Building a Powerful Gut Instinct | Steve Pavlina

Human logic is incredibly limited. Even our best logic is layered upon emotional biases and instinctual behaviors. Logic doesn’t care if we learn and grow. Logic doesn’t care if we’re happy or miserable. Logic doesn’t care if we live or die.

Fortunately, logic is only one tool for making decisions. Our bodies have many more layers of intelligence.

One of those layers is your gut instinct. Many people experience this as a sensation in the abdominal region.

When I used to eat animal products, it was nearly impossible for me to tune into my gut instinct. That channel was almost completely muted. I’d only notice it in extreme situations, like when I got arrested. I think my inability to hear that channel was one reason I did so much shoplifting in my late teens. How could I hear it while so much of my energy was being used to digest a bacon double cheeseburger, french fries, and a milkshake?

When I went vegetarian, my gut instincts finally became audible, and they grew louder and clearer when I went vegan, but it still took many years for me to start trusting them. I wasn’t used to receiving information on this channel, so I didn’t consider it important. But as the volume increased, I couldn’t entirely ignore it, so I began exploring these signals through the lens of spirituality. I’d listen through meditation. I’d journal about these signals. I’d discuss my impressions with like-minded people. I interpreted this as a spiritual awakening of some kind. But in my day-to-day practical life, I largely disregarded this information.

Over time I slowly realized that my gut instinct was providing useful information, but I only saw this in hindsight. I didn’t act in alignment with these impressions when they first came up, but I eventually dealt with the consequences of doing the opposite. For instance, I paid the price of doing business with people who gave me a queasy feeling in my stomach.

Most of the time when I felt this gut instinct, it was a negative feeling. That made it hard for me to listen to it because I saw myself as a positive thinker. My personal bias was to find a way to make a deal happen or to make a relationship work. I wanted to achieve things. 

Saying yes to new experiences was a key part of my path of growth. I had a strong tendency to discount my gut feelings when they were negative. I figured that it was the voice of fear and cowardice and that I should simply power through it.

The way I see this gut instinct now is that it’s a summary reading of the combined energies of a situation.

These sensations are usually very general. They don’t come packaged with details or explanations. A gut instinct is like a thermometer. It can tell you if something is hot or cold, but it can’t tell you why.

Finding the Positive Path

For many years my gut instinct seemed like an annoying naysayer. But occasionally it would give me a positive sensation, such as when I was reading personal development books or going to a conference. The negative signals were often louder and more prominent, so when I experienced the positive ones, it mostly felt like a form of escapism.

Eventually I began to explore paths that gave me stronger positive signals, such as when I started writing articles in 1999. Reading a good book was something nice to do for myself, but writing articles clearly impacted other people’s lives as well. I noticed that when I considered ideas that involved some form of contribution, my gut gave me stronger positive signals than usual. I began doing a lot of volunteering during this time as well.

As I began receiving more positive signals to balance out the negative ones, I felt encouraged to trust these gut instincts a little more and to take more action in alignment with them. I was far from perfectly trusting, but life seemed a little more fair once I began sensing opportunities to pursue instead of only traps to avoid. I felt like this instinct was finally meeting me halfway instead of just being a naysayer. It’s easier to listen to a voice that says yes sometimes and no sometimes instead of only no, no, no.

I began taking more risks to act on this voice, and over a period of years, I explored more of its subtleties. The tricky part was distinguishing this voice from other channels like my memories, beliefs, and conditioned emotional responses. Sometimes I’d feel some fear or trepidation about a new experience, like volunteering to speak at a conference, but my gut instinct was telling me to go for it. Making such discernments required patient practice. The more I listened to these signals and practiced deciphering them, the more I could hear their individual voices and make better decisions. It’s like learning to distinguish the voices of different people talking in a crowded room. Your brain will figure it out with some practice.

