Do we all have the same 24 hours in a day?

A few weeks ago, one of my master mind sisters in the Productivity + Planning Master Mind asked for my opinion on an image she had seen on Instagram. I will post the image here for you to read, but essentially, it was a tweet from the Author Shailja Patel explaining her belief that the concept “We all have the same 24 hours” is nonsense due to income inequality. I thought this was an interesting item to comment on and I provided the following feedback to the group. After our conversation, it was suggested that my response was so poignant that I should share it in a post for my wider community. The following was my response, I have reformatted it to flow better in this post:

This is where I agree with this post- there are people who are systematically underserved in our world, for which doing everyday things takes much more time and effort.

People who cannot afford a car or ride share services, and have to take public transport places.

People who live in areas where grocery stores are further from their homes, so they rely on corner stores where food is marked up in price.

People who cannot afford childcare and don’t have a reliable system of friends or family around them to help with that, so they have to take less desirable jobs with more flexible work schedules and often lower pay.

This is a real issue and it makes life a struggle for them.

Communities of color suffer from this the most.

But I still don’t love this post, because it is comparing those communities on one extreme of the productivity spectrum to those on the other, and it’s leaving out “the middle class”.

I like to use the phrase “we all have the same 24 hours in a day” because on a basic level, it’s true and there are examples of people from every point on the privilege (or non-privilege) scale that do buckle down, do the work, stay focused and become a success (whatever that means for them).

There are plenty of people who come from families of wealth who blow their money, are completely unproductive and end up on the streets as well.

That’s what I don’t like about the post. It’s comparing two extremes and almost giving people with enough resources a built in excuse as to why they don’t have to achieve their goals if they have some barrier that they judge in their way.

When it comes to the “middle class” many of us have enough resources at our disposal to move towards our goals and dreams, if we choose to see them and take advantage of them, and yet, plenty of us aren’t reaching our potential.

What it comes down to for me is mindset.

I know that until systems are devised to help the underserved, it’s always going to be more difficult for a majority of people in those situations to move out of those circumstances, but if you look at this from a mindset perspective, if one person in a bad situation decides they are going to do whatever it takes to go after their dreams, then I know they will make it.

The same thing is true of a middle class mother, the same thing is true of a billionaires daughter.

The only difference between them to me, is that it’s much easier for someone who has endless resources at their disposal to believe they can achieve what they want and go after it.

The middle class mother has less resources, but still plenty of opportunity if she would see it.

The poor high school drop out has even less resources and opportunity, but can still make any dream happen if they are willing to shift their mindset to believe and do the work.

One of the most common productivity conundrums I see is “I know what I need to do, I have made the plan and I have the time, but when the time comes, I don’t do what I know I should do to achieve my goal. How do I fix this?”

The answer is mindset.

In that situation, if you know what you want to achieve and have a plan and even have some time to move it forward, if you are NOT taking action, it’s because of something in your mindset. A limiting belief. And you will never do the work, no matter how good the plan is or how much time you give yourself, until you remove that block and shift your mindset.

The factor I think we all often forget when it comes to achieving goals is that, multiple people can have the same goal and take completely different routes to achieve it. That’s what having the same 24 hours in a day means to me. Not that we are all going to execute the same strategy to reach the goal, or that we all need to be on level playing ground to make our goals happen. Instead, it’s understanding that we all have our unique place in the world where we are right now, and still we can all reach the same destination if we choose to take action and believe we are capable and worthy of our objective.

Until we acknowledge that mindset is the deciding factor in success, we are always going to be focused on the wrong elements, leaving more people of means reaching their potential than those with less, and a heck of a lot of people with “enough” believing they aren’t enough.

So, what do you think? Leave me a comment below and share your thoughts.

xoxo,