What is the most important thing you have at your disposal? The most valuable thing that you have?

Some would say: my family, my home, my job, my car, my bank account, my pets etc and so on.

Dear reader…all of those answers are…not correct.

The absolute most valuable thing that any of us have as human beings is TIME.

Yes, time. Those 24 hours on a clock that all of us get, each and every day, is the absolute most precious commodity you have.

It is also the ONE thing that every person in the world has the same exact amount of, regardless of gender, color, race, creed, height, weight, talent, social status, etc. Yes, you have the same 24 hours in each day as Warren Buffett, or Beyoncé, or the guy who made your coffee this morning at Starbucks. In fact, I would venture to say that time is pretty much the only aspect of our lives as humans where we are all truly equal.

Think about that for a moment. Even if you had all the money in the world, you cannot buy yourself more time. Even if you were the smartest scientist in the world, you could not invent more hours in a day. There’s no way to cheat it or trick it, either. You get what you get.

Given that 24 hours a day is really not THAT long of a time – it’s pretty amazing how as human beings we sometimes waste a huge amount of those precious hours on things that are trivial in the grand scheme of your life. Ironically, we then sometimes later complain that we ran out of time to do important things when it reality, we had that time all along. We just didn’t use it to our advantage.

An example: most everyone can find an hour to mindlessly scroll through social media or watch a TV show, but finding time to tackle things like learning a new skill or searching for a better job, or even doing something that will help us be healthier eludes us.

One thing that I have found that has helped me tremendously in leveraging my time better is having a list of goals. Short term goals, long term goals, daily goals….however you want to organize them is up to you as long as you list them AND set a deadline. The deadline part…that’s where learning to use time to your advantage is a critical step. When you know you have a goal to meet – and you take those goals seriously – you know you HAVE to use your time wisely. You can’t let yourself fall into a rabbit hole for 2 hours looking at the Instagram feed of your neighbor’s sister’s ex mailman who races dwarf hamsters on unicycles. Because while that sounds fascinating and adorable…that will not get you closer to your goals. Using those 2 hours GETTING THINGS DONE will. Know what I mean?

Friends…time can be your best ally or your biggest enemy. It’s up to you on which you want it to be. Partner with time and use it to get the most out of life. It’s right there waiting for you.