Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - Stop Wasting Time

Episode Date: November 16, 2020

"Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity" - H. Jackson Brown Jr. This episode is about the cost of inaction. The impact of a decision is not just predicated upon what we choose to do, but also, what we choose not to do.

There's a quote attributed to H. Jackson Brown Jr. He says, nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity. I tend to agree with this. I also think it's interesting that these missed opportunities are also the most difficult, if not impossible, to quantify. So if you think about our common understanding of progress or growth, it's a sacrifice.

It's doing X brings us Y, doing the work, gets the result. It's a simple formula. You can show your proof. You can work backwards. I started working out one hour a day. Six months ago, this is what I look like now. The cost was one hour a day. The result, well, this is what I look like now.

But what's the inverse of that thinking? What's the cost of not doing the work or starting the journey or taking the steps? See, we don't think about that. We don't think about the opportunity cost. Our instinct is not to question the actions we do. don't take. I was listening to an old lecture from Jim Rohn, who I love because he's such a practical thinker.

He's got ideas you can literally plug right into your life. And he had an amazing point. He was talking about a conversation with an old friend in which he asks his friend, who apparently watches a lot of TV. He says, hey, what does that TV cost? His friend says, well, I think it was like $500. Jim says, no, I don't think so.

For instance, yeah, I bought it, $500. He says, no, I think it's costing you about $40k a year. Why? Well, not because of what he paid for the item, but because of the opportunity cost. What his time using that TV could be reallocated to. That's what's so incredible about that point. It's like, just because you don't have something

doesn't mean you aren't, in fact, losing out on it. Time is our most precious of commodities. Its utilization is the gateway to transformation. It should be protected. And, you know, the intent of the message is not to walk around panicking about every second, you know, of every minute, but more being aware, holistically, how recklessly we use our time. I don't know if you've ever looked at the screen time usage on a cell phone before going to bed at night. It's terrifying. Some of it was necessary, but, I mean, a lot of it wasn't.

And what does that cost? What is two hours a day of not moving towards a dream or goal cost you? What about when it accumulates and it becomes 14 hours a week? Or roughly 56 hours a month or times 12, 672 hours a year? I mean, these numbers start to get eye-opening. All it takes is a little awareness and we see how often we dispose of time like it's valueless. everything we do is a cost because in doing it

we are making a decision to not be doing something else with that time and again I believe in balance I want to emphasize that I'm not suggesting that we walk around like robots clocking in clocking out checking boxes so that we don't ever waste a minute right as the great Keith Urban says the best days of my life for all that wasted time

you know we should explore and enjoy and love and laugh and experience life but that awareness makes us more intentional with those pursuits with our work time and our playtime, it forces us in a way to prioritize, to ask ourselves what we want. Instead of only looking at progress like this vending machine where you put an X and Y comes out,

well, we can ask ourselves, what happens if I don't put an X? What happens if I keep it in my pocket? What won't come out? What could have existed that now won't? See, just because you don't see, something slipping away that doesn't mean that it isn't. And the immediate, the world in front of you, unfortunately,

won't remind you of that. That's a bell you have to ring yourself. You have to peel back the, what am I doing, and unveil the, what could I be doing? What could I be creating? What could reality look like? Maybe you think about it, and you find that you're right where you want to be,

and that's great. Maybe you realize you've accepted a tolerable existence at the expense of an ideal existence. In which case, I also have great news. You can change that, and you can change it now. We have to understand that you don't only have what's in front of you. You also possess a reality unseen and undiscovered. So don't let the former cover up or diminish the latter.

Don't lose the possibility of tomorrow with the distractions of today. Don't forget the cost of inaction with regard to those things that truly matter.