Overtime

Excellence happens over time. It often takes overtime to get there. And greatness is most often found in things you’re passionate about because when you find that one thing you really care about it takes over your time.

How you spend your evenings and weekends says a lot about you, probably more than how you spend your mid-mornings and days. The idea of 1000 minutes of productivity a day comes to mind.

Every day had 1440 minutes. 440 minutes is 7h20m for sleep leaving you with 1000 minutes or 16h40m of potential to work on things. Almost everyone I know doesn’t spend 1000 minutes working on anything for any meaningful number of days, but I also don’t know any billionaires, olympians, or really that many people that are operating in pole position.

1000 minutes also means 8h40 minutes of overtime relative to the typical 40 hour work week or 8 hour day that was popularized by Henry Ford in 1926.

It’s those hours of overtime that really define what you can do with your efforts and it’s those hours that often shape your identity. If you’re working during those hours, it’s more than likely that your identity is wrapped up in your job. If you play tennis in those hours, you’ll probably also identify as a Tennis player etc.

Every day we have another opportunity to change our identity or to build new layers with our 1000 minutes. It can feel encouraging, and wholly exhausting all within the same day. But that’s okay because you get another 1000 tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.