What if I were to give you $86,400 today? And you put it into a special kind of bank. One that each day gives you an additional $86,400. But….. There’s a catch. You have to spend all $86,400 today because not only does each $86,400 not roll over to the next day, but your balance reduces to $0 every day at midnight.
Kind of like the idea from the movie Brewster’s Millions (if you’ve seen the Richard Pryor flick).
How would you spend the money?
Would you leave any of it in the bank at the end of the day?
I doubt it. If there were a couple of hours left and you were struggling to spend it, you might end up giving it away to people who you felt needed it. Or at least, I hope so!
Wouldn’t it be amazing though? To have all the money each and every day and know that you HAD to spend it, as it wouldn’t be there tomorrow.
Well, I’m here to tell you that you do have just such a bank account. Everyone does and it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, your upbringing or anything else. This bank account is the one leveller of us all. Presidents, heads of state, celebrities, musicians, CEO’s, sportsmen and movie stars.
We all have a bank like this and the deposit is TIME.
We all get 86,400 seconds each and every day. It doesn’t accumulate, or rollover and it resets to zero each day.
How many of those seconds are really well spent?
I don’t know what well spent means to you. It might be spending time with loved ones, telling people how much you care about them. It might be developing yourself, working out, sleeping, working towards your big goals. It might be travelling, cooking well, learning a new skill. Hell, for some of you it might even be spending time on Facebook (I might have to challenge you on that one – but it could be – especially if community or business building!)
The point is, if we treated time like we did the hypothetical $86,400, would we do things differently?
I know I don’t maximise my 86,400 seconds each and every day. It’s almost impossible to. But I strive to.
This metaphor felt quite apt to me when I heard it and it resonated.
Does it call out to you? How are you going to go through this day differently as a result of thinking about time like that?
Will you ask for the promotion instead of wasting more seconds, minutes, years waiting for your boss to approach you about it? Are you going to ask that cute girl or guy out that you’ve spent millions of seconds thinking about?
Once your 86,400 seconds are gone – they are gone.
Don’t waste another dollar!
Please share your thoughts on this below. 🙂
