Confucius Crushed My Life

Photo by mauro paillex on Unsplash

“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop” — Confucius

Most of us have heard this one. An oldie but a goodie.

As with many old pearls of wisdom, we can glaze over their profoundness and miss the modern relevance they have for our daily lives.

Allocating Time for Goals

Recently, I caught a habit that had quietly snowballed into an avalanche of self-sabotaging thought.

Working constant 50–60 hour weeks had left me feeling incredibly time-constrained. I decided to organize what was leftover into 30-minute segments for “sufficient” and “quality” focus time.

It felt like an excellent method to help me when researching my next investment, creating that guitar instrumental, finishing that rough-cut article. It didn’t seem worth working on any goal for a shorter time than prescribed.

To give you an idea of my thinking at the time:

• What’s the point on spending 15 minutes attempting to put a dent into that 500-page book on the Blockchain?
• 20-minute workout? Might as well save the energy for a proper 1-hour session
• Why waste 10 minutes now writing my next article? It’s usually an average of 90 minutes just to get the 1st draft.

The Issue

Now, I can’t refute these arguments. They’re all tremendously rational thoughts with solid logic.

Of course, what happened was that any time outside of those 30-minute bitesize chunks was spent on Youtube, Imgur, and a plethora of News Feeds.

Needless to say, that neat 30-minute slot didn’t appear for days.

Gradually, those “sufficient” pockets of time worked their way up from a 30-minute minimum to a required devotion of a full 1 hour. It was when I flirted with the idea of stopping a project altogether until the following month that I got triggered.

“What? Did I really just consider writing-off my research for an entire month?”

Now, to be fair to myself, work was even more manic than usual, and my next 4 weekends were already filled with commitments that couldn’t be put off (call it bad timing).

But considering to stop working on my goals entirely? I’d caught myself being brainwashed…by myself.

What Went Wrong?

Here’s the thing, I had unwittingly seeded this new method with a seriously flawed assumption as you’ll see now.

My commute to work is 10 minutes. It’s great, I know. I don’t listen to music, podcasts, or radio during this time. I put on an audiobook. For twice a day, Monday to Friday, I get a pure 10-minute blast of audio heaven.

Do you know how many titles I’d gotten through in the past year?

Take a guess

11.

11 entire books from 20 minutes a day

I didn’t understand or believe it. So I delved further into the app stats to find out what had occurred.

I was spending an average of 6 hours a month listening to audiobooks. 6 hours is just shy of the average book length I download. So, “logically” at this rate, 11 books a year makes absolute sense.

But why hadn’t I been conscious of this simple conclusion?

Why hadn’t I been conscious of those daily 20 minutes adding up to 80 hours per year?

Why hadn’t I been conscious that those 80 hours translated into 11 books of material blasted into my head over the last 12 months?

Answer: That “sufficient” time that I had initially pegged as 30 minutes a day? Absolute Nonsense.

What I had been thinking: “I need sufficient time.”

What I should have been thinking: “I need any time.”

The Takeaway

Confucius understood (and apparently still does) that it doesn’t really matter about how little time you spend on those goals that you’re trying to accomplish.

The key to achieving our goals to keep going at them and never stop.

For many aspects of your life, you’re committed. Practically most of us still need our day jobs, need to look after loved ones, and have to take out the trash. You can’t control how much time you have leftover.

You damn well have control over spending your remaining time on whatever you like.

So, when you next find yourself with 20 minutes to spare, remember that you only need to spend 10 of them to make progress.

It really doesn’t matter how little progress you may feel like you make, just don’t stop.