Turning Up the Volume

I noticed that sometimes my gut instinct was very clear while other times it was murky. I found that the level of clarity was linked to my health habits. When I exercised a lot, the signal was especially clear. If I slacked off from exercise, it was harder to get a clear signal.
When I began exploring raw foods, these gut feelings became ridiculously loud and clear. Sometimes I found the signals overwhelming. 

This is one reason that I’ve been going back and forth between raw foods and cooked foods for so many years. I began dabbling in raw foods as far back as 1997, and I did my first 30-day 100% raw trial around 2003. In 2008 I ate 100% raw for six months straight. In the years since then, I’ve gone raw for 30 or more days many more times, especially when I wanted some extra clarity, but eating raw continuously hasn’t become my default baseline yet.

For the past two months, I’ve been eating mostly raw again, including 100% raw for several weeks in a row. Presently I’m eating about 90% raw. I still find it difficult to handle the intensity of my gut instincts when they’re at such a high volume. Eating cooked food has the effect of turning down the volume. Right now this is working well for me.

Another aspect of eating lots of raw food is dealing with the extra physical energy. I feel a little stir crazy if I eat raw and don’t move a lot. My gut instinct also tells me I need to spend more time outside in the sunlight. This morning I decided to take a day off from exercise and still ended up going for a 9-mile walk before breakfast. When I eat mostly cooked food, the urge to move isn’t nearly as compelling.

Trusting the Signals

I often like working and playing in sprints, with each sprint lasting a few weeks. This month I had planned to do two different sprints. First, I wanted to create the web pages for the new workshops we’ve booked and to open registrations for them. Second, I wanted to visit Costa Rica.

Logically it made sense to do the workshop pages first, then go to Costa Rica. That way people would have more time to learn about the workshops and to figure out which one(s) they want to attend. Going on the trip would be a nice reward for completing that project. So that was my initial decision.

But when I started trying to implement the decision, my gut said it was the wrong decision. I’d been eating 100% raw for several weeks in a row at this point, so that voice was loud and clear. I should go to Costa Rica first, then handle the workshop pages after I got back.

I decided to listen to the signal, but it didn’t feel like I was making a decision — more like the decision was made for me. I booked a flight and landed in San José the following day.

Overall it was a really nice trip. Rachelle and I explored several museums, a coffee and banana plantation, the top of a volcano, two rainforests, several waterfalls, and the capital of San José. We saw huge colonies of leafcutter ants as well as a bullet ant that was almost an inch long. We saw poisonous frogs. We saw orchids galore. We saw toucans up close and held them perched on our arms. We spoke a lot of Spanglish with the locals.

A few days before I was to fly back to the USA, I started having an intense allergic reaction. I began sneezing a lot, my nose ran like crazy, and my eyes kept watering. I felt like I had a cat sitting on my head, and I barely got any sleep that night. I couldn’t breathe through my nose at all. The next day was no better. Even after I showered and we went to another location an hour’s drive away, the symptoms continued all day long. It didn’t seem like a food allergy because I didn’t have any digestive issues. It felt like I was suddenly allergic to the air. I was puzzled since it was obvious that I was having a strong allergic reaction, but to what? How could it be following me around like this from one location to another?

I’m allergic to cats, but normally I’d have to pet one or come into direct contact with cat hair to have any notable issues, and I didn’t spend any time around cats on this trip. This reaction was much worse than any cat allergy I’d ever experienced.

While we explored a rainforest and I continued sneezing and blowing my nose dozens of times, a guide told us that one of the nearby volcanos had recently undergone a small eruption, spewing ash into the air which fell all around San José and beyond. He said that some people are allergic to volcanic ash, and he described the symptoms that I was experiencing. I’d never been in the vicinity of a volcanic eruption before, but apparently I’m one of those allergic people.

My symptoms continued for the rest of the trip, but once I got on the flight to Miami, I started feeling better almost immediately. I’d never felt so grateful to breathe the air inside a plane before. By the time I arrived back in Vegas, the symptoms were 80% gone. Within a few more days, I was back to normal.

