What To Do With Time?

Introducing the 4 C’s for Bringing Joy and Action to Your Life

12 min readMay 16, 2020

Think about someone you admire or respect. Perhaps this someone is a famous athlete, or a movie star. They may even be someone within your family or someone you have the opportunity to share time with daily. Could it be someone who was involved with creating a product or service which you use and have benefited from?

What you, the someone, and for that matter all of us have in common, is we all have twenty-four hours in a day. Yes, Albert Einstein also had twenty-four hours in a day. Within these twenty-four hours we have choices. Let’s safely assume a human-being dedicates eight hours to sleep and eight hours to working in a day. In addition to those sixteen hours, this leaves us with eight hours, eight hours of choices. In a podcast episode of the James Altucher Show, James interviews Jim Kwik who shares a few ways, referred to as ways to enhance your brain and build better habits during quarantine, in the form of four C’s — clarity, contribution, capabilities, and care. The mission of this article is to share mechanisms regarding how to go about the C’s, as each C is a choice for how to spend your time.

The difference makes the difference. Below are the mechanisms for each of the four C’s to acquire a positive action in your life to make a difference for your life for leading to joy.

C — Clarity

Have you thought…..what if being ‘burnt out’ is not because of doing too much, rather, being ‘burnt out’ because of not doing or doing too little of what really nourishes or energizes you? You are certainly familiar with a to-do list, but what about a to-be list. The question is, but how? Give yourself time to think and feel. Feel the pleasure and pain of doing or not doing something. Then, when reasons are formed, reasons reap results.

If an egg is cracked from an inside force, life begins, if broken from an outside force, it is damaged. This is about bending, but not breaking. Pausing does not mean stopping. The comfort zone is beautiful, but nothing grows there.

Find clarity though the following mechanisms:

Familiarize yourself with the start with why concept, originating from Simon Sinek. The start with why concept is the reverse of thinking in the order of what -> how -> why. The great organizations, such as Apple, instead, flow their efforts in the direction of why -> how -> what.

In conversations, spend just as much time talking versus asking and listening. Ask questions about assumptions, incentives, and the big picture. It is okay to be curious.
On a sheet of paper, draw four columns with the titles as things you love, things you are good at, things that make money, and things the world needs. Ideally, positioning yourself at the intersection of these four constructs is a big thumbs up.
Write down possibilities, decide what to delete, journal, reflect — -> are your actions aligned with your values?
Understand the distribution of outcomes before you make a decision (every decision has consequences). You may have goals, but have you thought what could go wrong? Attempt the WOOP method for goal setting. This method entails noting your goal, what the outcome(s) of fulfilling the goal is, what obstacle(s) may hold you back from the goal, and lastly, what your plan is for overcoming the obstacle(s).
Begin a vision collage. Browse for photos which represent meaningful keywords, feelings, experiences, or accomplishments you hope to strive for. The vision collage can then serve as a reminder of the various facets of your future and moving forward during times of difficulty, and just as important — being humble during times of flourishing.
Treat emotions as data rather than directives. Begin to log your emotions to uncover the root cause as to which underlying human need is being met, or is not being met, and therefore leading to the outward emotions. Social Determination Theory (below) tells us that we all need to feel a sense of belonging, mastery, and autonomy.

Try the 6-month outlook exercise. This can be done for a respective decision, when deciding on yes or no so to say, think of yourself 6-month into the future from the present moment. Would your 6-month self choose yes or no for the decision? This helps to keep you aligned with your mission and to act within the type of character you embody to be.

C — Care

Self-care isn’t selfish. Instead, it can be an act of celebration you exist. Keeping healthy habits a priority through self-care can help ensure you are the best possible version of yourself for making decisions and maximizing your quality of living. You may have heard the notion of adding years to your life, but what about adding life to your years? Here’s a reminder, make sure when you say yes to somebody, you are not saying no to yourself.

