When it’s the right thing, you don’t need that much of it

One of my best friends spent three years living in paradise.

His construction company posted a job opening for a gig out on the islands, right around the time he was craving a change in scenery from city living. He put in his request, did a few interviews, got the transfer and uprooted his life.

Honolulu, here we come baby. Aloha!

Once he got settled, we spoke on the phone. And my first thought was:

Wow, it must be hard to go into work each day with all that amazing landscape around you.

My friend disagreed:

Hawaii’s recreation is so good, you don’t need that much of it. All of your desires are fulfilled in a highly compressed time period. When you go surfing on the best beaches on the planet, or go hiking around a volcano in the pouring rain, the half life of that experience lasts for days. It carries you for the entire week.

Sounds like paradise to me.

My friend’s story reminds me of the classic twelve step mantra, you can never get enough what’s not working.

Hawaii proves the opposite. When it’s the right thing, you don’t need that much of it.

It’s basically a form of applied relativity. Einstein’s theory proved that time expands or contracts according to our perception of it. Intention before doing something plus attention during that thing determines how long the experience lasts. Time ultimately becomes a function of how we choose to occupy the space we find ourselves in. Motion of one object is always relative to the motion of everything else around it.

Translation, if you’re spending five minutes doing something deeply meaningful to you, that time has greater cash value to your life than spending fifty minutes doing something that’s soul sucking for you.

Forget about the time value of money, this is the time value of meaning.

That’s why the happiest and most prolific people in the world don’t have to do lists. They understand how to focus on a few high value priorities that leverage their core talents and produce disproportionate results with the least amount of effort.

There’s really nothing to remember, write down, keep track of or cross off any list.

Doesn’t that sound like paradise to you? Do you know which five activities in your life have the highest ratio of results to effort?

If not, my recommendation is to spend some time doing existential calculations. Figure out the right things that you don’t need that much of to be fulfilled. You’ll discover the benefit earned from making meaning is vastly more valuable than other activity you could do. And that there is no relationship between total time spent and fulfillment received.

An hour of your life might achieve something that’s an order of magnitude more valuable than anything else you could have done.

Aloha, brah!

How many items on your to do list could go undone with little effect on your life ninety days from now?