You can spend it watching an episode of your favourite TV series.

You can spend it just lazing around.

You can spend it working out.

You can spend it honing your foreign language skills. 

You can spend it just surfing aimlessly–something I’m guilty of often, unfortunately .

So.

What is one thing that, if you’d just spend 30 minutes every day doing it, will change your life SIGNIFICANTLY? A lot of major achievements are not about one-time big major effort. Many of them are the fruits of sustained effort over a long period of time. Picking up a foreign language is one example. Your health is another. Relationship with people is yet another example. 

For me, it’s exercise. I know that if I spend 30 minutes everyday on intense workout, my body and my health will be significantly better. It’s just that it’s difficult to follow through with it sometimes. 

What is your one significant, life-changing, 30-minute every day thing?

I’m aiming to improve my average typing speed to 90 wpm using this fun website. You always can get somebody to race with. Fun!

(UPDATE: And 83 races later, my average has improved to 90 wpm. TypeRacer works! I’m shooting towards 100wpm now.)

Go ahead and read many other interesting facts about how the greatest athletes, musicians, dancers, actors/actresses, and even statesmen handled failures and kept going towards greatness anyway in But They Did Not Give Up.

But lately, since I spent some time listening to Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy, I’ve found one absolutely fail proof way of having enough time to do anything you want. I’ll share it with you now. Ready? This is it:

“You have to really, really want it.”

Yes.

That’s it. As simple as that. Seriously.

If you delay doing something for months because you “don’t have enough time”, then let’s face it, you just don’t want it badly enough. In which case you’d better just acknowledge it to yourself, accept the idea that you don’t want to do it that much, and go on with your life with one less baggage in your mind. 

On the other hand, if you really, really want something, trust me, heck, no, trust yourself, you will make time for it. You will create a timeslot within your schedule, no matter how busy, to do it. 

See, there is a difference between (a) the things that you genuinely want, and (b) the things that you think you want, or you think you should want. For things in category (a), come hell or high water, you will make time. You will postpone other things so that category (a) can get done. It’s those things in category (b) that you never seem to have time for.  

Don’t believe me? Fine. Read on.

How to tell whether a person likes you or not

Remember the last time you were pursuing a girl? You asked her out for a date, and she said she couldn’t make it, but she was apologetic and really nice about it.

Man, what a dilemma we were in, right? If she was obnoxious and rude, then it was really easy to tell, she didn’t like you, period. But she was so nice, and her apology sounded really sincere, so maybe she really couldn’t make it to the date but she actually liked you and really wanted to go out with you, right? So how could you tell?

There’s one very simple way: watch what she does.

If she proposes another time/place, then yes, she does want to go out with you.

If she’s being very nice about it and very apologetic, but she doesn’t propose another time, forget it. She’s just not that much into you.

This applies to guys as well, ladies. In a lot of things, what a person says is meaningless. What matters is what he or she actually does. 

Having enough time

So, think again of the time when you were doing something you really liked. Let’s say, for the gamers among us, World of Warcraft. Or, for the older gamers like me, Diablo II.

Ever stayed up all night playing till the morning? Did you have something else that you should have been doing instead? Bet you did. But we played anyway because we really wanted it, didn’t we? All those homework and exams just slipped away from our awareness in the face of the mighty Diablo, didn’t they? All for the simple reason: at that time, there was nothing else in the world we wanted more than playing Diablo. Not even sleeping or eating! 

Now that I have a family, I don’t play games that much anymore. But this is out of my voluntary choosing. I guess I just don’t like playing game as much as I did 10 years ago. I want to spend time with my family more. 

Another of those “I think I should do this” thing that never gets done: for years now I’ve been trying to learn a certain foreign language. In the end I’ve always given up. I used to think that I gave up because I didn’t have enough time. But looking back, I was lying to myself of course. For countless nights I was watching TV instead of learning the language. For hundreds of train rides I was reading a novel instead of reading materials in that language. For thousands of hours I was listening to music instead of the instructional tapes.

I just don’t want to learn that language that badly, I guess. But hey. At least I’m honest with myself. 

The conclusion

Some of us, have truly legitimate reasons for not having enough time or not being able to spend time to do something. Perhaps you are working 14 hours per day for your family’s survival. Perhaps you’re in a country where you will be shot if you do the activity you want. For you, I wish you the best of luck. I hope you will be able to do something that you really want soon.

But for the rest of us, 99.99999% of the time, there’s no such thing as “not having enough time”. There’s only “I just don’t want to do this badly enough to make the time to do it”.

One day, just by pure chance, I came across Steve Pavlina‘s website. There I found my answer in one of his super money gold posts. Quoting from that post, the reason why habits don’t stick is: “… we often psyche ourselves out of getting started by mentally thinking about the change as something permanent — before we’ve even begun. It seems too overwhelming to think about making a big change and sticking with it every day for the rest of your life when you’re still habituated to doing the opposite.”

Permanent change is hard. Heck, even now I think the prospect of exercising everyday till I die doesn’t sound so good either.

But… what if we can quit? Again, quoted from his post: “But what if you thought about making the change only temporarily — say for 30 days — and then you’re free to go back to your old habits? That doesn’t seem so hard anymore. Exercise daily for just 30 days, then quit. Maintain a neatly organized desk for 30 days, then slack off. Read for an hour a day for 30 days, then go back to watching TV.”

That doesn’t seem so hard anymore!

The Result

And you know what? That seemingly trivial, even a bit silly, mental trick WORKS. For the first time in my life, I could actually exercise every day for 30 days, with minimum numbers of off day. Right away after that, I decided to start a 60-Day Trial. Same result, pretty much the habit sticks now. I just finished my 60th day, and after a break of 4 days, I’m on a 90-Day Trial now.

Didn’t know it’d be this easy! Steve Pavlina is a genius. Please, do yourself a favor and read his post: “30 Days to Success“. It can potentially change your life!