### Proudly published on the Bitcoin Blockchain by John Byron Hanby IV, the Author, to help guide our future generations. This book is intended to be interactive, use a journal to capture each of your answers to the questions asked. ###

Your Answers - Exploring Life’s Questions and Achieving Your Goals

Section 5: Habits and Time Allocation

#100
On what do I spend my time? 
Developing strong time management skills is one of the most challenging tasks when it comes to personal development. If you can hone your ability to create habits, maintain momentum, and allocate the right amount of time to the right objectives, you can become an unstoppable force.
Time is our most valuable resource. It is essential to understand that our time is a precious and finite resource; how we use it can shape the trajectory of our lives.
We must prioritize learning, work, friends, family, hobbies, and other interactions and experiences. Are you spending the right amount of time on the activities that have a proportionate impact on your goals and well-being? Be aware of the things you take for granted and the activities that are time-consuming, yet provide no value.
How often do you engage in mundane tasks or activities that have little to no benefit on your goals or mental/ physical health? Watching TV, going to the gym, using your smartphone, or playing video games can be a much- needed break from long days of work. Making sure you choose to spend your time wisely on activities that will help you stay in optimal performance is key.

#101
How much time does it take for each thing I do?
Now that you have identified all of the things you spend your time on, you can begin to analyze how much time you allocate to each task in your life, and question whether you are spending the right amount of time on each task.
By understanding how much time we spend on each part of our lives we can gain better control over the time investments we make, ensuring that the time we spend is aligned with our purpose, goals, objectives, and ability to achieve fulfillment and health.
Estimate the amount of time you spend each day, week, or month on a given set of tasks or activities, and then add up the time over the course of a year for each task. Analyze how much time you are spending on each aspect of life and then consider whether those time allocations are proportionate to the value of each task or activity.
According to the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, Ph.D., sleep is the single greatest contributor to good health. Make sure you prioritize your sleep. Do not forget to include the amount of time you spend sleeping, eating, using the bathroom, etc.
By taking into account the amount of time each task requires, we are able to direct energy to the tasks and activities that offer greater returns, rather than wasting valuable resources on less productive actions, maximizing our opportunities for growth and achieving our goals.

#102
How much time do I spend thinking?
In today’s busy world, it is easy to become consumed by our daily activities and forget to take time for self- reflection and introspection. Taking time to think allows us an opportunity for personal growth that can inform future decisions through understanding patterns of our thoughts and behaviors—both positive and negative— as well as addressing any underlying issues that may be causing stress or unhappiness.
Setting aside a specific amount of time to think, or allocating time to a specific activity that allows for reflection (e.g. walking), provides a greater capacity for achieving mental clarity. Mental clarity can enable more effective creative problem solving and an opportunity to reflect, analyze, and learn from our life experiences, both past and present.
If you are fearful of your thoughts, it is important to recognize that avoidance will not make the problem go away. If you can tackle the areas where you experience anxiety or stress in small steps, then over time you will become more comfortable with your thoughts and yourself, and regain control over your mind.

#103
What do I think about when I am thinking?
The ability to recognize what you are thinking when you are thinking it is an incredible power of self-awareness. If you can elevate your thinking to be self-aware, you can modify, adjust, and improve how you think and what you think about.
By practicing mindfulness and self-awareness, you can unlock a new level of control over your emotions and free up brain cycles that can be spent on the types of thoughts that help you achieve your goals.
Recognizing when you get sucked into a repetitive thought pattern, or allowing negative worries to consume your mind, you become distracted. Having the power to recognize when these thoughts occur, you can begin to minimize them and turn them off when appropriate, or create new ways of approaching the thoughts that cause you grief, allowing you to resolve them.
Taking time to reflect on the types of thoughts that run through our heads while we are in the act of thinking allows us to gain a better understanding of the patterns and habits that shape how we feel, act, and perceive as reality. Acquiring this level of control over your thoughts can also significantly help your mind focus and eliminate distractions, allowing you to achieve a state of flow for any type of activity you choose to do. These changes do not happen overnight; they take years to master. But it begins here, by asking yourself this question, identifying what you think about, constantly inquiring throughout your day, and course correcting where needed.

