4 Genius Strategies to Stop Time and Live Longer Than Everyone Else
How to live 1,000 lifetimes in one decade.
Most people are guilty of saying that awful phrase:
“Wow! Time flies!”
I was just invited to my high school’s 10-year reunion. Many of the comments on the group page sounded the same.
“I can’t believe it’s already here!”
“Where did the time go!?”
“It feels like we just graduated yesterday!”
“Wow! Time flies!”
I think the reason why I hate this phrase so much is because it’s admitting that the past “long time” was kind of a blur to you. You spent so much time on forgettable activities that you don’t really remember much.
It’s so common. It’s cliché. It’s what the “average” person says.
And in the words of Seth Godin:
“Is there a difference between ‘average’ and ‘mediocre?’ Not so much.”
If you want, you can make time stand still.
There are countless people today that have lived hundreds of years in the past decade. These are people like Tony Robbins, Kendrick Lamar, Elon Musk, and Beyoncé.
These individuals move so quickly through time, you almost can’t even see them. They’re a blur. For them, a typical “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” happens almost every week, endlessly.
These people are a mental age of 1,000 years old.
You can have that, too.
You can live a life where your waking moments are vivid, vibrant, and memorable. Days and months might speed on by for everyone else, but you can choose to, as the saying goes, become “an old man in a young man’s body” by seizing time for yourself.
Anyone can do it.
Here are 4 genius strategies how to stop time and live 1,000 lifetimes.
1. Become “Results-Oriented” Instead of “Busyness-Oriented”
Most people are “busyness-oriented.”
Being busyness-oriented means you perceive being “busy” as more important than actually achieving results.
Sadly, this is how most 9–5 jobs work. If you’re in a system where you get paid more based on how long it takes to finish, you become busyness-oriented.
Since you get more money for more time, the obvious answer is: be busy.
The results don’t matter — the money does. Even if that means prolonging the result.
On the other hand, a results-oriented mindset ignores time altogether. Being results-oriented focuses completely on getting results as fast as possible.
Instead of being told “I want you to complete this project in 3 months,” you try like hell to finish the job as fast as possible. Busyness is the enemy. If you’re not directly working on the solution, you’re wasting precious time and effort.
When you adopt a results-oriented mindset, you can accomplish your tasks tens and (more likely) hundreds of times faster than most people.
“The truth is that if you want to achieve your most signifiant goals, and you want to change the world for the better in the process, you really don’t need to jump through all the hoops that people build up for you.” -Chris Guillebeau
How fast do you think someone could eat a 72oz steak? This woman did it in 3 minutes.
Someone beat the iconic Super Mario Bros. (a game that normally takes dozens of hours to beat) in under 5 minutes.
This man mowed grass twice as fast with a scythe as an opponent did with a modern lawnmower.
These examples are a little silly, I know. But they prove a critical point:
Tasks that are commonly believed to take a long time could be completed in mere minutes by a results-oriented individual.
This is how to make time stand still.
By changing your mindset to focus entirely on getting results, you make time work for you. Time will seem to slow down, and you’ll speed up.
You’ll start accomplishing massive tasks every few days that usually take most people months or years.
“A person choosing to spend large portions of time in an unsatisfying job in order to make ends meet is on a fast track to his deathbed. Time will move increasingly faster as a result of his slow pace — the relativity of time.” -Benjamin Hardy
2. Think About Your Death — and Everyone Else’s — Often
“Every third thought shall be my grave.” -Prospero, The Tempest
You are closer to your death than you think.
That’s a good thing.
Let’s imagine two fathers. One consistently (not obsessively, but occasionally) thinks of his young daughter’s potential death. The second father never has such thoughts.
The first father would undoubtedly be horrified and broken at the thought of his loved one dying. The thought is powerful and haunting.
As such, it would be natural for him to respond by valuing his daughter’s time more. He would likely become more focused on her while they’re spending quality time together. Their relationship would likely become deeper, more intimate, and more full.
The second dad never thinks about his daughter passing away.
Like so many fathers, he will probably begin to take his daughter for granted. For him, the time he spends with her might just be yet another hour in the monotony of life. He might not even turn his head from the T.V. when she walks in from school.
When you think about your or a loved one’s eventual death, life’s minutiae evaporates away. Your boss doesn’t matter. Your credit score doesn’t matter. Your job doesn’t really matter. Money isn’t that important. Time slows down.
This is called “negative visualization.” Once you imagine the possibility of losing something, the things that really matter are seen with crystal clarity.
The first father might spend more quality time with his daughter in 60 minutes than the second father could in a week.
Imagine that over 10 years.
When you see life this way, time stands still. When you spend your time focusing only on what is most important, life becomes longer and fuller.
For me, contemplating my eventual death might sound morbid, but it’s not. It’s comforting. It’s invigorating. It’s revitalizing.
3. Make a Time Slot Chart
This is a picture of iconic vlogger Casey Neistat’s schedule.
I freaking love this.
Every single hour of a 24-hour day is accounted for in a simple chart. It’s also not incomparably difficult to an “average person’s” schedule. He has plenty of time for free time, sleep, work, exercise, family, and fun.
For most people, hours go by like dollars in a paycheck; by the end of the month, most people can’t tell you where all their money (or time) has gone.
Just like you can make a budget for dollars to see where your money goes, you need to make a budget for your hours. This is the single easiest way to instantly create substantially more time — plan your day.
“Never begin a day until it’s written on paper.” -Jim Rohn
Here’s an example of a typical morning for me. Notice how tasks are broken down to even the 5-minute mark, and even things like brushing your teeth get a line.
I have 4 hours before I usually need to leave for work in the morning. Oftentimes, I complete 5x — 10x more results in one morning than I ever did over an entire week before this schedule.
