The five percent difference

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xrayman4 K5 days agoPeakD4 min read

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There is a distance or a difference between what “is” and what “could be”.

When we know that the salary increase will be around 5%, we don't get too excited. We always want a bit more. And that goes across the board. A little more pay rise, a little more vacation time, a little more time for ourselves, or to do what we like best.

But every day that little boost we're looking for never comes.

And the main reason for this is precisely our own fault.

If we knew that all we had to do was dedicate just 72 minutes, or just 5% of the twenty-four hours we have every day.... every day of our lives, to doing something different, we would have an absolutely different result.

I calculate that the daily investment - and yes, I do call it an investment, because in practice that's what it is - will always have a return of more than three times as much.

If today we manage to be with a friend who needs our help, and even if it's not the 72 minutes we're using by analogy, and we use that time to make an offering to them, not trying to get anything in return for that help, we'll reap many rewards from that small gesture in the future.

The return may not even come from the same “place”, or in the same way. I believe there is a real cascade effect... An action that takes place in one place can cause a reaction thousands of kilometers away, and almost always by someone who is not even related to us first hand.

Imagine that those seventy-two minutes are used by yourself, and that you use them to, for example, read a book. That time may not bear fruit straight away, but it will certainly implant in your mind a desire to project ideas, visions, to connections that you wouldn't have seen or detected before.

But why don't we just use that five percent to do something different?

Basically because we're not used to doing something different with our “free time” and making it more desirable, more profitable.

Imagine that your time is like a small coin... On its own, it doesn't seem to have any value that we need to worry about. But just like a small coin of little value, when placed in a piggy bank... and right next to many hundreds of other small coins, it ends up having some impact. In this example, it's not even the best. Because the coins, unlike those at the bottom of the piggy bank, will be earning interest on interest... All the time we invest in ourselves, in others, in something other than our “normal” life, makes us look at things differently.

Have you ever asked yourself after going through a situation where you didn't do your best, “What if I had tried 5% harder?” What could I have done differently? What could I not have done? Would I have gone to talk to that person differently, or would I simply not have ignored the person who passed me by and was looking for a shoulder to lean on?

Another example. For everyone who goes to the gym every day to do some kind of resistance training. As a rule, every day we don't increase the loads we use, or the number of repetitions or sets. That's not how growth and development works, but one thing's for sure, if there isn't a day when we invest an extra 5% in effort... it's very unlikely that we'll see results at the end of that workout.

In friendships, how many of us often end up simply waiting? Waiting for the perfect opportunity to arrange a meeting, or simply a coffee. The perfect opportunity doesn't exist.

I'm also reminded of a well-known fable. The fable of the cicada and the ant. While the ant prepared for the winter and saved some of what he gathered during the summer months, the cicada enjoyed life and didn't use what he had to spare.