#104
How does thinking help me achieve my goals?
After identifying the thoughts you have, you can begin to explore how each of them moves you in a positive direction toward personal achievement and fulfillment. Reflect on the value of each thought, what motivates it, and what the ultimate outcome of it will be. Ask yourself if you will gain something from exploring a thought, even if it is negative, or using your imagination to innovate something great.
It’s important to remember that thinking about certain topics that are deemed negative isn’t necessarily bad. The effect such thoughts have on your emotional and physical state determines whether their presence helps or hinders you.
In this book’s Worst-Case Scenario section, we will examine many tough questions. Taking a strong approach to these topics and recognizing the benefits of thinking about them will allow you to use them as learning experiences and opportunities for growth, rather than negative influences.
Pay attention to how your thoughts evolve when you reflect on them, and identify which inner voices drive your self-dialogue. Is there a negative voice you should be wary of, or an overly optimistic one to treat with caution?
By determining your outlook on each thought, you can decide whether to keep dwelling on it, or move on and allocate your time elsewhere.

#105
How much time do I spend learning? 
As you continue to unpack your time allocations and understand various elements of your life, identifying the amount of time you spend learning can provide you with an understanding of how likely you are to achieve your long-term goals.
If you are not learning new things, then you are stagnating and will not be able to adapt to the world around you. Everyone should allocate a certain amount of time for learning, with the topics chosen aligning with their long- term goals and purpose.
Spending time learning about yourself is just as valuable as learning a new skill for the next career move. Find the topics you enjoy learning about, explore why you enjoy those things, and then determine if they align with your other life objectives.
It is easy to get into a routine where you work, exercise, watch TV, sleep, and repeat. Break that cycle; exercising your mind is just as important. Mix up your days or reduce time on certain tasks to allow for important learning time. Start small if you must—30 minutes a day, or more if you can.
Learning is like compound interest. If you start with 100% of your current mental capacity and simply expand your entire knowledge base by 10% per year, in 10 years, you will have 2.5937 times as much knowledge, and in 20 years 6.7275 times as much knowledge.
Achieving 10% growth each year is possible with dedication and relative ease. It means reading a few books each year (say one per month), listening to some podcasts, and spending time exploring your mind through questions like the ones in this book.
The more you learn, the more you have the capacity to learn. You’ll recognize things you haven’t seen in the world before, become curious about them, and ask more questions. Now ask yourself—What could you accomplish in 10 years if you expanded your knowledge by 25% each year? The answer: 86.732 times as much!

#106
How much time do I spend improving myself?
Application of learned knowledge leads to improvement. We have spent time identifying the amount of time and energy allocated to learning and other aspects of life, but without applying the knowledge learned, we cannot improve.
By assessing the amount of time devoted to self- improvement, we can begin to understand the underlying factors that contribute to our growth. When you allocate a considerable amount of time to developing yourself, testing out new ideas, and optimizing your life for the goals and values you prioritize, you may find that you are able to achieve the desired results.
Alternatively, if you are feeling frustrated with your current situation or an aspect of your life and are wondering why improvements are not coming, by examining your time allocation to making the desired changes, you may find that while you devoted a significant amount of time to learning the new skill, not enough time has been put into implementation and application of that knowledge.
If you can observe the connections between your current life state and the time you spend trying to better yourself, you can draw useful insights into how the actions you take and the time you devote can bring you closer to your desired goals. Additionally, tracking your progress over time in other areas of your life can be helpful in understanding how much of an impact the time you dedicate to self-improvement has. The more beneficial returns you notice from the time invested, the easier it will be to allot additional time to improving yourself and applying your learned knowledge.

