What do you do with 1440?

There’s a really cool thought exercise when it comes to understanding time. You may be aware of but in case you aren’t, it goes like this:

Let’s say every day you had $1,440 in your bank account when you woke up. But by the end of the day, that bank account would be wiped to $0. What would you do?

Most people would say that they would spend it asap. Well, you have 1,440 minutes every day. So with the same passion of spending $1,440, you should ensure you spend your time meaningfully in the same way.

It’s an interesting concept. It helps you appreciate the “bank of time” and try to maximize it as much as possible. But I’d like to go one step further.

Let’s say you sleep 8 hours a day. This would mean that you have about 960 minutes a day. Let’s round it out to 1,000 minutes a day. Where do you spend these minutes? Do you have an accurate “accounting” of them?

If you do an accurate accounting of your minutes, it would certainly reflect your life. It would reflect your investment in yourself, your job, your family. It would reflect the choices you’ve made on how to build your future. It’s a very good exercise. But I’d like to go one step further.

What you do is important. But how often have you done an accounting of what you think? That’s a challenging task because a lot of people think all the time. “Dr. Eric, what exactly do you mean?”

If you take an accounting of your thoughts with minutes as the unit of measurement, how much time do you spend with positive thoughts? How much time do you spend with negative? How much time do you spend problem solving? How much time do you spend in fear, anxiety, worry? How much time is constructive? How much time is actually destructive? How much time do you spend complaining? How much time do you give yourself for expansive thinking?

Imagine someone who spends 80% of their thinking time in negative thinking, worry, complaining and 20% solving problems. Compare that person who spend 80% of their thinking time solving problems and 20% time with fear/anxiety/worry? Which one will be able to grow?

Is a 100% positive mindset, problem-solving, and expansive thinking the key to High Performance and growth? Sure, as long as it doesn’t distort reality. But that’s a story for another day.