Another oddity on this trip was the weather. When I checked the weather app on my phone before and after I arrived in San José, the forecast was 10 solid days of thunderstorms — not a single dry day in sight. I’d never seen a weather forecast like that, not even in Seattle. San José gets so much rain that there are trenches between the streets and sidewalks for the water to flow. You have to step over these trenches when crossing the street. Some are so wide and deep that they have small bridges built over them. Why would I want to go on a trip to a place where the expectation was constant rain?

Logically I expected this to be a very wet trip, but in actuality it didn’t rain much at all while I was there. Most days were partly cloudy and partly sunny. When it did rain, it was usually at night while I was inside. A couple other times when it rained, it was while walking in a rainforest, and the canopy served as an effective umbrella. Overall the weather was beautiful while I was there.

Despite all the sneezing in the final days of the trip, I had a wonderful time in Costa Rica. It turned out to be a really good time to go. But I didn’t realize how good the decision was till I returned home. A few days after I got back, there was a much larger volcanic eruption, covering the city of San José in tons of ash. Hundreds of people were hospitalized because of it.

If I had gone against my gut instinct, I’d be in San José right now. With the minor eruption that happened while I was there, I had one of the strongest allergic reactions I’ve ever experienced, and I couldn’t even see any ash in the air or on the ground. Given the situation there now, with visible ash in the air, on the ground, and inside buildings, I might have been one of those people headed for the hospital.

I suppose that now I also have the benefit of knowing that I’m allergic to volcanic ash, which may be a good thing to know when I travel to volcanically active places in the future. 🙂
While many people turn to raw foods to heal from serious illnesses, another attractor is the heightened sensitivity to various forms of energy — the energy of living beings, the energy of places, and perhaps the energy of the planet itself.

Letting the Locking Relay Float

Because these energies are always in flux, I find it nearly impossible to make gut-based decisions far in advance. The signals are very present-moment. When I make a gut-based decision, there’s a certain immediacy to it. I have to run with it right away.

It’s not unusual for me to feel a surge of clarity about taking a trip and to be in another city within 24-48 hours. Sometimes I’ve made a decision to take a trip in the morning, and I’m arriving at my destination that same evening. Sometimes my gut screams YES, but I know the YES is time sensitive. I have to act immediately or not at all. Even delaying one day can kill the timing.

One of my favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes is “Lower Decks.” It includes the following scene, which begins when Ensign Sito takes too long to obey an order to fire the phasers.

RIKER: What happened back there, Ensign?
SITO: I’m sorry, sir. When we changed course I had to re-lock phasers before I could fire.
RIKER: Next time, try letting the locking relay float until the actual order to fire is given. They may not teach that trick at the Academy, but it works.
SITO: Thank you, sir.

When people ask me about my plans and intentions, especially with a desire to lock me into certain commitments, I often recall this scene. It reminds me not to succumb to the pressure to prematurely commit myself when my gut instincts are still in flux.

I understand people’s desire for predictability and certainty, especially when they want to coordinate their schedules with me. But I know from experience that it’s usually best for me to let the locking relay float until the order to fire is given. In other words, I prefer to let my plans and options float until I get a strong gut instinct to go a certain direction. Then I lock the decision into place and fire with immediate action.

I hope that what I’ve shared here gives you some insights to further develop your own gut instinct — and to trust it when your signals are loud and clear.

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My Favorite Questions for Making Tough Decisions | Steve Pavlina

Sometime you’ll encounter tough decisions that can leave you wallowing in indecision, such as whether to change jobs or careers, end a relationship, move to a new city, or pursue a new lifestyle direction. There are many processes you can use to make intelligent decisions, but all of them have shortcomings when you’re dealing with imperfect information. Sometimes all it takes to gain sufficient clarity though is to ask the right questions. A good question can shift your perspective about your decision and make the wise path obvious.

