Tag: Time

Beware of the “Time Eaters: Ways of attacking leadership in the world

As we talk about people who live in the back of the train and are not the leadership type, using Robert Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality, there are sure ways to detect their destructive attributes.  I call them “time eaters”: people who are afraid to do things in the world and disguise their impact by consuming time, hiding their lack of leadership.  Because they are too timid to live life in front of the train, they make a lot of noise to seem helpful in a fast-moving world.  They are the kind of people who want to consume your time with small talk or discussions about small things that are not important to the task.  And when you are doing important things in life, they seek to take up your time to associate themselves with some level of success without committing to fulfilling the endeavor.  And the really insulting thing about it is that when they want to waste your time, they fail to recognize that, as a fellow human being, you must be suffering from the same ailment as they are.  When people don’t know what to do, they seek means to disguise it with nonsense and waste time trying to look productive, but only with meaningless chatter.  A good example of this is the occasional salesperson who tries to sell you something in a shopping complex and stops you with “can I have a moment of your time?” as if that moment were not infinitely valuable.  The assumption is that, as two fellow human beings, you have some obligation to waste time on someone else just because they request it.  And in so doing, a lot of unproductive output occurs.  Being nice and accommodating will often leave you feeling empty because these people seek to drain you of your effort to fill up what’s empty inside them.

Using the metaphor of the speeding train, the people in life at the back of the train are always trying to bleed you of information when you are the leader type at the front.  So they are always trying to get you to come to the back, where they are, so that they can feel part of the process.  They, of course, wait for you to do something meaningful, then try to associate themselves with the success.  But because they are the back of the train types, they need to eat your time to gain something they didn’t earn.   And when you take the time to give it to them, trying to be nice, they fill the time of the exchange with nonsense, hoping to blend in and to look helpful.  They talk about sports, about the lottery, about wine, donuts, and college football teams.  But they never have the guts to talk about the things that really matter because they are in the back of the train and are only trying to appear as if they are part of a team.  When we talk about teams, there are usually leaders.  Then there are the people who like to spend time talking about silly things, trying to associate with success in the exchange.  I find wasting time with people in the back of the train talking about nonsense is a sure path to failure, because leadership is about being on the cutting edge, seeing things as they come, and dealing with them there.  Not talking about cutting the grass and what your neighbor is doing.  If it doesn’t involve life on the cutting edge, it’s mostly about wasting time. 

And in that way, I see a different kind of tyranny in the modern world designed by people who live in the back of the train.  They want you to always read their terms of service agreements for every little thing.  They want you to waste time figuring out a new software update for your smart TV that adds all-new control features to your remote.  They want to drag you into meaningless states for baseball stats and sports while the world outside burns away.  There is an evil in these time eaters that tries to keep you from getting to them by trying to trap you in the back of the train and away from the front so that they can work their malicious schemes.  And before you know it, on any given day, you have wasted 24 hours of your life and achieved very little.  Because your day was filled with “time eaters” who took away precious time to be on the leading edge with analysis from the back, trivial nonsense that are observations, not leadership-led.  And even in that sentiment is the notion that success should never be achieved at the cost of our humanity, of not communicating effectively, or of volunteering to waste time with people in the back of the train out of compassion for their position.  And that no achievement matters more than talking to another human being.  Even if what everyone is saying to each other is meaningless in the scheme of things.  The point of communication is to validate the lack of leadership that the other parties are terrified of, and the point of existence is to make them feel better about it. Not to actually achieve things. 