#107
How much time do I spend being happy?
Being happy is an important aspect of life; however, you should not strive for happiness. Happiness is a product of fulfillment. If you prioritize your short-term happiness, you may be happy in the moment, but take actions that are detrimental to your long-term fulfillment.
Be cautious not to pursue the fallacy of 100% happiness all the time; you must be able to experience other emotions and feelings so that you can appreciate the value and significance of your happiness. Through these different feelings, you can achieve a level of contrast that allows you to place value on the happiness you feel.
Happiness that is deep and achieved through fulfillment should also be compared to the fleeting happiness that may be achieved in other areas of life. Recognizing the differences and understanding how each impacts your life will be valuable in assessing how much time should be placed on the sources of that happiness.
Another important question to ask is whether the things that make you happy are actually making you happy, or do you just think you are happy doing those things because your friends, family, and the society around you “appear” to be happy doing those things? A good place to start is asking yourself why the things you do make you happy. Hold yourself to a high standard for the quality of your answer, and then critically analyze your answer. Would your answer convince a critic? If you cannot articulate why something makes you happy, you may need to spend more time on introspection or realize that the thing actually does not create the amount of happiness you initially thought.

#108
How much time do I spend being sad?
The reverse of exploring how much time you spend being happy is understanding the amount of time you spend being sad. Sadness is critical to have an appreciation for happiness; however, it should not consume your life. Sadness can come in the form of loss, loneliness, discontentment, and many other types.
It is important to explore your sources of sadness so that you may begin to determine effective remedies. Additionally, it is possible to experience feelings of sadness in a situation in which you thought you should be happy. When this happens, there may be misalignment between your expectations and perception of events compared to the energy in your body. When this occurs, examine the cause for your sadness. Over time, by exploring what makes you happy, sad, fulfilled, etc., you can recognize the actual events or experiences that trigger these emotions. When one of those events does not happen or triggers a different emotion, there may be an external cause.
For example, you may love to spend time with friends playing golf, but today, for some reason, you feel a weight that isn’t normally there. If you can recognize the unique
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feeling and correlate it back to the fact that two days ago you only slept one hour due to a looming work deadline, you may realize that your weakened immune system, lack of sleep, and stress at work, plus the additional energy exerted in socialization and exercise, creates a feeling of unease and sadness. While this level of awareness will not entirely allow you to switch on and off all your emotions, having insight into the cause can minimize the drain on your energy and help you to better appreciate the moment even in a state of lesser emotional strength.

#109
How much time do I spend planning my goals and the strategy for achieving those goals?
Thoughtful and effective planning is critical for achieving long-term success. If you have long-term goals that you want to achieve, it is essential to plan for them. Identifying how much time you spend planning and thinking about those goals today will determine the likelihood of achieving them, and the timeline through which that success is possible.
The time you spend planning for the achievement of your goals could include the time you spend reflecting on the questions in this book, the efforts you take to develop your understanding of yourself and the world around you, and any other effort you take to better prepare yourself for your ideal state. If you do not think about your goals regularly, how can you expect to achieve them?
The time you spend imagining your future can inspire your motivation, action, and drive. Your visualization of a future where you have achieved your dreams is not a waste of time. Rather, it allows you to get into the mindset of the person you must become to accomplish those goals. By forming an understanding of that matured version of yourself, you can begin to comprehend how that version of yourself thinks and acts and apply those insights to your present, thus bringing you closer to your desired future.
Leveraging a monthly journal or chronicle of your goals and strategy can be a powerful first step in your journey. In addition to a monthly form of strategy, evaluating your plans in a more free-form setting on a frequent basis, constantly updating it based on the new knowledge you have acquired, will allow you to more effectively adjust course or accelerate your achievement.

