Chances are you will put those Fountain of Youth dreams on the back-burner once I tell you there is an actual human-lifespan-friendly source of Meaning, Contentment, and Purpose that you can tap into right now and that will enable you to start living a memorable, satisfying life in which all moments count and every minute is used to the fullest. All you need to do in order to enjoy all the linked benefits is to make time for it. Literally.
In his latest book, “The Time Miracle: A Practical Guide to Slowing Down, Rethinking Time, and Designing a Meaningful Life“, author Jean Paul Zogby shares an inspirational, data-driven strategy to maximize the amount of time you have available to invest in the things that hold the most significance to you. He is not only sharing a realistic perspective on how you can analyze and think about your limited time resources, but presents actionable steps you can include in your self-development plans so you can make the best of it and create as much Life Essence years as you can – Life Essence is a term the author uses to describe “the very best of your life [..] – la crème de la crème [..] – [the] highly-concentrated extract [of time]”.
The Time Miracle is the second book in Jean Paul Zogby’s Time Life Series and while the first book, The Power of Time Perception (read review here) is rather focused on the way humans experience time and how we can use the main factors of time perception to mentally “stretch” each moment as much as we can, the new one presents powerful time optimization techniques that can generate the subjective experience linked not only to a long life, but a satisfying, meaningful and authentic one nonetheless.
When I accepted Jean Paul’s invitation to read and review The Time Miracle my expectation level was really high based on the previous book, which I really enjoyed, and I was pleased to discover very early on that the second book not only delivered to that level of expectation but actually exceeded it significantly. The book is filled with countless elements of scientific data, social statistics, fresh perspectives on main aspects of life and recommendations on how to better your life by simply making time for … a better life.
Quality Time takes on a new meaning in The Time Miracle because you are not only encouraged to enjoy it when you get the chance, but you are also shown how to actually create the opportunities that generate a significantly higher amount of it.
With only around 666,216 hours available to us in our lifetime (the number may vary when considering leap years and other factors, but I’ll just let this one here, to please conspiracy theory lovers; number calculated based on U.S. life expectancy of seventy-eight years), Jean Paul reasonably argues that we need to make smart choices when deciding how to best use these hours to achieve our most significant personal and professional goals.
To assist that objective, the author considers three time-spending categories and their specific main benefit or outcome, when guiding self-analysis and providing recommendations to optimize the decision-making processes. The categories refer to Time spent on basic needs (generates health), Time spent on earning money (generates money) and The remaining time available for a person to “enjoy” Life (generates memorable moments). As you could probably guess, the last category is the one closely linked to the Life Essence concept and general goal.
The Time Miracle includes 20 Chapters divided into four sections, each of the sections dealing with a broader topic or goal. Part One, “The Lottery of Life” considers the “miracle” quality our very existence holds (the odds of each of us humans coming into being) and the value we assign to time as a consequence of this fact, together with our far-from-being-immortal nature and it also examines the way we use this resource in general. Part Two, “Squeeze More Out Of Life!” explores time usage at a deeper level and presents many recommendations to optimize those segments of life that we dedicate most time to – sleep time, eating time, money-earning time and (surprise, surprise) time spent on media. Part Three, “Happiness & Meaning” takes a closer look at the main factors linked to our perceived happiness and sense of meaning in life or purpose. Finally, Part Four, “Stretching Your Life Essence Years”, which is closely linked to the first book in the Time Life Series, The Power of Time Perception, offers practical tips and recommendations on how to slow down the perceived passage of time, how to use every minute to the fullest and create meaningful days that add up to a perceived satisfying, long life.
I liked how most of the factors and time-related elements addressed in the book are presented in a quantifiable way – how many years we have available in general, how much time we spend on basic, money-earning and memorable-moment-creation activities (in years), how much time we can save if we are being more mindful about our time resource and the choices we make in our life, etc, but at the same time a qualitative value is being assigned to all these elements, by linking them to their necessity, role and potential to trigger positive experiences and thus contribute to the overall life satisfaction levels.
Another two neat elements of the book regard the inclusion of a “Time Miracle Task” at the end of each chapter – an exercise related to the chapter’s content, meant to assist the reader in his time optimization efforts, and the different self-assessment tools and online tests you can take for free to better understand your own perception and relation to time and linked concepts.
Since its educational content and recommendations can be linked to a variety of larger contexts such as Life (nature, meaning, purpose of), Humanity (development of), Civilization (developmental direction of), Future (how time optimization can enable us to reach better goals faster), I find the motivational power of The Time Miracle impressive.
Once again, I appreciate Jean Paul Zogby’s thorough approach and responsible attitude toward documenting and translating evidence-based materials into actionable, realistic, high-quality self-development steps one can take to improve not only a specific segment of their activity, but mainly to increase their perceived self-worth, self-confidence, and life satisfaction levels.
It’s authors, people like him who remind me of the importance of interdisciplinarity and who confirm the fact that goals related to extensive healthy, collaborative environments are not to be dismissed as mere dreams, but fostered as common directions that can take both individuals and society toward contexts in which we get more answers and which guide us toward better ways to experience life. I like his courage as well. He’s not sugarcoating, he’s not telling readers what they would rather enjoy ‘hearing’ instead of presenting beneficial and scientifically accurate information in his books, and takes on the mission to provide effective perspectives on life improvement strategies. This is rather rare in the self-help/self-development industry and, in my opinion, needs to be given more attention and shown more support and appreciation.
In conclusion, I highly recommend The Time Miracle by Jean Paul Zogby. I think it has the information and the inspirational value to make you go into action-mode and start optimizing the way you think about time and how you make time-related decisions that can have a direct impact on the achievement of your personal and professional goals and your life satisfaction level. It’s basically a book that can help you make both your brain and your heart happy.
“The Time Miracle” is available in Kindle and Paperback formats starting July 20, 2018, and you can download a free sample or order it here.
P.S. This is not a commercial endorsement deal. I get no commission from the sales of this book. The author invited me to read and honestly review the book on Psychology Corner.
Photo Source: Copyright (C) Time Lighthouse Publishing. Used with author’s permission.