. I thought it was against me this whole time.

So a question maybe for you to think about without journaling endlessly or any of those things is just, what. What do you care about that? If three years pass? And the four hours per day concept is there, what would you look back on and be like, man, in those four hours, I wish I had gone fishing. I wish I had worked out. I wish I had done. Like just paint the picture uninhibited, even if you don’t have those. Free for hours right now.

And the reason I even went in a rabbit hole to explore this and. Feel like this was worth coming on here and sharing with you. Time is usually the currency that we blame most often. When we don’t want to do things, money is one, but it’s usually, I don’t have the time for that right now. I’m so busy.

That one is used more often and is more publicly accepted than not. I don’t have the money for that. There’s a little bit of oh, I don’t have the money. We feel a little bit weird even saying that, but I don’t have the time we all participate in that. And sometimes it’s a valid excuse to get us out of things that, we want to get out of it and we don’t want to be involved in but there are times when it gets in the way of things we actually want to do for me. It’s, working out more, it’s recording more podcasting, more. Work. Of my own, as I’m doing more client work and taking more of that cool stuff on, I’m not making the same mistake that I did in the past three years, which was as that happened. And that was in the fitness world where I took on a bunch of, 60, 70 clients, like my personal creative stuff, fell off a lot.

Not making that same mistake. Because now I see, okay. Now, only in the next three years from now on, is it worth the 35,000 or whatever it is? So if time is the excuse that we’re all using and it can be. Sometimes when we want. To use time as the scapegoat to get us out of something, which I don’t judge anybody for. There are certain situations. Things we want to get out of just in times of perfectly great things too. To blame it on, but there are times when you actually want time to work on your side.

And you want to use that time to work out more, to record more podcasts, whatever it is for you write more, Sleep more, eat more. I breathe more. I don’t know. This problem of solving. How do I make more time? Feels like a worthy. Problem to solve before anything else? And no matter what career paths we’re on, no matter what ethnicity we are, no matter, where we live. None of that matters. It’s like we all are using and participating in this currency of time. And we are all.

Given the 24 hours a day. At this point, to start with and it’s like a little cash balance that gets reset every single day versus money is, the variable depending on a lot of things. I hope this was an interesting deep dive. If it was please let me know. It really, honestly, at the very least is motivates me to keep doing these. And it’s just interesting.

To start a conversation through these episodes. I was one of my favorite parts of the first hundred and 50 episodes with the conversations that were created

 I actually just want to. Read the last section of that prompt. But it was after I described that whole four hours a day, okay. The $1.8 million over a 50-year period. It describes what your leisure life would be like if it was set up to be genuinely productive and enjoyable.

And it says, think. And write for at least two minutes and then move on. I thought this time pressure was great. It didn’t have to be this 15-minute reflective thing. Just, get your new timer if you want. It’s in the description. Put it up to two minutes or five minutes, honestly, this is a trick. A growth hack. I’ll tell you. It’s not a growth hack. It’s really like an anger hack because you’ll get angry sometimes at just setting the two minutes and hearing the beep beep go off over and over. What you want to do is possibly set it to five or 10. That way, two minutes is pretty quick to where you can just look a minute or two later and see where you’re at. And if you go a little bit longer, this is not a high-stakes scenario. For a call you have to be on in two minutes, so you can avoid the beep beep beep If that’s helpful,

But hit me up on Instagram or honestly, Ms. hq.com. That’s where I’ve been. That’s like the Homebase I’ve been writing a lot. They’re posting a lot of these podcasts and central locations for everything. Hit me up through there on the contact form. Share this episode, all that stuff. If you can help out, that would be amazing, but I really appreciate you.

Hanging out today and I will talk to you soon.