We will start by picking anything (call it y) that exists and adding it to a set X. Then, we can ask some question of y, such as “why y?” The answer to that question would either be in X or not in X. If the answer to that question is not in X, then we can put the answer z into the set X and ask a question of z, such as “why z?” Repeat this process until infinity, and we’ll get a set X of everything that exists.

Since everything is in X, that would include the answer to the question, “What is the meaning of existence?”, or “Why X?”, since X represents the entire set of all things that exist. However, since everything that exists is in X, that would mean the answer to the question is also in X. That would mean existence can be defined by itself! Hence, existence IS the ultimate meaning.

Making existence the meaning of life makes some commonly fuzzy terms very definable:

Good – Things that increase existence
Bad – Things that decrease existence

Of course, a lot of things are still subjective, such as what does increasing existence mean? or How exactly do we define existence? The answers to these questions determine how people perceive life and how they live it.

Let’s take a look at our history to see how things got to this point. At one point, we can assume that there were two types of things that existed – things that want to exist, and things that don’t. Of course, the things that don’t want to exist stopped existing before long, and the things that wanted to exist continued to exist. We’re descendants of things that want to continue to exist, and that’s why we exist today.

So what does that mean for us? It means that we are built to exist! Every single person you see alive has chosen to be alive. These people have the option of committing suicide, but they choose not to do it. Accepting that we do want to exist, we can see that we are provided with various tools to facilitate that particular goal. I would argue that all of these tools are different forms of emotions:

Instincts – Keeps you away from things that have a decent chance of instantly destroying you. For example, when you touch a fire, or jerk away from some sort of monster trying to eat you. This is kind of a fast trigger reaction for emotions. You feel a special type of pain, so you are programmed to jerk away from that type of pain instantly.

Logic – This is like of like the opposite of instinct. It’s a slow emotion. It plans for how you will feel later, rather than now. It tells you what kind of emotion you would feel if some sequence of events happened.

While it is probably shocking to hear an INTJ say this (I was shocked myself when I came to this conclusion) – it looks to me like all motivation is emotionally based. All logic and thinking gives you is a series of if this and this, then this and this, but so what? That tells you nothing about why you should do that specific thing. This can be easily demonstrated with the existence loop: Pick anything you’d like to do, ask why you should do that thing. You’ll get the answer, “I do y because of x”. Then ask, “why do x?” Continue this process and logic will inevitably fail you because it’s a recursive loop with no base case.

When you want something, you desire it – that is a feeling. So to tell what you really want, you can just visualize the finished product of each item on your to do list, and see how you feel about it. Make sure you visualize the exact finished product of the task, what you would do with it, how people would react to it, so you get the full picture. Once you find something that you feel absolutely certain you want, then don’t let anything stop you.

For me personally, I get extremely excited by new ways of making money and new ideas. Both of these things can keep me up for 72 hours without sleep and I wouldn’t care the least bit. My feelings are also exceptionally positive when thinking about being a good father, and becoming one of the richest people in the world who solves some of the world’s most impossible problems. Deep down inside, I know that’s what I want and that I’m capable of accomplishing them. Even if I die, I would know that my life has been worth living. Feel that way about something, and you’ll know that’s what you want!

As efficient people, we want to get tasks done. The solution is to always do things NOW (or never)! When it comes down to it, what do you really need to get done? If it doesn’t kill you if you don’t do it, then it really doesn’t need to be done right now. You can eat later, drink later, pee later (or even on the floor – sure it would be a mess, but you don’t have to go to the bathroom). You don’t have to do your work or study either. Yes, you will get fired and expelled, but you can get another job or go start your own company. Just realize that there’s nothing you must absolutely do right this second.

Now, back to the task at hand that you said you’ll do later. Do you really want to do it? If not, then don’t! It’s okay. Just remember that all your problems go away when you die. Wait long enough, and you won’t ever have to do anything. The task you mentioned is something you are conciously choosing to do. If you really want to do it, then DO it! Otherwise, never do it.

In general, people put off doing things because they think they have to do them, but don’t really want to. When you apply the above advice, you’ll find that all the things you don’t want to do will go away, and that the tasks on your list will only be the things you want to do. Knowing it’s something you want to do, you’d just do it.

The main point here is that people procrastinate because either they don’t want to do the task at hand and think they have to, or they’re not sure whether they want to do the task. It’s a form of indecision. Simply decide whether you really want to do it, and then do it or drop it off the list!

In the general case, people are exchanging services and/or resources, and money is just one particular type of resource. Therefore, when you agree to work for a boss for money, you are actually exchanging your service of doing what your boss wants, for the resource money which your boss has. Holding this view is very useful in that while it is true that your boss is hiring you, you are also hiring your boss! That perspective will help you a lot when asking for a raise, or looking for a job in general, but that is a subject for another article.

So what exactly is a service? Well, in essence, it is your time + your knowledge of doing a particular task (which is actually also a form of your time). Hence, to be even more simple, you are essentially trading your resource of time for your boss’ resource of money. So how do you spend your time to get money? Here’s a couple of steps:

- Go with the opportunities that are already available for you. These are generally options you have with the current skills you already possess. For example, you may already know of a McDonald’s opening, which pays you $8/hr between the hours of Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm. Or you may know of a publishing company which likes your articles, but it pays $50/hr but available once a month.