#110
How much time do I spend working? 
The way you define work is critical to understanding this question. Work takes many forms, as we discussed in the ‘Personal Career Roadmap’ section. It is also important to list the different categories of work you spend time on and allot a specific amount of time to each of them.
Contrary to popular opinion, work does not need to be a negative experience. If you align your work with the people you care most about, your passions, and what brings you fulfillment, work can be the best part of your life. On the other hand, work may simply be a means to achieve your true goal. In either case, be sure not to overlook the effort you put into activities that result in a material benefit for someone or something. For instance, you may spend 60 hours a week on your primary job, 10 hours a week on a personal project, and volunteer for an additional 20 hours a week. All of these areas are important to consider.
As you contemplate these questions, evaluate how your definition of work changes over time. Ask yourself if the time you are dedicating to each aspect of your work is being used effectively. Are the efforts you put into your work delivering the returns you need to reach your long- term goals?

#111
What am I doing when I’m not working?
The time you spend on activities that you do not consider work are equally important for your life. Capturing the types of activities that you do not consider to be work can be invaluable to understanding how you perceive the various activities in your life.
It is valuable to assess how much time and effort you put into working, as well as reflecting on the activities you do not consider to be work. This can provide insight into how you use your time and whether it is being used optimally, depending on whether that activity is to accomplish a task, achieve a goal, or is purely for enjoyment.
Analyzing your responses over time and across multiple entries can also reveal how your perceptions of “not working” evolve as you mature and develop.

#112
What are my good and bad personal habits?
We must become aware of our positive and negative behaviors before we can strive to improve and optimize ourselves. By identifying the good habits we embrace, we can create a sense of control and purpose, which can be channeled to help us manage our bad habits. By recognizing our bad habits, we can work on developing better alternatives. Acknowledging the current limitations in our ability to maintain or maximize positive habits can enable us to strive for improvement.
Setting realistic goals for ourselves and managing our time more effectively can help promote the establishment of new habits and prevent procrastination. Once we have identified specific goals that can be immediately acted upon (e.g. eliminating sugar from our diet) and broader guiding principles (e.g. eating healthier), we can develop a plan for execution.
By this point, we have done a great deal of work to define who we are, what motivates us, and where our challenges lie. Let us leverage this knowledge and self-understanding to create the optimal plan for ourselves to maximize our good and bad habits.

#113
What are my good or positive relationships and social habits?
Much like good and bad habits that have an impact on the individual, it is essential to personal growth, solving problems, and achieving desired goals to take time to reflect on the habits that affect your interactions with those around you.
By examining the positive aspects of your relationships and social habits, you can gain a greater understanding of how you view the people you interact with and how your connection with them can influence your behavior, the decisions you make, and the habits you reinforce.
Focus on the people who inspire you to act in the best way and reach your dreams. Ask yourself, what habits do those people encourage, and why? With this knowledge, you can link your positive habits to the insights you have gained, and gain a clear understanding of how the people in your life contribute to your daily life and the choices you make. As you gain insight into the types of people you want to emulate, you can make changes that will realign your socialization choices, so that you can take a more effective path to help you reach your ideal future.

#114
What are my bad or unhelpful relationships and social habits?
In addition to considering the people who inspire great habits, it is important to reflect on those who have a detrimental impact on our habits and choices. Taking the time to evaluate the types of habits that shape our interactions with others can be a critical step in personal growth, helping to identify problem areas and ultimately attain our desired future.
By examining the harmful and destructive aspects of our relationships and social habits, we can gain a better understanding of how we view the people we encounter and how our connection with them can shape our behavior, the actions we take, and the bad habits we reinforce.
We should also consider the people who influence us to act in a way that works against our goals. What habits do those people promote and why? How did we get caught up in such interactions and how can we minimize their impact on our lives today, as well as prevent similar entanglements in the future?
By drawing connections between the bad habits we have and the answers to these questions, we can gain insight into how our socialization choices can steer us away from our ideal future. This understanding can then be used to create meaningful changes that will help us achieve our desired outcome.

