For the most part, life is like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel — you can be anything you want to be, meet anybody you want to meet, and live anywhere you want to live.
But achieving any of these goals is going to take effort, dedication, and hard work; much like a video game, you may need to grind before your next “level up.” The good news is that there are many other people around you who are happy to help you succeed any way they can. In many cases, then, the problem isn’t a lack of effort, dedication, or teamwork; the challenge is having enough time to work towards our goals.
By the time we find our passion in life, many of us are already locked into a college major or have a full-time job supporting our family, mortgage, or lifestyle. We wake up, go to work, come home, then go to bed exhausted. We rinse and repeat the habit for five days and celebrate a weekend in which we have no energy. It seems there’s always something holding us back.
So how do we break the cycle? How do find time to start that elusive side hustle? Hint: Find your four minutes.
My four minutes
In a previous career, I worked as a software engineer for a scientific research company. The company was knee-deep in space research carrying out large-scale experiments. Each experiment resulted in petabytes of data; the data would then be handed over to me for processing and analysis. My job was to build a customized algorithm to find hidden relationships lying within the data.
Early on, the algorithm required constant attention and care; as pieces of the code came together, I would test the code base using small subsets of the data and fix the pieces that were broken. But as the code grew, so did the datasets I would examine. Eventually, my one second of wait time had grown considerably. With little else to do, I began counting the minutes between each computation cycle. Each time I ran my code, I had nearly four minutes of down time, in which I could neither leave my desk nor actively work on my code. Why not use the time (slowly) developing something for my own future?
Five thousand minutes
Four minutes may not seem like a long time until you account for the multiplication factor. Let’s say I run my code five times per day. With four minutes of down time per run, I’d effectively have 20 minutes per day (or 100 minutes each week) to work on a side project. Given that my analysis would take more than a year to complete, over the course of a year I would accumulate nearly 5000 minutes — or 3.5 days — to build up a side project, four minutes at a time.
Keep in mind, these aren’t three and a half working days…these are three and a half full, undisturbed, 24-hour days. Additionally, each of the four minute windows occur during your work day; this means you’re likely not spending the time eating, sleeping, or using the restroom…you’re awake, alert, and motivated. In those four minutes, there’s so much you can do. You can begin building a website, submit paperwork to found your own LLC, or even begin writing blog articles piece-wise. You can formulate a study plan, find valuable resources, or identify an online university with your desired program. You can build connections on LinkedIn or start a collaborative conversation.
There are two additional perks of working on a side project in short time increments: (1) you’re forced to break down large projects into smaller bitesize issues, and (2) there’s an sense of pride in which little task you accomplish. While you cannot expect to accomplish any major milestones within any one time window, you can begin to think about and tackle problems in the future. At the end of the day, any progress is good progress.
Conclusion
Laozi said it best: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Making a change for yourself in the future means putting in effort today. No matter how small the time increment, a little bit of progress along the way can add up to a truly staggering feat of accomplishment. There are others around you who are happy to help, but nobody will do the work for you.
If you find yourself struggling to describe your results to others along the way, Present Proper can help. We work with you to ensure your accomplishments and your hard work get the recognition they deserve. We can’t do the work for you, but we support you every step of the way. YOU CAN DO THIS. Believe in yourself…we do!
Present clearly. Present concisely. Present Proper.