How to integrate self-care into daily living:

Pick and choose from the acronym S.A.V.E.R.S each morning. This includes a rotation of all or any of the following — silence (meditation), affirmations, visualization, exercise (even simply body-weight movements or dynamic stretching for twenty minutes), reading, and scribing (write).
Traditional health talk can focus on what we eat, but just as important can be the circumstances around our eating, that is the when and the how. Specifically, why we’re eating the way we do, and any poor habits which might be occurring that we aren’t even aware of! Try mindful eating: eat slowly and chew each bite of food well, try not to do anything else while you are eating, stop eating when you’re two-thirds full because it takes roughly twenty minutes for the brain to register the feeling of fullness sent from your gut.
Put a stop to the transmission of disease by increasing the strength of your immune system through consuming amble Vitamin C and prioritizing sleep hygiene.
When your arousal levels of nervousness or fear go up in the time before a performance, task, or action, ask yourself “What else am I?” If the answers are hard-working, prepared, experienced, well-intentioned, telling yourself this can get your right back into the game and redirect your attention.
Everything in moderation as they say, but be careful in regards to the food cycle of indulgence. It’s not just the calories from a treat in the form of an alcoholic beverage which could be problematic if excessive, but rather, the salty snacks that could come alongside the indulgence.
What can you do regarding [indoor] air quality? That’s right, sick building syndrome can be contributing to poorer cognitive function and fatigue. Think about ventilation (letting outdoor air in), dust, mold, and VOC’s (volatile organic compounds).
Even though it was mentioned at the beginning of this article that we all have twenty-four hours in a day, time can be of limitation and thus symbolizing the importance of time management. Give scheduling “exercise appointments” a go, and couple this with a friend so that accountability can enter the equation and aid with exercise commitments. Further, try Aaptiv which is podcast designed to act as a virtual fitness class (also includes yoga, meditation, and stretching).
Be sure to plan for resilience. What is a contingency list you can refer back to during difficult times and when the hope battery may be on low? A resource certainly called Plan for Resilience can be used to help.

C — Contribution

Contribution revolves around giving back. This is surely not solely through money, but also can involve your talent and time. When you learn, teach; when you get, give. As Jim Kwik says, learn — earn — return. What may be of utmost ease to you, or what may no longer be of benefit to you, could be a missing puzzle piece for someone else. Shining a light for others to share with them possibilities for how high they can jump or how far they have come can make a life. Remember, the receiver is the one who determines if they have been helped or not, and thus, even if you don’t feel as if you have helped someone, it is entirely likely that you very well could have.

It’s hard to feel a sense of fear during quarantine or panic, and a sense of giving or gratitude, at the same time. Give yourself permission to spark purpose by helping others and counting your blessings. Help yourself by helping others. They say to make a million, we must serve a million. As a theme in this article, contribute in your own way — there is no wrong answer.

Mechanisms for contribution:

Check-in on a neighbour. When we think of others, we can immediately jump to family or friends. Neighbours can be an individual or set of individuals in our lives who may be overlooked.
Provide something back to the industry you work in or desire to work in, in the form of ideas and methods of approach. To do so, explore lateral thinking whereby you vanish assumptions and connect the dots between seemingly unrelated areas, ideas, or protocols. This can help to solve continuous or hidden problems to help with effectiveness and efficiency for all, resulting in innovation. This is about taking something ordinary in one context and transferring it to another context where it ca become extraordinary.
Explore GoFundMe for real-world individuals who’s projects, many times projects of social good, are reliant upon reaching and funding milestone.
Volunteer in the community. The community may even have a Volunteer Coordinator to help position your volunteering with your needs and wants and how to best integrate the time into your current life or schedule. Charity Village can be a start!
When in public and interacting with others, whether it be the employee cashier at the store, the individual you walk by during your walk, a smile can go a long way to someone who may not be having the most ideal day or phase of their life. You never know the ripple effect and who needs to hear or see kindness. Your small actions of contribution in this sense — smiling, eye contact, holding the door open, saying thank you, showing patience — matter. Take responsibility and be an example for those around you.
Visit a local park or forest path, a sort of greenery (try forest bathing!), and take a few moments to put on some rubber gloves and pick up some trash. Not only can this contribute to others, but we can also contribute to our planet. Steps to save electricity and green energy are along these same lines of rationale.