So beware of the “time eaters.”  I avoid them as I would any disease.  There is a real menace in their actions that intends to destroy the world, and I don’t like it at all.  And I say all this not to be mean, but to explain why I don’t allow myself to get stuck in projects or circumstances that are “time eaters.”  When I see and hear that the people I’m dealing with are “time eaters,” I remove myself from their company quickly and move on to something much more interesting.  If I feel what I’m doing isn’t important, then I don’t do it for long.  And people do take offense to it, but that’s OK.  I see value in the back of the train only in the analysis it provides.  But it only helps in a kind of future state, as leadership is fast and furious, and is not a team exercise.  The concept of teamwork is designed to be a time-eater of shared consumption of resources to appear busy and proactive.  When, in reality, it’s just intended to keep leaders from the front of the train and to trap them in the back with all the other slugs.  And the more time they waste keeping essential things from happening, the worse the world is.  Whether the issue is a discussion about a meaningless topic or wasting time with the TV remote, “time eaters” are a real problem imposed on us by an evil that lurks just beyond our senses.  And the war they have against us is a very real terror against the human race.  The lure is in compassion, wasting time with people who can’t contribute to success because they lack the ability.  And in that effort, the whole ship sinks, and this is by design.  So, to prevent that eventuality, beware of the time-eaters.  They will seek to destroy the world with nonsense and sell it as a value because of the human need to feel wanted by other human beings.  And in that exchange, vast evils are expressed and injected into society to undo all thoughts of goodness.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Bible Says Earth is Roughly 6000 Years Old: Understanding water displacment

I really like people like Mel Gibson and Ken Ham, one the famous actor, the other the creator of The Ark Encounter just south of Cincinnati.  However, both believe in the scriptural understanding of the earth’s history, that it is roughly 6000 years old.  I would argue that they aren’t wrong if you measure years differently than we do on Earth, but that is an entirely different discussion.  Regarding earth sciences, it says that life on Earth is billions of years old and is at apparent odds with scriptural timelines.  Within these kinds of debates, the truth gets concealed from people, which is partly on purpose and other parts unfortunate.  It’s challenging to put science into a belief system, just as it’s hard for people who build a belief system in science to alter a previous assumption because of their emotional investment.  I don’t hold it over Mel Gibson in any way; I can’t wait for his new movie on the Resurrection of Christ.  That will be a life-changing movement for all human history and change the world.  I believe God’s hand has pointed his life in the direction of making this movie the whole time.  So I can’t wait for it in 2026 or 2027 when they finally finish the movie which is a sequel to The Passion.  Because I love the Bible and have had a relationship with it all my life, it comes up a lot more now. How can you love the Bible and love science? The two are incompatible.  I hear all the time that Earth is only 6000 years old and that Charles Darwin was an absolute idiot.  I also hear a lot that we never landed on the moon.  But I think there is compelling evidence in both categories that will erase any doubt very soon, so people believe what they believe, and if it holds them together as people, that is the important thing.  But that doesn’t make everything a fact.  

Mel Gibson is a very smart person who is very passionate about many things, making him a great actor and creative director.  But he has lived a very rocky life, living hard and going through many women.  For a period in the 80s and 90s, he was the sexiest man alive by many considerations, and it was hard for him to maintain his sanity, I think, being a hand of God and having every woman in the world throwing themselves at his feet already undressed.  So, I don’t blame him at all for holding onto scripture like a disabled person holds on to the handrail while going down the steps.  But he recently said something on the Joe Rogan Podcast that was very interesting and part of the movement of trying to fit science into scripture, which is popular these days.  However, I argue differently because I see science trying to force understanding into the same problem, where new evidence is ignored to maintain a scientific narrative.  I’m just going to say it; everyone is going to be screwed up in a few years once we get out into space to discover that humans came from out there, not through Darwin’s evolution, and that many of the things we believe are going to be shattered with new evidence.  That doesn’t make scripture any less relevant or some scientific method.  It just means that discovery gives new evidence and that we must let that evidence tell the story.  Not to make the story fit our assumptions. 

I think these tunnels under the Temple Mount are older than when Abraham went there to sacrifice Isaac to God. And is why the politics of religions are designed to make real excavation impossible.

