Effort should be withheld for pursuits worth taking

I want to start with this very simple rule first of all just to explain further my rationale for saying what I am about to say. Most things in life that are worth achieving require a certain degree of effort. For example if you are to be an expert in a certain area you require at least 10,000 hours of undivided practice and attention in that particular field. Now with regards to the rest of the world that would be deemed as effort, because that is exactly what it is. Has anyone bothered to check the math of 10,000 hours though? 10,000 hours / 8 working hours which you can maximally devote to it = 1250 days. Divide that by 365 = 3.42 years of every day practice. If we consider weekends and the fact that it requires undivided attention to become an expert in the thing that you want to excel in, the answer is probably closer to 5 years+.

Now, you see that is the root of the problem right there. That means that for every single thing that you want to be great at, you need about 5 years of practice.

That means of course that your time spent on things that you want to excel in, is limited. Especially if the particular field that you want to excel in is outside the scope of your every day work. It makes expertise in that field almost impossible outside of your job or perhaps simply makes it that much harder to achieve. Therefore there is a huge problem with effort and it needs to be applied where you need to apply it. Efforts put to waste are mainly a problem that most of us suffer by. Short attention spans, a variety of interests, youth and inexperience are not a great recipe for achieving excellence. Therefore the effort you apply in areas of your life that you think need improving should be well calculated. Don’t let your hours go to waste.

Many people here read about and perhaps practice game. Others write about their experiences and some others try to give life altering advice. What I want to remind everyone is that the problem with effort is that it takes away one of your most valuable commodities and that is time.

Therefore if you need any more motivation to be able to ignore those women in your life that give you headaches; if you want some way in which you can push yourself away from people that are toxic to you; if you really want to improve yourself but keep getting site tracked by other things, remember this: Effort means time. And that commodity is very finite.

Conclusion

One of the main things that improved my life is reprioritising my goals. Realising that time for me, even in my late 20s is a finite commodity that I should take full advantage off pushed me on doing the things I actually wanted to do. If you are able to think in this way then you will find a way to ditch people, ditch time-wasting activities and focus. It’s about time we focused on the things that matter to us.