When I face tough decisions, here are some of my favorite questions to ask:

Will this help me grow?

Since growth is one of my highest personal values, I favor decisions where I can expect to learn and growth. If I see little or no growth on a particular path, I’ll tend to lean against it.
This heuristic gives me a bias to embrace the new, as opposed to repeating something I’ve already done. It’s one reason I usually don’t repeat workshops. Even though it’s more work, I favor doing new workshops because a new workshop pushes me to learn and grow a lot more than repeating a past workshop does.

Asking this question helped me join Toastmasters in 2004, and I remained a member until 2010. I felt a bit anxious about getting involved with the group since I didn’t think it would be a comfortable experience to practice public speaking. But I went to my first meeting and joined a club because I figured that it would be a growth experience, and it certainly was. When the growth aspect faded and the experience became overly familiar, I quit Toastmasters and shifted my attention elsewhere.

There are many situations where fear and hesitation might hold me back, and then my mind wanders towards justification. I can’t because I’m too busy. The timing isn’t right. I’m not feeling my best. Yes… but will it be a growth experience? If a decision will help me grow, then I’m inclined to lean into it.

Sometimes my answer to this question takes the form of a grudging dammit, yes. Part of me doesn’t want it to be a yes, especially when the decision involves facing a fear, a lack of skill, or a lot of extra work, but it’s a good step to at least admit that if I move forward and say yes, I know it will be a growth experience.

Would my best self do this?

Asking this question gave me clarity when I was trying to decide whether or not to uncopyright all my blog posts back in 2010. I had created a tremendous body of intellectual property, and I owned it 100%. But I often wondered what would happen if I let go of that ownership and donated it to the public domain. It seemed like a huge leap, and there was no good way to predict the outcome.

When I asked if my best self would do this, the answer was clear. If uncopyrighting my work would help more people than keeping it copyrighted, my best self would pull the trigger and do it.

My best self is brave, generous, and creative. He could handle the consequences of giving so much away and letting the world run with it. He trusts that it would work out. He knows he can always create more. He doesn’t want to depend on ownership of intellectual property for his sense of security. For him it’s enough to feel secure in who he is. Even if things didn’t turn out so well, he could handle that too. He’s strong enough to deal with the consequences.
Asking this question removed enough doubt to make it so. Would my best self do this? Of course he would.

This still wasn’t an easy decision, but at least I knew that if I could do it, it would bring me further into alignment with my best self. If I held back, I’d be keeping myself out of alignment with him.

Do I want the memory?

Every decision ultimately becomes a memory, and the sum of your decisions will eventually become a string of memories. So which memories do you want?

Do you want the memories of maintaining your current social media habits for the next 10 years? (It’s extremely rare to find someone who can honestly answer yes to this.)

Do you want the memories of keeping your current job for another year? What about your current relationship situation?

Do you want the memories of taking that trip, or would you rather have the memories of not taking it?

This is a really powerful question, and some people have gained immediate clarity the first time they’ve asked it.

Of all the social media interactions and online commentary you’ve posted over the past decade, what do you remember? I remember very little of it. It’s all just a blur. My mind seems to value those memories so little that it didn’t store them in any meaningful detail.

This question helped me lean into lots of delightful travel experiences. Every year I travel to places that I’ve never been before, and one reason is that I love acquiring the memories that come from travel.

When you look back upon the past year, what do you remember? Do you like those memories? Could you have created better memories?

When I think about the past year, I remember eating lots of yummy meals at this small restaurant called Verde Vegan in Acapulco. I remember walking around the streets of London in the rain. I remember going to the top of a volcano, visiting a coffee plantation, and seeing several waterfalls in a rainforest in Costa Rica. I remember sipping espresso on a cobblestone sidewalk in Italy, walking around Villa Borghese park, staring up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and taking silly photos at the Mouth of Truth. I remember lots of fun times while spending 30 days at Disneyland. I remember seeing many plays at the Fringe Festival in Winnipeg and eating samosas with tamarind sauce. I remember sharing laughs and insights at last year’s workshops and going out to dinner with the attendees afterwards. And I remember doing all of these things with my girlfriend.