If I keep this up, I will accomplish tens and hundreds of times more than the “average” individual who has no time discipline.
Make a chart. The hours will start pouring in. Life will become much longer and fuller, very quickly.
4. Spend a Supermajority of Your Time on “Hell Yeah!” Activities
“If it’s not a ‘Hell Yeah!’ it’s a no.” -Derek Sivers
You need to start saying “no” to almost everything.
Most people say yes to just about everything. Jobs, friends, dating partners, the food in front of them, requests for their time, etc.
But by spending the majority of your time on these “good-not-great” opportunities, you ensure life passes by quicker with less memorable moments.
The reason life passes so quickly for most people is because they consistently spend the majority of their time on unimportant tasks.
In the big picture, these activities become a blur; they were never that important.
Here are some of the biggest time-wasters:
- Hanging out with the wrong people
- Social media
- Multitasking
- Being jealous of others
- Mediocre side-projects
- Unfulfilling full-time jobs that just “pay the bills”
- Sleeping in
Not only do these tasks prevent you from participating in activities that make you say, “Hell yeah!” and let you enter a “flow” state; they drain energy exponentially.
Pretty soon, you’ll realize you’ve spent hundreds of hours over the past 24 months on people, projects, and obligations that are, frankly, a waste of time.
In order to make time stand still, you need to start saying “no” to almost everything.
Instead, only say yes to incredible opportunities that fill you with excitement.
While everyone around you is shortening their lives by saying, “Sure, that could be fun” or “Yeah, let’s see how this goes,” you can ensure you live longer and better.
Only commit to that which directly develops the legacy you want to create.
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” -Warren Buffet
4 Ways To Speed Up the Process:
Now that we’ve covered four strategies to stop time and live a longer and fuller life, here are four tactics to achieve your results faster.
1. Read a Ton of Books
Most people don’t read books. It’s a main reason why they remain mediocre.
In a recent poll, one in four Americans admitted they hadn’t read a single book in the past 12 months. The average is four books a year.
In 5 years, the individual who has read dozens of books will be decades older (mentally) than the individual who never read at all.
Books present us with the best, most potent, and most important lessons history’s greatest thinkers discovered.
By absorbing the wisdom and instructions given to us through books, we gain new weapons, strategies, and shortcuts to living a more meaningful life now than most 80-year olds ever will.
2. Don’t Get Into Debt
We don’t pay for things with money, we pay for things with hours of our life.
Most of us have an income that is directly related to how much time we worked. If you work 40 hours this week, you receive “X” dollars. If you work 35 hours, you receive slightly less than “X.”
When you buy that $4,000 HD TV, you’re not really paying $4,000 dollars.
You’re paying 3–6 months of time that it takes to earn that.
Think of debt as future hours of your life that are already spoken for. The individual who has $100,000 in debt can only pay off his debtor with hours of life over many years.
The less debt you have, the more time you give yourself to do what really matters.
“Sadly, people today not only spend the time they have, they also spend away their futures. To accrue debt is to sell away our future time.” -Benjamin Hardy
3. Fail As Fast/As Much As You Can
“If someone is better at something than you are, it’s likely they’ve failed at it more times than you have.” -Seth Godin
Most people will never achieve the life they want because they are unwilling to fail. The embarrassment, shame, and broken confidence is too high a price.
But if you want to achieve something extraordinary, you need to produce a massive quantity of work.
By failing as much/as fast as we can, we ensure we stay on the fastest route to achieving our goal. No one is incredible at first. But you’ll never learn if you always prioritize being liked and appearing successful over actually learning.
Fail fast. Fail often.
In the words of Ernest Hemingway, “Everyone’s first draft is shit.”
By simply humbling yourself and embracing failure on the way to success, you’ll arrive faster than anybody else.
4. Engage in Deep Work
Prolific science fiction novelist Neal Stephenson once said,
“If I organize my life in such a way that I get lots of long, consecutive, uninterrupted time-chunks, I can write novels. But as those chunks get separated and fragmented, my productivity as a novelist drops spectacularly.”
Most people engage in what could be called “shallow work” — interrupted, unfocused, haphazard production. They take a full 8 hours to finish what could be completed in 30 minutes, if they only focused their time.
If you want to live longer and stop time, engage in deep work.
In the words of Cal Newport in his book Deep Work: Rules For Focused Success in a Distracted World, he describes “deep” work as “top-tier results only able to be produced by long, uninterrupted periods of deep concentration.”
When you engage in deep work, you begin completing tasks in minutes that take other people days. You can 10x or even 100x your output in a fraction of the time — if you only spend focused, uninterrupted, diligent time doing so.
“What if you could live and breathe every moment of your 80 year life in the first 25 — thus extending your earthly possibilities by 55 years?” -Benjamin Hardy
In Conclusion
“The largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose.” Seneca
Time can move as fast (or slow) as you want it to.
Most people will be remarking, “Wow, time flies!” for the rest of their life. They will never cultivate the mental discipline to create a structured schedule, an “hours” budget, or commit to only working on tasks that are truly important.
This is how to make life pass by in a flash — do things that do not matter.
Don’t bother creating a schedule. Forget about developing discipline on where you spend your time. Say yes to whatever lands on your lap.
But if you want to make time stand still and live 1,000 lifetimes before you die…
Become results-oriented. Spend all your time on finishing, rather than “being busy” while working.
Remind yourself in healthy doses that you will die someday; life will pass by if you let it.
Create a rigid time schedule. Be unapologetic about it. Your hours are yours — take them back from everyone and everything else.
Commit to spending most of your time only on truly important things that really excite you.
“The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.” -Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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