Anyway, Mel Gibson was telling Joe Rogan that he doesn’t believe the idea that the ocean levels weren’t lower during the Ice Age, as I have been saying, 400 feet lower.  Mel Gibson said that if you put ice in a glass of water when the ice melts, the water doesn’t displace itself over the rim of the glass.  The level of the water doesn’t change.  And from the point of view of mass and how we measure it, he’s got a point.  But he was missing that during the Ice Age, massive amounts of Earth’s water were tied up in glaciers, and those giant blocks of ice were coming down over both poles and were mostly over land.  The weight of the ice itself is what caused the Great Lakes in North America.  The weight was so great that it flattened the earth’s crust in that location, which is still rising back up to a circumference, pushing the water out and into the St. Lawrence Seaway and, ultimately, the Atlantic Ocean.  Another several thousand years, and the Great Lakes won’t even be there.  So because of this massive effect of glaciers displacing large amounts of water over the land masses, the world’s sea levels were 400 feet lower.  At that time, you could have walked from England to France without getting your feet wet, except for a few ancient rivers.  And the Persian Gulf was above water all the way down to Dubai.  Most of Florida extended well into the Bahamas, Cuba, and the Yucatan Peninsula.  If you have read the Book of Morman, there were old civilizations in North and South America that the Nephites and Lamanites interacted with when they migrated from Jerusalem around 600 B.C.  Even then, it looks like land mass was lost to the sea. 

I would further offer that if you look at the previous shorelines of water levels that were oceanfront during the Ice Age, we will discover a lot of ancient civilizations and that the assumption science has of linear technical development is ridiculous.  Rather, we are dealing with the Vico Cycle here, where human civilization has started and stopped throughout history.  And that history goes back millions of years.  Not just 10 thousand years.  And likely goes out into space.  I think there is compelling evidence that Jerusalem goes back to settlement with a cave system under Mt. Moriah and that the Temple Platform that King Solomon built his temple on, and the current Dome of the Rock was significant, perhaps even millions of years ago.  And many of the world’s religions have purposely been put at each other’s throats to conceal the truth, which we’ll likely figure out once we start colonizing Mars.  Much of what we know now about everything will change with new evidence, and we have to be willing to look at that evidence without losing the importance of our belief systems.  It can be tricky business, but it’s not impossible.  Everyone must understand that the bad guys out there purposely seek to pit people’s beliefs against each other to conceal or use the truth to their advantage.  So, because Mel Gibson doesn’t quite understand water displacement concepts and how they relate to ocean levels, that doesn’t mean that what he says in his movies, especially the upcoming Resurrection, is false.  It’s just perspective.  The art says what it says.  And that is the same whether we are talking about the Bible, the Book of Morman, or the Quran.  I find them all very fascinating, and there are certain truths there.  But there is a lot else that science is unpacking, and our scope will increase with new information.  We must have the guts to look at that information and not hide from it, which is the case with science and what we look at regarding previous ocean levels.  And what we will discover under the water, especially off the coast of Cuba, India, Japan, and the Persian Gulf.  It’s going to be a mind-bending few years of upcoming adventure.  And we will all be better off for it.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Time Management and Friendships: Being productive is fun but not very socially accomidating

To answer the question all at once, because many people have been reaching out for friendship, and I give them quick one-sentence texts and very short emails, it’s not personal. I have many friendships, and I like that I do. But I don’t traditionally maintain them. In my life, there isn’t a lot of time to ask about how the dogs and cats are doing, and I certainly am not one who spends time standing around the grill in the backyard with friends sipping beer and talking about lawnmowers. There is nothing wrong with that; many people enjoy that kind of thing. I might if I didn’t otherwise have the type of life I enjoy. But it’s certainly not a rejection of friendship that I express to all those who have reached out, and it’s been happening so frequently that I do want to put things in context a bit. If I can avoid some hurt feelings, I care enough to at least do that. I try to answer all the emails I get from people. For instance, my Gmail account is so out of control that if anybody sends me an email there, it’s highly likely that I will not see it. There are over 500,000 emails there that I will never have time to open, so I have other email accounts that are much more manageable that I use for the needed correspondence. It’s an interesting problem to use technology to reach as many people as possible and not lose touch with the personal relationships that can quickly saturate life with too much interaction. As I came to think about it recently, it really is an astonishing number of correspondence, and managing them all might otherwise make each of them feel disenfranchised, which certainly isn’t the intention. 