Most of my best memories are not about working at my desk. They come from having interesting experiences. Is it the same for you?

I’ve taken action on a lot of stretch ideas – and sometimes just plain silly ones – after asking myself if I wanted the memory. One of the silliest was last year’s decision to spend 30 days in a row going to Disneyland. That’s a lot of time to spend on such an experience, and I certainly could have used that time in other ways, but I realized if that I did it, I’d end up with some wonderful memories, plus the overall memory of taking action on a stretch experience.

I rarely regret taking action in a new direction.Usually I regret holding back. I think that’s true of most people. We tend to regret the opportunities we missed as opposed to those we pursued, even if we didn’t get the results we hoped for. We regret not trying even more than trying and failing. Failing is okay. Not trying just sucks.

You could ask yourself which path you’re more likely to regret, but regret is just one type of memory. So when you ask this memory question, it already covers potential regret.

How will this sculpt my character as a man?

I’m sharing this question the way I ask it, so feel free to modify it to fit your gender, or use a gender-neutral substitute like, How will this sculpt my character as a human being?

This was an especially powerful question to ask when I was in my 20s, and I was thinking about what kind of man I wanted to become. This question stemmed from a realization I had while sitting in jail for a few days when I was 19 years old. I saw myself becoming someone much darker than I wanted to be, and that realization woke me up. I realized that in order to change the man I was becoming, I had to start making different decisions.

The decisions you make ultimately define your character and personality. Making a decision is like chiseling out the sculpture of who you’re becoming. Most decisions only chisel out small details. Some decisions define significant aspects of the final piece. The decisions I made while sitting in jail were some of my life’s biggest.

If you’d visited my website between 2004 and 2008, you would have seen a lot of ads. At the peak I was earning $12-13K per month in passive income from having advertising on the site. In late 2008 though, I removed all the ads, which immediately shut off that income.
One reason I made this choice is that I saw it as a character decision. I didn’t feel congruent with distracting my readers with third-party advertising when they came to my website to read about personal growth. I faced a choice, and each option would sculpt my character differently.

The first option was to continue enjoying the easy passive income from advertising for many more years. By today it would probably have been about a million dollars extra if I’d kept having advertising. This would also mean many years of sculpting myself into a man who accepts a misalignment with his values in order to make money, which would only make it more likely that I’d continue making similar decisions down the road.

The second option was to remove the ads and look for more aligned ways to earn income. This would mean pursuing a path of greater congruence, even if it might be less profitable. It would also be a harder path to take because the advertising income was very easy to maintain. This path would definitely be more work.

I chose the second path because I believed it would sculpt my character in a more positive direction. It would be more difficult in the short term, but I liked the idea of shedding misaligned income sources in order to do the harder work of creating aligned sources. The year after I made this decision, I created and delivered my first three-day workshop. Fast forward to today, and now I’ve done 16 of them. While the workshops weren’t as lucrative as 
I expect the ads would have been, they’ve paid off in many other ways that I value much more than money. For instance, I met my girlfriend Rachelle at that first workshop, and a key strength of our relationship has been our values alignment, such as the fact that we’re both long-term vegans. And we love traveling and having fun lifestyle adventures together as well.

If you accept a misalignment in your life, you’ll attract more of the same. If you go for congruence, you’ll also attract more of the same. So think carefully about how each decision will sculpt your character.

I’m glad that I made the decision to remove those ads in 2008. Getting that incongruence out of the way helped me feel much closer and more connected with my readers. Since then I have met – and hugged – hundreds of them in person. The ads didn’t feel heart-aligned, so by getting those out of the way, I removed a barrier that might have otherwise weakened this relationship.