Share positive and/or insightful comments on social media. This does not have to necessarily be though Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn, but also, YouTube comments, Google Reviews, Amazon Reviews, and Yelp ratings (to name a few) — these are forms of social media as well and your contribution can help with a decision looming in the life of someone else.
Finally, and my favourite mechanism for contribution is by helping others who don’t know how to ask for help. This can then apply to yourself teaching others by writing blog posts, reaching out to be a guest option for relevant podcasts, starting a ‘ghost’ social media to create content for helping others seek help, and perhaps surprisingly, even asking a friend if they really are okay. With the internet, we are all once piece away from creating content that someone can find and be really helped by.

C — Capabilities

An impactful line of thinking is to align careers with the aim not to be successful, but rather, useful. Albeit, with the latter being a component of inputs for the outcome of the former. Skills are what create utility. Confidence is achieved by increasing skills, or knowledge, leading to overall competence — not by telling yourself to be confident. This is a reference to the model of the competence-confidence loop. Confidence isn’t something you necessarily have, it is something you do.

For sure, trying something new in terms of skill acquisition can be intimidating. A tactic to overcome the intimidation and to help create a positive initial experience is to design in small steps or experiments. Small steps, one by one, not large enough to constitute as any sort of interpreted failure, and which inevitably add up — think compound interest. The most important part is boarding the learning curve in the first place. To instill motivation, it has been said with even just a little bit of practice or cultivation of a new skill, can project you into the top 1% of the world population for the respective skill — making your ability to add value to others skyrocket. From there, the lifelong goal to position yourself into the top 100 people in the world can commence!

To help with developing capabilities, and thus skill acquisition:

Realize knowing what you don’t know can be as important as what you do know, as said by Charlie Munger. Acknowledging what you don’t know, and then learning more about it can act as a north star to guide you.
Access novel information online in the form of podcasts, newsletters, and blogs. My favourite podcasts are The James Altucher Show, The Jordan Harbinger Show, London Real, Tim Ferris Podcast, The Gary Vee Audio Experience, Marketing School, Social Media Examiner, and Brave New Work. Some of my favourite newsletters are those from Brandon Hakim, Ryan Holiday, the Greater Good Science Center, and the Global Wellness Institute. Lastly, my favourite blogs are courtesy of Pinkcast, Seth Godin, and Thrive Global.
Leverage cost-effective and practical online courses, such as through Udemy, Edx, and Coursera.
Sharpen your skills in communication, both in an intangible and tangible sense. To increase your value in transitioning a product or service into the hands of the target audience, while tracking continuous improvement, try: reading about the topic of emotional intelligence, public speaking through groups such as local Toastmasters clubs, and familiarizing yourself with logic behind critical thinking and evaluation techniques through analytics.
Join and become involved with industry groups, such as coalitions or non-profits. Then, utilize their content, teachings, and network as best practices and industry trends to guide your own work.
Scan Eventbrite or Meetup for local events relevant to your needs and wants, many events (or perhaps more accurately called small-scale networking sessions) can be free and feature guest speakers.
Create yourself a personal website, or a landing page of any sort. This can be done with website platform builders such as Carrd, Squarespace, Wix, or Wordpress. On a side yet relevant note, how creating websites work is through the first step to obtain a custom domain through services such as Namecheap or GoDaddy, then, you connect the domain with the website platform builder in the settings of the website platform builder. Similar, and what can be more straight-forward, consider hosting a blog through Medium, or recording your voice and presentation slides for YouTube.
When reaching out to others for coffee chats, collect their emails if you can. Then one day, pending appropriateness, you can use a service such as Mailchimp or Constant Contact to reach out to everyone through a creative lens (in the form of a newsletter). They say the future belongs to creatives!
Speaking of creativity, start an ideas notebook. Each day, such as upon waking in the morning or moments before your head touches the pillow at the end of the day, write a certain amount of ideas, ABOUT ANYTHING. For myself, there I times I write three ways for how my day could have been better, or five ways a restaurant could have improved, or ten song titles if I were to write a song. The purpose is to exercise your creativity muscle and expose yourself to the opportunity where there are no wrong answers — your answers are your answers.

With the four C’s as ways to enhance your brain and build better habits during quarantine, leading to action and joy, the habit of showing up for yourself consistently does mean everything. You can’t get upset by the results you didn’t get by the work you didn’t do. Of all the mechanisms, the most critical one is the one that works for you, it isn’t about what’s right or wrong, but rather, what serves and empowers you.

Nathan Kolar, www.reachworldwide.ca