- Spend time finding the opportunities above. This may involve networking, going to job conventions, speaking with entreprenuers, thinking up good business ideas, etc. The point here is to develop options for particular time slots at a particular hourly rate (or expected hourly rate if it’s a high potential thing). For example, you might come up with playing poker, which yields an opportunity which gives you $20/hr of expected value any time you want, or you might get a job offer which gives you $30/hr for 40 hours per week.

- When you are looking for opportunities, you will find that a lot of them have prerequisites. That simply means they want your time in a different form. For example, if your job requires that you have masters degree, that just means your boss wants your time converted to the form of a masters level of knowledge for the job at hand. This is actually something very useful to keep in mind when you are interviewing for a job.

So now that you have all these time slots with dollar values and prerequisites (which you can convert to either time or dollar values), it becomes a scheduling problem. Just try to figure out the easiest way to fit these opportunities into slots that maximize your value. If you have trouble doing this, you can use a standard scheduling algorithm. Doing this, you can figure out how much each hour of the day is worth to you. For example, if you work at a job, your hours of 9am-5pm is worth say $30/hr, but if you do nothing afterwards, your 5pm-12am hours are worth $0.

To take this further, you can assign a dollar value to everything you do in life. This is purely arbitrary. We automatically assign a value to doing some things in life anyway. For example, we like to eat ice cream and don’t like to die. If we’re going to measure these things, we need some scale. If we use a different scale than dollars, then everything (including your hourly rate), would have to be converted to that scale. I figure it’s easier to use scales that already exists – $ and hours. That way, using the scheduling algorithm above, you can completely optimize your schedule based on weights ($ values) you assign to each task.

Obviously, there’s a lot of fuzzy areas. What expected dollar value should you assign to “thinking about new business opportunities”? Also, there’s all sorts of constraints like eating would not be a good task to perform 3 hours in a row, or swimming would not be a good task to perform at 4am. However, like most real life problems, if we use some assumptions, this is still a very useful way of optimizing your time and converting it to money if you so desire.

When trying to increase our efficiency, we essentially care about producing the maximum amount of work in a given unit of time. This section will share tips for maximizing your efficiency.
In order to have more time to do the things that we want to do, we should start by looking at where we spend most of our time. What is one of the most common activities that pretty much everyone does in a day? That’s right, walking. Here’s a sample of a typical student’s day:

9am – Get Up
9:30am – Walk to Class
9:40am – Class Starts
10:30am – Class Ends, Walk to Class #2
10:40am – Class #2 Starts
11:50am – Class #2 Ends, Walk to Lunch
11:55am – Eating lunch
12:30pm – Finish Eating Lunch, Walk to Lab
12:40pm – Arrive At Lab (Yeah it took you 5 minutes longer on the way back )
2:00pm – Lab Ends, Walk to Class #3
2:10pm – Arrive at Class #3
3:00pm – Class #3 Ends, Walk to Library
3:10pm – Arrive at Library, Homework/Study
6:00pm – Walk to Gym
6:10pm – Work out at Gym
7:00pm – Go Have Dinner With Friends, Walk to Collegetown or dining hall
6:15pm – Eating Dinner
7:15pm – Finish eating, back to dorm/hang out
7:30pm – Arrive at dorm/some sort of night time entertainment

In this normal sequence of events, you walked a total of 85 minutes, and spent 50 minutes at the gym. However, if we assume that you can run 3 times as fast as you walk, it would take only 28 minutes to traverse the same distance. That is a savings of 57 minutes a day! Furthermore, most people do some sort of aerboic exercise for about half an hour while they’re there, so you can skip that since you’re already getting your running time in for the day. Additionally, if you schedule your gym days better, so that you only do aerboic exercises on some days, you can skip the gym trip all together.

So in total, you can save approximately 1.5 hours per day by just running from place to place instead of walking! Not to mention you’ll be getting exercise every day AND you’ll be running faster day after day, hence increasing the amount of time you save even more.

What can you do with 1.5 hours per day? Well, I like to assign a monetary value to my hours. In this example, as a student, probably only like $10/hr. So 1.5 hours/day * 365 days * $15/day = $8212.5. Assuming you have some knowledge of converting your time to money, what an easy way to make $8.2k/year and have a healthier body!

This is even better for the professional who works. While most professionals drive, their amount of time spent walking is pretty large also. In general, to/from lunch, to/from a recreational place, and/or possibly to/from work/gym. However, remember that the hourly rate is much higher for someone who has decent technical/work skills. A technical job is very easily $40/hr, conservatively (as of 2007). Even if they save only 30 minutes a day including the savings from the gym), that is 0.5 hours/day * 365 days * $40 = $7,300. As a professional person, with all tha extra time, you can easly produce $7.3k worth of extra work and ask for that $7.3k raise (or invest your time elsewhere on something else if your boss is kindda tight). For professionals who drive though, very significant chunks of time can be saved by making good use of concurrency or not driving.

So pretty much, running should be an efficient person’s default mode of getting from place to place, unless there is some special reason not to (i.e. you don’t want to show up all sweaty to meet a date, you’re hanging out with people and they’re all walking, etc.).