#115
What are my good and bad work habits?
Identifying your good and bad work habits can allow you to optimize your career and abilities to perform, unlocking new opportunities for advancement. Once you have found what fulfills you, whether it is a specific type of work itself, or whether the work that you do enables your fulfillment by acting as a source of funding, by optimizing your capabilities you can more effectively achieve your work goals, thereby resulting in a greater ability to directly or indirectly do what makes you fulfilled.
The good habits you create can last a lifetime, and if you recognize them in advance, you can encourage them to develop and mature, leading to a greater level of effectiveness in what you set out to achieve.
Bad work habits can vary greatly, but some of the most common include poor person-to-person interaction, procrastination, disorganization—or lack thereof, an inability to prioritize tasks, and neglecting necessary breaks.
If you wish to succeed in a highly competitive career, the sooner you can identify your bad work habits and take steps to rectify them, the more effective you will become. The ability to make these adjustments and improve your ability to operate will give you a significant advantage in your career. This can also translate to a great advantage in your personal life, as honing these skills often happens across multiple areas of your personality and decision making simultaneously.
By acknowledging these strengths and flaws and subsequently taking steps to bolster or rectify them, you can optimize your potential.

#116
What are my good and bad health habits?
We have already examined your health profile in the health section, yet this question provides a chance for you to ponder how your habits factor into the portrait of your health previously depicted.
We must be candid with ourselves about the adverse elements of our lifestyle if we are to make impactful changes that will result in positive outcomes. Smoking, overindulging in alcohol or recreational drugs, neglecting to exercise regularly, and consuming unhealthy foods are all examples of poor health habits that can obstruct us from attaining peak physical and mental performance in life.
The initial step toward making any enduring transformation is often the most difficult; we must recognize our own damaging behaviors and intentionally strive toward substituting them with healthier options that better fulfill our individual needs.

#117
How can I effectively change my bad habits to something better and less harmful?
Focus on breaking the cycle of engaging in behavior(s) that give short-term pleasure or relief, and instead work toward habits that support long-term happiness. Breaking that cycle is challenging because everyone will have different approaches to changing behavior. To make effective change, align the most important values in your life with the desire to change your habit.
It is of paramount importance that we ask ourselves how we can replace our bad habits with something more beneficial and less damaging. Negative behaviors can have long- lasting and serious repercussions on both our physical and mental health, leading to decreased productivity, poor overall wellbeing, and difficulty establishing meaningful connections.
Contemplate your life. What happens if you continue your bad habit for the next 10 years? What is the worst-case scenario that could emerge from those continued actions, and what is the probability of those events occurring?
How does that worst-case scenario, or a slightly less severe 298
version, affect the things that bring you the greatest joy and the attainment of your most cherished goal or dream? How does that eventual outcome compare to the habit you choose to embrace today?
We will explore Worst-case Scenarios more fully in the next section.

#118
If I were able to eliminate all of these bad habits, how would I feel?
The bad habits in our lives can have a range of impacts, including on our health, focus, mental capacity, stress levels, creativity, and relationships. As you work toward eliminating your bad habits, try to imagine a world where you have achieved your ideal state where the bad habits you struggled with and their associated burdens have been lifted. Articulating how those changes could positively influence your life could provide you with extra motivation to embrace the change.
If you can envision a world where your habits have changed, you can envision a world where you are a newer, less burdened version of yourself. What do you look and act like? How do you feel in this new world, and why?
The Why in this equation is particularly essential because it identifies the source of the burden and bad habit. What caused that habit to occur? Why was a weight lifted? And now that it has gone, how do you feel?
Taking time for this reflective exploration can upgrade life quality and offer a valuable chance for growth and renewal. It may be difficult to imagine yourself in this new ideal state, so begin by considering each improvement one at a time, and remember that they not only add up, but compound.