I could name many more instances where this character question has helped me make tricky decisions. This question nudges me to face more fears, to pursue new experiences, and to delve deeper into personal growth explorations than I otherwise would. I don’t always get it right, but I get it right more often when I ask this question.

Could I reverse or undo this decision?

Last week I decided to get a new home office chair to replace my really old beat up one. As I began browsing online, I thought that maybe I should get a really nice one this time instead of just another cheap sub-$100 chair from Office Depot, especially since one of my health goals for this year is to work on improving my posture. After doing some research, I narrowed the decision down to two choices: the Herman Miller Embody and the Steelcase Gesture. I’ve never owned a chair that had a name before.

Both chairs costs more than $1000. Both have radically different designs. I couldn’t find any stores in Vegas that actually carry them, so I couldn’t try them out first. Online reviews were helpful, but I could find really detailed, in-depth reviews that ranked either chair above the other. And wherever one chair got lots of four- and five-star reviews, I could always find other people rating it one and two stars. It seemed to come down to a matter of personal preference.

Instead of wallowing in indecision or not getting a chair at all, I went with the one I expected to like best – the Steelcase Gesture – even though I had to order it sight unseen and hope for the best when it arrives. What helped was knowing that the decision is reversible. If I don’t like it, I can pack it back up and return it. Or worst case I can always sell it. I might waste some time and money if I made a bad decision, but the long-term consequence is minimal, and the damage is largely reversible.

Some decisions are permanent, and you can’t simply undo them. If you quit your job or leave your relationship, you may not be able to go back if you later change your mind. But for many decisions, there’s a built-in undo. You can often return items you purchased. You can move back to your old city. You can buy back similar possessions to replace those you gave away. You can switch back to your old diet and exercise routines.

If a decision is reversible and/or the negative consequences of a mistake are low, then I’ll tend to lean towards the new experience. At the very least, I might learn something from it.

Can I test this decision?

If you can’t undo a decision, maybe you can test it somehow. Could you dip your toes into each path to gain more clarity about the options? Could you collect some real world experience before you have to commit?

This mindset was especially helpful in 2009 when trying to figure out whether Erin and I should stay together. By entering a polyamorous phase for several months, it was possible to test the waters by exploring other connections without ending the marriage. That provided tremendous clarity that the grass would indeed be greener on the other side. It still wasn’t an easy decision, but it became easier by testing.

Some long-term couples go through a trial separation first in order to test what their lives might be like if they were to separate and divorce. A good book for structuring such an arrangement is Should I Stay or Go? : How Controlled Separation Can Save Your Marriage. That book takes a pretty formal approach, which Erin and I didn’t really follow, but the general idea of testing the waters first is certainly helpful in these types of situations.

Testing a decision can help you tip one way or the other, so you don’t remain endlessly stuck in ambivalence, where you’re constantly waffling about which direction to go.

* * *

Try asking some or all of these questions the next time you face a tricky decision. I think you’ll find them useful tools for increasing clarity and making better choices. When I’ve shared some of these questions with other people, their number one favorite is usually the memory one, so that may be a good one to start with.

Please let me know what you think below.

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Time is All We Have: 3 Ways to Increase Return on Investment | Erin Falconer

Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of.– Benjamin Franklin

Return on investment (ROI) is a term you hear frequently, usually in relation to business and finance. The goal (obviously) is to maximize return on the money you invest. The implications of this concept go much deeper when you start to think of time as your primary investment rather than money. Everything you do is an investment of time. When you watch television, you’re making an investment in entertainment. If you watch a show that sucks, you’ve made a bad investment and receive a poor return for your time.

In many ways time is more valuable than money. You’ll always have the opportunity to make more money, but once time has been spent it’s gone forever. When you think of time as a commodity, and all of your actions as investments, it changes the way you approach every day decisions.

