Time Well Spent

In the past, we were limited to our own physical vision. 

Today:
1. The accessibility of the internet has penetrated to most of our world [1]
2. The amount of internet bandwidth capacity has reached to a point where we can blur the lines between real and digital life [2]

We cannot deny that we live in times that are better than ever before on creating new opportunities to our self. Instead of being constrained to our current physical location, we have the ability to gain insights and bring influence to anyone anywhere in the world.

We are discovering today one thing that we were in denial, but cannot be in denial anymore: human nature has the choice to not run the pedestal of improving our world or move the pedestal of improving our world. Besides all the bumps we went through, we fortunately, by the mercy of our minds on making our world a better place, made great strides on making people more connected and expressive.

The next step of our mission is how to make people more complete. In this world, most of us, we feel that we do not have complete control of the ship that we are on board, that our fate was not chosen by our own will, but by picking a ship whose captain we most like, for after all, would we be good accountable captains when the responsibility was granted to us?

This is a mission that few will take, and even fewer will take if we still treat people as passive consumers and professionals only merited by skill. The world will have a lot of people that will provide basic needs by playing the role of a passive consumer and many enough on creating the basic infrastructure as the role of builders, but only very few will be shaping and lifting the world as the role of an inventor.

Builders and passive consumers take actions that have no liability because they are not the ones that choose the destination where the ship goes. It is a very safe path to choose, but at the same time, these people cannot be trusted to run the wheels for big destinations, for they do not have the competency to keep the ship afloat for long. In contrast, we need to give people training wheels on running small ships on their own for short trips before they are able to get challenged with bigger ones.

I think people taking control and taking action on improving our world instead of just being a member of our world will be a big paradigm shift in how we view ourselves and others. For we can always give an excuse and blame if we follow orders from a captain that lead us to a road astray that was away from our expectations, but we cannot escape on the choices we make and how we react and adapt to them when we become in charge of running the ship. Then, at that moment, we will be more focus on improving our own self instead of expecting others to take us to our ultimate destination. Before, only a few had a moral compass for improving themselves. Now, more will have accessibility to that compass for striving a great fortune to their inner self.

People will learn a lot of elements when they start improving the world: They will learn that expectations cannot be too lofty. Expectations cannot be redeemed in an instant. It requires a lot of steps before we can reach to our ultimate destination and we have to be disciplined on keeping running the pedestal through that destination. Second, we will be better at not underestimating and overestimating things. A lot of the stuff that we use and buy as a service we seem worthy may not be worthy of the actual value. I think being accountable on investing on products and services that will add value to the long term is a step that people should already start making it as a habit. It will eventually be a cornerstone habit for keeping our planet clean and avoid climate change.

People have a choice now to become accountable. There is and will be more technology for people to become more accountable. However, we cannot wait for too long. It seems people are asking for bad habits and technology is feeding it in the same format smoking companies profited from it. When scientific evidence shows that smoking caused lung cancer, it was not taken into account because the effects did not become on a grand scale. Only after decades when a lot of people already suffered from its effects, did it became conclusive. And even when it became conclusive, people, especially the youth, were on a smoking spree. When people have a choice and they do not choose the good path then we do not have any other choice other than to regulate it: In most developed countries, we don't allow people to smoke indoors, hotels and cafeterias have their non-smoking spaces and we even have cigarette packages with ugly images for the side effects of smoking where you have to even pay higher taxes from the rest. We do not want people to be forced in doing the right thing, but if they do not, for the sake and mercy of humanity as a species, we do not have any other choice but to influence them to do the right thing.

Now, we may not be harming people physically, but we are influencing their attention. It may not be physical, but it is psychological. If the path they do deviates the person to innovate, we are decreasing the value of what each individual is worth, stagnating the economy on the long term. If the path they do aligns with what they want to innovate, it increases the value of each individual is worth, increasing the economy in the long term.

There is a lot of friction for people to innovate these days, especially if you are not at a young age and have to take care of your family or health. We should not be too afraid of playing small risks on finding our own sense of morality by taking a small journey on making our world a better place through trial and error, for when the time comes when we depart to this world, how will we know that we were good moral characters in the world in the end if we didn't experience doing it in the first place? The other problem is that the education system (even the digital one) focuses too much on placing people to build stuff instead to innovate.

There are a lot of companies that give back to the world. Allocating that giving properly to the right people can expand their capacity on giving back to the world, accelerating our growth and diversity. However, a company is more whole if it both gives and teaches people how to be better role models of society. It is similar to how companies hire people: smart companies do not hire people with their skills alone, they hire also if they are a good cultural fit or not. Similarly, teaching people to be better role models will be the culture fit for humans bonding with earth to transform our world into a paradise.

Companies may not choose to disrupt themselves if it does not affect their business. We cannot expect a better social world from others if they do not care as much as we do. So if you care about the world where people can take their own small ships and traverse their own adventures rather others letting them do the handling for them, join the movement Time Well Spent. Although we live in a world where there is a lot of clutter of information that must become relevant to us, we lack more on prioritizing our free time with correct expectations on the daily challenges we personally live. We need technology that solves the problem of us being more active & conscious of how our brain responds to time to get the best for me and others. Planning our time that adds best value will be the new revolution in the next 100 years. Joining the movement has a chance of making a difference on whether we will have more engaging technological products that engage our life on taking more risks and less staying idle as passive consumers.

Thanks for reading.

[1] Thanks to the low cost of mobile phones, despite political instabilities and monopolies of the physical infrastructure, a lot of developing countries were able to afford access to the internet and gain the benefits that it could offer.
[2] At the time of writing, we have devices that have 4k video resolution, 360-degree cameras, and early stages of virtual reality. Several countries provide an internet subscription to its users that handle the bandwidth capacity on streaming through these devices.