Let’s debunk a shitty motivational platitude, shall we?
“We all have the same 24 hours in a day.”
This trite adage is meant to motivate the lazy. It’s meant to erase the excuse “I don’t have time,” to convince us that the only thing separating us from the most successful people in the world is how we spend our allotted twenty-four hours every day.
The result, at least for this Bitch, is that I sometimes find myself frustrated and cranky because I couldn’t complete all my goals in a single day.
I begin my twenty-four hours with the goal to finish three major projects at work, read fifty pages of a novel before bed, get a workout in, walk the dog, weed the garden, write an article for the blog, edit a chapter of a freelance project, mop the kitchen floor, schedule dinner and hanging out with three other couples, paint a bookshelf for my friend’s nursery, and call United Airlines in the vain hope that for once in their miserable existence they’ll treat a customer with reasonable compassion.
And when I’ve failed to complete all these goals in a single day, I beat myself up for not being efficient enough. For clearly there are successful people out there achieving all of their goals in the same amount of time, right? We all have the same twenty-four hours, after all!
To be successful, you just need to optimize your time! Work smarter, not harder! Stop wasting time and use your twenty-four hours just like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk! Sort out your priorities and get shit done! If Sheryl Sandberg can do it in twenty-four hours, then by all that’s holy, so can you!
Which is, of course, complete and utter bullshit.
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