#119
If I were able to eliminate all of these bad habits, what would change in my life?
Similar to the introspection of how changing habits can impact your inner self, take the time to explore the impact of removing bad habits from your outer self as well. How do the people in your life benefit from your change in habits? Are you a better friend, partner, husband/wife, mother/father? What new career opportunities and fulfilling activities can you embrace with your renewed energy and freedom from detrimental energy drains?
The process of self-improvement and optimization can become easier over time. The first change you make may be difficult, but if you can select a habit that is easily conquered, and stick with it until you realize the results you seek, you can appreciate the effort and justify the outcome. With this sense of pride and success, you can turn your attention to your next bad habit, taking down the dominoes one at a time. Soon the benefits you gain from eliminating your bad habits will be so gratifying that there will be greater ease in taking a step away from even the most deeply rooted bad habits you have.
Doing this kind of self-reflection regularly means you’re 306
less likely to make choices that hinder your progress, lessen the likelihood of developing new bad habits, and instead take steps toward becoming a happier, healthier individual.

#120
If I were able to eliminate all of these bad habits, how much time would I get back?
Your time and habits are inextricably linked. This inquiry encourages introspection, as it forces individuals to confront the ways in which their bad habits are having detrimental effects on their life and siphoning off the time available.
As explored before with regard to time allocations, any time spent in neutral activities, not bringing you closer to the goals and dreams you seek (or those not giving you fulfillment to sustain the effort), are missed opportunities.
Activities that are worse than neutral—negative or self- harming (mentally or physically)—are ruinous to your progress as you not only waste the time you could have spent on doing something meaningful, but you also create a negative stimulus on your body that you now have to recover from psychologically, physically, emotionally, or all three; thus, multiplying the setbacks from where you could have been.
By considering this question and reflecting upon its implications, individuals can gain valuable insight into potential positive amendments they could make that would benefit them in both the short and long term.
This question not only gives us insight into our current state but also provides us with drive to move forward; when we contemplate possible gains from making wise decisions, we become more likely to experience success in creating meaningful change within our lives by embracing newer healthier patterns of behavior instead of harmful ones.
The time you recover can be reinvested in the actions you’ve already identified as being the most fruitful use of your time, bringing you closer to your goals.

#121
Can I make an effort to spend 10 minutes a day to sit quietly and meditate, simply being aware of my body, and focus on my breathing?
Meditation has been employed for centuries as a method to explore inner consciousness and to cultivate mindfulness. With an ever-increasing number of distractions, pressures, and exposure to strategically designed situations that maximize emotional reaction, we have become conditioned to live on the edge of our seats without even realizing it.
The chronic stress associated with this type of exasperated and overstimulated living often goes unnoticed, yet it can lead to serious mental, physical, and emotional health issues. At best, it diminishes our performance—meaning it takes longer to achieve our goals—and, at worst, it can cost us years of our lives due to stress-induced health conditions.
The practice of taking 10 minutes out of each day to sit and meditate can be a powerful tool in helping us sustain both physical and mental wellbeing. By focusing on our breathing while being mindful of our bodies, we can reduce stress levels, increase focus, reduce anxiety levels, and improve overall physical health. The benefits of meditation don’t manifest in a single session; rather, it requires ongoing effort to quiet our minds and learn to let go.
If you have not meditated before, make a commitment to yourself to try it for 10 minutes a day for at least a week before deciding on its effectiveness. Much of the first few weeks will be spent forcing yourself to confront your mind—a skill few of us have been taught due to constant overstimulation by external inputs.
Meditation can also come in the form of reading one of the questions in this book, closing your eyes, and thinking about the question for a few minutes before writing down your answers. Everyone has their own preferred form of meditation; for example, I find that I thrive in a dark room of absolute silence, while others have told me that, despite having practiced meditation for years, they could never do that and much prefer a guided meditation where they can listen to a narrator guide them through the practice.
I used to think that I was way too busy to meditate; I was wrong. It freed my mind, reduced my stress, and improved my abilities in every conceivable way.