Our efforts compound over time. Time and energy are the limiting factors of success. Imagine what great personal feats could be achieved if our time and energy were in abundance. And yet, we can grow careless with our hours when we fail to appreciate them as precious nuggets of opportunity.

The idea behind 252 hours was born from a conversation:

“I have no free time,” I whined to my mother’s fiancé after an especially arduous shift at the cafe.

“Wrong.” He said, “you have from the moment you get off work until the moment you go to bed as free time. You choose how you spend it. Don’t like? Change it.”

He was right. I had allowed myself to believe I was at the mercy of my own routine, with only a half hour of wiggle room each day. My choices of where to invest my time felt less like decisions and more like iron clad obligations. It made me wonder, just how much time do I have? I decided to calculate it.

From the moment I am home from work [3pm] to the moment I go to bed [10pm] I have 7 hours at my disposal. That’s 35 hours of free time a week. For my two days off, assuming I am awake from 8am to 10pm, that’s 14 hours twice a week, so 28 hours. Altogether, that’s 63 hours a week, or 252 hours a month. 252 hours is a large chunk of time. In fact, that is enough time to take a full semester of general chemistry lab and lecture and still have over 100 hours to spare. But coming home from an 8 hour shift, the gravitational pull of the couch increases ten fold. Without the Big Picture in mind, dipping into our 252 hours can be ask mindless as going for that extra piece of salami on the cheese boar. We end up spending those ours disengaged and distracted rather than investing that energy into establishing and maintaining habits that will compound in our favor over time. Success does not happen over night. A great opportunity may arise by chance, but to quote Louis Pasteur, the French Biologist, “chance only favors the prepared mind.”

Use your time to prepare for the opportunities you seek. Your time is your capital. Invest it in yourself, in your brain, in your passion, in your professional relationships, your family, in whatever you value. As the limiting factor to both your success and your well being, time is not a commodity to be handled with thoughtless hands.

Be deliberate with your time and you will be successful, whatever success looks like to you.