You’ll quite often hear that time is the most valuable resource. I disagree.

Unlike, say, money or strength, everybody's exactly got the same amount of time. I don’t mean lifespan, but hours per day. No matter how you behave, you still get 24 hours a day, just like Elon Musk or Beyonce or the homeless dude down the street.

How you spend that time is the most important metric, but it's not about the amount of time you have available.

Instead of time, I encourage you to think of what I call bandwidth, which is the amount of YOU that is available at any given moment.

If you’re present, focused, energized, and confident, you have HIGH bandwidth. You’ll be good at making decisions, easy to connect with, and generally productive in living by your values and creating a great life for yourself.

If you’re stressed, future- or past-focused, suffering from low self-worth, or catastrophizing about unimportant data, then you have LOW bandwidth. You’re likely to compound your misery with short-sighted strategies, impulsive emotional decisions, and poor social behaviour.

You can have a lot of time available but poor bandwidth, meaning you won’t make good use of that time. Yet with great bandwidth, you can squeeze massive results out of even the tiniest windows of opportunity.

Most people, in my opinion, are just too busy doing shit that doesn't matter and panicking about things they can’t control or shouldn’t care about, and it uses up all their bandwidth.

They're worrying about things that aren't currently happening or even likely to happen. They're doing things that aren't important or value-aligned. They neglect their health. It just uses up all of their available headspace, which leads them to waste time.

If you think of yourself as a brain with limited daily bandwidth, with a scarce amount of energy and attention for what matters, and then ruthlessly allocate this resource accordingly, you’ll create a meaningful and valuable life.

For more on this topic, check out my video/podcast “Having an Effective Attitude”:

https://theinspirationallifestyle.com/having-an-effective-attitude/

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