Dedicate 50% of your life to maintenance
We all hear from social media and other outlets that we should strive to become the best versions of ourselves. The messages that they sent have great intentions however, they often forget a very crucial aspect of success: maintenance.
Maintenence comes in many shapes: sleep, cleaning, exercise, oil changes, brushing your teeth, etc. These are all the necessary things you need to do to keep yourself and your life in optimal condition.
Some cars break down after 50k miles and some are still going strong after 200k. Most of what accounts for this difference depends on who's the owner of the vehicle and how well they have maintained it.
Here are the following reasons why you should make time for maintenance.
You can't work hard all the time
We are led to believe that anyone can achieve success through hard work alone. But this type of thinking is absolutely wrong. Yes, there are times in your life when you need to give it your all, but you simply cannot do that for an extended period of time.
We are humans and your bodies are a machine that requires ample amount of rest to recharge. We have a limited amount of energy. You can continue to push through but the quality of work will significantly drop.
Things will break down
Your car may break down, your child may get ill, or the kitchen gadget you just bought isn't turning on. Whatever it may be in your life, something will break.
If you have allocated all of your time to working extremely hard, these types of incidents will incur a significant amount of stress in your life. You have already pushed yourself to the limit and these stressors will take you over the edge.
You cannot live like this for an extended period of time and expect to live a happy life. You need to allocate some slack in your life to attend to these problems when they come up because one thing is for sure: something will break down.
Most things can be prevented from breaking down
At this moment in your life nothing could be broken, but there are things that are on a verge of breaking if you do not allocate attention to it.
Allocate a certain amount of time in your life to analyze the things that are in need of some care. Your body, your relationships, your electronic devices, your car, etc.
Problems in your life simply do not just go away.
At times we like to just close our eyes and distract our mind in the hopes that when we open them, the problems will just disappear. That's the child in your mind hoping that maybe some adult will come and take care of it.
But you are no longer a child, you are an adult that's fully responsible for your own life.
Go see your dentist.
Go get that oil changed.
Do the damn dishes.
You are an adult and the problems in your life are your responsibility.
Small problems become big problems
If you don't do your laundry, you'll have nothing clean to wear.
If you don't make time for your partner, you'll deal with a breakup or divorce.
If you don't brush your teeth, you'll pay heavily dealing with cavities.
Compounding interest is a beautiful thing. Where your good efforts compound in benefits as time goes on.
Compounding also happens with debt. If you continuously ignore maintenance tasks in your life, they will negatively impact your life more severely than if you just took care of it.
Make time for wellness or you'll be forced to make time for illness.
Allocate a specific time for maintenance
Put some time on your calendar to do laundry on the weekends.
Add slots for exercise.
Dedicate time to think about what things in your life could require some attention to prevent bigger problems in the future.
There are problems in your life that are fully avoidable. Dedicate the time and awareness to attend to them.
Get some assistance
You don't necessarily have to do all these tasks on your own.
Have discussions with your family or roommates and discuss what things need to be taken care of.
By having open conversations and understanding the need to do maintenance work, you can live a more productive life.
If you are an extremely busy person and have the means to do so, consider hiring an assistant (or even a virtual assistant) to handle some of these matters.
Offload things that just create problems
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful” - William Morris
There are things in your life that have a net negative impact on your life. Consider if you can simply remove them in your life and free up some mental space in your mind.
Do you have old phones and electronics that are just collecting dust?
Are you maintaining relationships in your life with people that you don't like?
Get rid of these things in your life that don't serve you anymore and free up some space in your mind.
Acceptance is key
Maintenance sucks. It's not fun. But it's a necessary part of life. You cannot simply hope that it will go away.
Once you accept this reality and put some time and energy into it, you will live a much happier life.