Are you paying attention to your time?

Why our time should be our core metric for success in this lifetime.

happy Monday friends,

I posted a version of this on Linkedin last week and decided to share here as it resonate with a lot of people.

I think it’s the most important constructs we need to be paying attention to.

In 2021, when I was in the middle of my own personal pandemic, I discovered the book Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. It’s one of those books you have to be careful with because when you start reading it, you will inevitable want to change everything in your life.

The core thesis is that the average human gets 4000 weeks on this earth, which is the equivalent of 76.9 years. But for whatever reason when you put it into weeks, it feels imminent. I think it’s because we operate in weeks and it’s one of the most common ways we measure time — “what did you do last week?” “let’s get together in 3 weeks…”

Of course I did what everyone does when you get the book — take my age and multiply it by 52 and you’ll see where you are in your weeks. I’m in the 2000 range.

So based on this thesis, I’m right in the middle of my 4000 weeks.

Or maybe I’m here? It’s possible I might get more than 4000 weeks…

Or maybe I’m here… tomorrow isn’t promised.

That’s the thing about time. None of us know how much we have.

The Only Math that Matters

I’m not normally a math person, but this was worth breaking down…

The average person lives 4000 weeks or 76.9 years.
That is 672,000 total hours in the average lifetime.

We should be sleep for 1/3 of that, which leaves 448,000 total waking hours.
As an adult, we have 343,168 total waking hours.
When we break this down on a daily level, we have 16 waking hours a day.

The average adult who works in corporate spends…
⏱️ 9-12 hours at work (65-70%)
⏱️ 2 hours a day streaming content (12.5%)
⏱️ 3 hours a day on social media (18%)

If we’re not careful, we’ll spend 70% of your time doing work you don’t care about, with people you can’t stand, immersing yourself in other people’s dreams, stories and scrolling through everyone else’s waking hours.

If you want to change your life, it’s not about doing more. It’s about being intentional about reclaiming your time. It’s the fastest, most effective way to improve how you feel. Time is your most valuable resource. Take it back.

sending you so much love wherever you are,

m