Chapter 3: We Have All the Time in the World

Overview

Time is a gentle god.

Sophocles

At the age of 30, an extremely successful Wall Street trader decided to go to Tibet, enter a monastery, and undertake rigorous spiritual studies.

On his first day, while his fellow trainees were hanging back, the extrader marched up to the top Zen master and asked, How long does it normally take to become enlightened?

Seven years , the Zen master replied. But I was top of my class at Harvard Business School, I made $10 million at Goldman Sachs, and in preparation for entering the monastery I ve taken all the best time-management courses. How long will it take me if I study intensively and try extremely hard to cut the time?

The Zen master smiled and said, Fourteen years.

On the other hand, do you remember the story about Archimedes? He was having a quiet bath one day, slopped some water over the side, then suddenly leapt in delight from his tub and ran naked through the main street of Athens, shouting at the top of his lungs, Eureka! I ve got it!

He d discovered an important theory. It took just a moment of inspiration, while he was relaxing , thinking about nothing much.

Time is like that: cussed when we try to speed up, a dear friend when we slow down.

What s this got to do with the 80/20 principle? Time is perhaps the best example of the principle, and the one of most value to our lives. If we create high value at work, we ll achieve at least 80 percent of it in 20 percent of our time. In our personal lives, we ll attain 80 percent of our happiness and value to those we love in 20 percent or less of our time.

Once we realize this, our lives are transformed. Suddenly, there is no shortage of time. There is no rush. If we think intelligently about what we can achieve with our time, we can be relaxed , even lazy. In fact, being lazy ” having plenty of time to think ” may actually be a precondition for achieving a great deal.

This was true for the ancient Greeks. With slaves to do all the work, they spent their time thinking, debating, and in leisure pursuits. Result: the greatest civilization, science, and literature that had ever existed. It is also true of developed modern society. Because most of us don t have to labor with our hands, we use our minds to create great wealth, science, and culture.

Yet here is a paradox. We have never been so free, yet failed to realize the extent of our freedom. We have never had so much time, yet felt we had so little. Modern life bullies us to speed up our lives. We use technology to do everything faster. But in racing against the clock, all we do is stress ourselves out. Going faster doesn t give us more time ” it makes us feel that we re always behind. We battle against time, our imagined enemy. We perceive time as accelerating, draining out from our lives at an alarming rate.

Andrew Marvell wrote:

But at my back, I always hear

Time s wing d chariot , hurrying near.

Henry Austin Dobson wryly observed :

Time goes, you say? Ah no!

Alas, Time stays , we go.

However, Marvell, Dobson, and modern life are all wrong. We can have more with less: more happiness with less time, more results with less time.

The 80/20 Way overturns the modern view of time, freeing us to enjoy our lives without worrying about time. Time is not in short supply, we are awash with it. Time need not rush, nor need we. Time can stand still, bringing us happiness, achievement, and a taste of eternity.

Time is a boundless sea. We can swim happily in time, confidently, calmly, with no sense of impending doom. Dear old Sophocles was right after all: Time is a gentle god.

There are two ways in which we experience time. There is the small quantity of time ” the 20 percent or less ” that delivers 80 percent of what we want. And there is the much larger quantity of time ” the 80 percent or more ” that delivers a miserable 20 percent.

Time doesn t run at a constant rate. Time flows in fits and starts, in gurgles and splurges, in trickles and floods. There are long periods when nothing happens, and short bursts when a tidal wave transforms our world. The art of time surfing is to track down the waves and ride them to happiness and success. Time is not absolute ” time is relative to our emotions, our attention, and our timing.

There are times when we are totally absorbed, absolutely happy, in tune with the universe ” when time stands still. We are scarcely conscious of time or ourselves. We are in the zone, in the moment, experiencing a sense of inner calm or bliss.

Time flew by , we say.

The day just

dis appeared.

These are the rare moments when we feel happiest and when we achieve the most. A little like Archimedes, we may have a breakthrough insight or idea. We may make a decision that changes lives. These small fragments of time are worth many days, weeks, months, or years of normal time.

At other times, little worthwhile happens. We are bored, miserable, or unexcited. In these dog days, time doesn t race past or stand still, it drags heavily along.

Is time from the first category the same in character and value as time from the second category? Hardly. A day of time in the zone may be worth a lifetime of dog days. Less is more.

The value of time, and how we experience it, depends on on how we use it: how we feel about our lives ” at the time.

• We are likely to experience 80 percent of our happiness in 20 percent of our time.

• 80 percent of our time may only contribute 20 percent of our happiness.

• Probably 80 percent of what we achieve comes from 20 percent of our time

• and the other 80 percent of our time only leads to 20 percent of our achievement.

It follows that:

• Most of what we do is of limited value, for us and everyone else. French novelist La Bruy re wrote, Those who make the worst use of time most complain of its shortness.

• A few things that we experience and do, in very little time, are of enormous value. We get a fantastic return on our time when 20 percent of time leads to 80 percent of happiness or achievement ” we get a fourfold or 400 percent return on this time.

• If we only make good use of a small portion of our time, there can t be any great shortage of it. If 80 percent of our time leads to 20 percent of value to us, then the return on this time is only 20 divided by 80, or 25 percent. The issue is not time, but what we do with it. We can get a paltry 25 percent return on our time, or 400 percent.

• If we are self-employed and spend two days a week on our most valuable type of activity, we should be able to get 160 percent of the value that used to take five days to generate ”and still have three days left over for whatever we want.

• We can sharply boost the quality of our lives by changing our use of time. If we do more of the few things that make us happy and productive, and much less of the many activities that take most of our time but don t lead to high levels of happiness or achievement, we can improve our lives in a sensational way ” all with less effort!

• We normally experience good time, which is short, and bad time, which is long. What if we switch them? If we make the good time long and the bad time short, we revolutionize our lives.

Of course, happiness and personal effectiveness can t be measured precisely. The 80/20 numbers are approximate. Still, multiplying the value of our time by four ” a good rule of thumb ” is like living to be 320 instead of 80, without any of the disadvantages of old age!