We spend time in many different ways: working, eating, sleep, exercise, entertainment, etc. All of these things are important. When we start investing too heavily in one area and not enough in another we create problems for ourselves. The key is investing our time in a manner that perfectly balances each of these areas and forms a productive and pleasurable life.

Deciding how to invest our time is a formidable task. Unlike business, there are no percentages or spreadsheets to reference. We have to rely on experience and intuition. I’m far from a master at this, but these are a few principals I use to guide my decision making.

1. Look for Multiple Positives

A multiple positive is an activity that generates a positive return in more than one area. These are great for ROI because they multiply returns and incur fewer losses. One of my best multiple positives is working on this website. It’s something that I find extremely entertaining, it contributes to a small (but steadily growing) stream of income, and it develops skills that I’ll be able to use the rest of my life like writing, web design, and networking.

Every individual will have different multiple positives, the important part is finding ones that work for you. A multiple positive for a software developer might be working on open source or a personal project. It can even be as simple as playing basketball, a fun game that’s also great exercise. The key to finding multiple positives is finding areas where different positive actions intersect. If I can find a way to get paid to eat delicious food I’ll be golden.

2. Avoid Multiple Negatives

Multiple negatives are the same as multiple positives, except the complete opposite. These are activities that detract from multiple areas of life. One of my favorite weaknesses is going out drinking. This hurts me in three ways: the time spent isn’t productive, drinks are expensive, and the effect of staying up late and being hungover usually ruins the following day. If I don’t have a good time, this is basically the worst possible scenario.

I’m not saying you should never go out and have a good time. To be happy we need socialization and excitement. My point is that we should always try to minimize the negative impact of our actions. I try to do this by minimizing the amount I drink and only going out when I know it will be enjoyable. Often we get caught in a pattern of poor investment. Over time, the benefits fade away and what remains is mostly negative, but we keep doing it out of habit. This can be avoided by periodically analyzing our behavior. Is it still a good investment, or is it time to make a change?

3. Utilize the Power of Compounding

I’m sure that everyone reading this understands the power of compound interest. When you invest money you earn interest. Then you start earning interest on the money you earned from interest. Over many years this continues to compound and eventually leads to a very large sum of money. The same concept applies to time. If you invest time by working hard when you’re young, you put yourself in a position to succeed that will continue compounding for the rest of your life. If you waste time when you’re young, you can’t make up for it later because you’ve lost the opportunity to utilize the power compounding.

Many people my age fail to realize this, in fact I didn’t, or at least I didn’t act on it, until fairly recently. The primary reason is that we’re trapped in the childish mindset. As a child, your only responsibility is entertaining yourself. You needn’t worry about investing your time because Mommy and Daddy are there to take care of you and they’re usually happy as long as you stay out of trouble. These days many young adults ride the childish mindset straight through college. After graduation we’re expected to adopt the adult mindset (and the responsibility of investing our time) instantaneously. A lot of people don’t get it, and every year they waste, trying to extend the college days, is an opportunity that can never be replaced.

Many people think their time isn’t valuable when they aren’t working, so they throw it away on activities that have a poor return on investment and don’t build for the future. The truth is, no one else is going to consider your time valuable until you do. If you want to acquire the wealth that will provide the freedom to live your ideal lifestyle, start thinking of every decision as an investment. Nothing is insignificant.

One mental model that can help you make better decisions is imagining that your life is a corporation and you’re the only employee. If you were the CEO of John Doe Incorporated, and were obliged to maximize profit on behalf of investors, what would you make yourself do? You’ll find that this sort of analysis simplifies many decisions and increases return on investment.
Thought provoking?  I think so.  Let me know what you think below.
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STOP KILLING TIME ► Motivational Video | Ashley Zahabian

An inspiring motivational video featuring motivational speech from Ashley Zahabian. Check out her channel at - https://www.youtube.com/polishedofficial

"While you're killing time, time is killing you."

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Let me know what you think below!