Creating Success from the Inside Out: Develop The Focus and Strategy To Uncover the Life You Want

II.3. Excuse Number Two: I Don't Have the Time

After lack of capital, lack of time is probably the most-often heard excuse for not doing the things that need to be done in our lives. Feeling too crunched for time to take on anything new. Of not having enough time. Or rather, the perception of not having the time: Not having time to get the house painted, no time to exercise, not taking our spouse on dates, not starting our own business, and on and on.

It's also a major excuse that holds individuals and families back from ever realizing their full potential and keeps us from our dreams. The reality is that the busiest people often are the ones who can get the most done with the time they have. And they have exactly the same amount of time as you and I:

We all have 24 hours in every day; 168 hours each week; 52 weeks in a year; 525,600 minutes every year.

I don't get one minute more than you. We all have the exact same number of hours in each day—no more, no less. It's how we manage our minutes and hours that counts. Just like managing our money, managing our time frees us up. Overextending our commitments on our calendars, and wasting "free time" in low-quality ways, buries us emotionally and keeps us too tied up and wiped out to pursue our dreams.

No matter how you look at the finite amount of time we all receive, it is our own responsibility to maximize every second of every minute of every day of our lives. But managing time takes discipline. So perhaps it is the lack of discipline ...