The book 📚 I hate myself for not reading sooner

I am, I believe, a moderately creative person and have been looking to get better at it for as long as I can remember, in this regard I have read some stuff, watched a lot of videos and practiced it here and there as and when I can, from poems to shayaris to short stories to pieces of music, to whatever interesting I could get my hands on, I was though a lousy reader and substituted most of my reading, especially if it were long books, to short summaries, YouTube videos and other alternatives, I just didn’t want to read long stuff, a grave mistake I now understand.

Recently, since reading this, Mr. Mattis, has haunted my dreams holding placards reading “More than 30 years in and you still are illiterate, how does it feel??” That is when I took reading more seriously and I am thankful that I did.

The journey, I chose my books to lead me into, was of productivity and life in general.

I started with a few books and then got to something, something amazing, the joy of discovering this book was that of finding some sort of a buried treasure 🪙 I was happy, I found it in just a few shovel strikes but angry and disgusted at myself because I started digging after three decades of my life. You should really start soon.

The book I got my hands on was “Someday Is Today: 22 Simple, Actionable Ways to Propel Your Creative Life, by Matthew Dicks.”

Now it is a great book overall but this post is dedicated to the time saving mantra that it taught me. Since reading the book 📖 I have recommended it to almost everyone I have crossed path with, my wife, my sister, my students, my landlord, my 2 year old daughter although she didn’t respond well to my recommendation.

Since reading the book I have been labelled as a lunatic on various occasions by my wife, as for the last month or so whenever, I  perform any task I always have a stopwatch by my side, I  time any task in order to be more time efficient, perform it faster and to save time, even if it is just a minute I have understood post the book that everything adds up even if I save a minute each day it amounts to over 6 hours per year, but I do perform more than one task each day, most of us do so we can save over an hour each day.

Now it is a great read, I had many moments of realisation all through the book, I understand relationships, responsibilities a little better now, or at least I think I do, my wife though, may disagree with this statement, but the best thing that book did was, change my perception of time ⏰ fundamentally, while reading it I discovered how my day can have a few extra hours, as of two weeks following the philosophy of the book I believe I virtually have 1 to 1.5 extra hours on my clock on a regular basis, I kinda can do a lot more than what I believed I could in a day because my day now has an extra hour.

Finding the extra hour or maybe more

The biggest chunk of time I was able to find was when I stopped taking my phone to the restroom 🚻 the time I saved with that one move was gigantic, about 20 minutes each day and this amounts to a little over 5 days over a year, this is how I have been saving bits and pieces of time and it is a great habit now I know. Dr. Andrew Huberman also in one of his podcast episodes talks a bit about this scenario and asks the listeners to avoid using phones in the restrooms.

Everything is going great, as of now I am just left with trying to eliminate using the stopwatch ⏱️ for every task possible. It is fun though a race against time to save time.

Fix your sleep

Increase your effective sleep time 💤, to save time, I had this habit of using the phone at night when I was in bed till the time I get drowsy and slept, that increased my time on bed, a time I could have used for either resting my body or doing something productive and the quality of sleep I got was not good my smart watch could vouch for that. Watch a lot of Dr. Huberman, reading that book and some stoic philosophy, I understood the importance of dimming my night light exposure and that also meant not using my phone at least 1 hour before sleep. The book asked the reader to fall asleep within a small frame of time after laying in bed, for me since the last 2 weeks the latency between me on the bed and me asleep is about 5 minutes. I prefer using brown or green noise when I sleep, as I find it more relaxing however brown I prefer over green. By reducing the time I take to go to sleep I can have a quality 7 hours sleep and still get up at around 5:30, 1.5 hours before my regular wake up time since the last three days I am getting up before the alarm goes off 📴. 1.5 hours of the morning now spent on physical exercise, meditation, planning of my day and other stuff instead of snoring. (The benefits of meditation are documented in a previous post). That routine is promising and I am happy I follow that everyday (even on weekends).

You have time, what now??

So, I save about 2+ hours each day minute by minute. What can I do with them?? Essentially anything I want, “Someday is today” talks about how we can be productive in these little pockets of 10 minutes we have every now and then, like right now, I am writing this while waiting for my wife to finish dressing our daughter up, before we leave for work.

Family guy

The book along with some Stoic philosophy I’ve read talks about spending time with family. We think we spend a lot of time with family, but we really don’t. Most of the times we are there around them, sitting in the same room maybe watching the same T.V. even, or together at the dinner table, but are we really there in the moment savoring it or are we in our screens scrolling social media or may be YouTube there but not there at the same time.

My daughter will grow up in a blink of an eye, my mother will keep waiting for that one call, my wife would crave some nice REAL family time with the both of us a time when we are not binging on Netflix and actually enjoying the moment, time flies and you can’t really put your running shoes on and catch it. Spend it wisely, choose who to spend it with wisely. I have it here I have it now, should I not cease the moment, because bit by bit, second by second time is slipping away without me noticing it, without me enjoying it. since reading the book been more aware of this, I can guarantee I am happier, and at more peace with myself post making this a regular habit, I am there in the moment and it feels great, I would steal more time if I could to spend all of it with my loved ones, being happy and at peace, lowers my stress and anxiety in turn making me a better person a more productive person.

Learn and explore

When we have time on our hands we should be looking to spend it productively, with 2 extra hours to kill I have taken to writing this blog, falling in love with music again, meditation, I am more physically active, I am also thinking about learning ukulele or maybe taking up swimming, or any other thing I find interesting, I am more open to trying new things now than ever before because I have time.

Conclusion

The book in parts has essentially taught me how to live my life to the fullest in every possible way, how to be happy, more productive and explore every possible path that life shows me. There is a lot more in the book that is yet to be discussed. I however would really want you to embark on that journey by yourself, it is a great journey though, at least I thought so, I had a smile almost through the complete book. I once made a promise to me that I won’t write ✍️ anymore a grave mistake again, the book showed me the true meaning of being creative, working in an organised way and how to still enjoy life to the fullest with all that on your plate, it got me into the happiest patch of my life and I guarantee that this patch is here to stay, and I wish the same for you.