Professionally, I apply about 70 hours per week toward those objectives, which by itself is a lot. Then beyond that, I put in about 30 hours a week, usually between the hours of 2 AM and 6 AM, toward political endeavors, which I view not as a networking opportunity but purely as community maintenance. I want to live in a good world, so I spend that kind of time each week to do so. Some people actually move into elected office, and many have asked me about doing so in many positions. But the truth is, I can do the most with the time I have available in the way that I do because I am interested in so many community functions. Even though I talk about it a lot in specific formats, education issues are less than 1% of what I spend my time on. There are actually many more topics that I am much more passionate about, but public education is a predecessor to them. So, you must do one thing before you can do the other thing kind of thing. So, if you are doing math, you can quickly see that there are only about 68 hours of sleep left for the week, which would be about 9 hours per day. But then there is spending time with family, which I do a lot. And I have a lot of interests and read many books. I read an average of 3 books per week. I manage that by utilizing reading time during meals. I answer emails usually while walking from one place to another. And there certainly isn’t much time to talk about lawnmowers and smoking meat in the backyard. 

The truth is, I love the pace of my life and all the things I do in it. It’s a hyperactive life, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Many people believe that we are supposed to sit around meditating all the time, centering ourselves with quiet. To take time and find peace in our lives. I think that is a bunch of garbage. Life is meant to be productive. Quiet time is boring. I would go as far as to say that it’s lazy. And people who say such things are just trying to justify their own lack of ambition. If I had more hours in the day, I would quickly fill them with every possible opportunity to do something productive. They would not be filled with more sleep. I think only a few hours per night in the form of power naps is needed, and I’ve been doing this kind of pace for several decades, and it’s enjoyable. Not a burden the way many might think of it. There are occasions when hostile perpetrators came to my house at 2 AM hoping to find me asleep, only to be caught by me as I was walking around my yard at that hour with books in both hands and me reading them with a flashlight. Needless to say, they were quite surprised and frustrated by that reality. Being busy has its benefits, you might say it that way, depending on what a person values in life. And for me, it’s productivity. The more productive I am, the happier I am. But I do expect to accomplish things quickly. I don’t have much time for traffic or to get to things. I drive fast. I avoid crowds that might slow me down. And I expect to be doing multiple things all at the same time. My wife thinks it’s funny; we recently went to the grocery to get my mom some Mother’s Day flowers; I expected to be in and out in under 7 minutes. She wanted to look at the various breads and snacks, so she slowed us down and laughed at how fast I moved. She’s used to it, but she always manages to draw a joke when she has to experience my pace, which is so different from her. 

Usually, especially regarding family things, she coordinates where everything happens. I show up where she says and do what needs to be done. I love family stuff, but like the grocery visit, I usually have an hourglass I’m looking at before the next thing needs to happen. So, without a relationship with my wife, it’s pretty hard to get me to be somewhere unless she arranges it. I appreciate when frineds send me texts telling me about something important, even if I don’t answer right away. Those reminders keep me plugged in where I might otherwise miss it. Reminders of big events are very useful as news stories. I don’t waste much time on gossiping in the newspapers or the nightly news. But I do appreciate it when people point things out that are useful. From trusted friends, it helps me manage chaos better and still get to the essence of a problem. But taking time for small talk and smelling the roses that are just not for me. And I don’t intend for people who would like to spend more time to get frustrated with the lack of effort on my part. It’s certainly not intentional. It’s just clock management. You get just so much time per day, and I literally work to make every second of every minute of every hour matter to the most efficient utilization. And it’s fun. But certainly not normal. 

Rich Hoffman

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