Teach Kids Life Hacks Episode 2 | The Time Monster

One important success principle you need to teach your kids is that of the time monster. This life hack focuses on teaching kids about the effects of time.

Time changes everything.

Whether time changes things for good or for bad depends on our choices.

The compound effect is the power of time, or rather, our power over time.

Teaching kids the effects of time and the compound effect will give them the power to use time in their favor for the rest of their lives.

This is why it is considered an important life hack for kids.

Teaching Kids Life Hacks Episode 2 – The Time Monster

In today’s Life Hack Training series, we are going to go over how to teach kids life hacks that will set them up for a lifetime of success. The first thing I want to show you today is how to make luck.  This will include good luck and back luck.  

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The life hacks found in this lesson were learned from “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy.

What Does Luck Look Like?

Look at this graphic.  

The curve going up has good luck and the curve going down has bad luck.  

What do I mean by that?  Simply this: when the media picks up on the happening of rags to riches or reverse type stories (this is riches of all types not just money), the part they report on is just the very end curve parts.  What they never show you is the super long part before the luck zone.  

That part before is the time that it took to ‘get lucky’.  The time is what took you to the luck zone; the actions you choose to do day in and day out will determine if you are going to receive good luck in that zone or bad luck.  If we think about this in hypothetical terms it sounds like a bunch of hogwash, so let’s get some real numbers out here to look at.

How to Create Your Own Luck – DIY Luck

Teaching kids how to create their own luck is one of the best parenting hacks there is.

Let’s take a financial example first (though keep in mind not all luck or success is financial in nature).  

Mr. Nothing

So we have Mr. Lucky, Mr. Nothing, and Mr. Unlucky.  Mr. Nothing is going to do nothing and so he loses all the time we apply and has nothing to show for it.  Fast forward 40 years and he has nothing left.  No time and no money.  

Mr. Unlucky

Mr. Unlucky is not going to do anything horrendous.  He will put $1 a day on a credit card that has a normal 15% interest rate.  Then we will fast forward 40 years like we did for Mr. Nothing.  Mr. Unlucky has now spent $14,400, one dollar at a time.  

Over 40 years that is not a big deal right?  Ooh, wait we have 40 years of interest to add as well, so tack on $669,261.07 for 15% interest over 40 years.  Now this looks serious because Mr. Unlucky is not $14,400 in debt; he is in $683,662.07 in debt.  

Ouch.  

Mr. Lucky

So to flip that, Mr. Lucky invests $1 a day to an account that grows at 15% and, you guessed it, he has $683,662.07 at the end and he only put in $14,400.  Not a bad little chunk of change for a $1 a day investment.  

This example is cool but it really does not show the true power of time so let’s have Mr. Nothing change his mind in the middle. For the next one.

This time Mr. Lucky is going to put $250 a month into an IRA that is growing at 8% compounded interest monthly starting at age 23 and by age 40, he will not have to put in anything more and will have over a million dollars by age 67 retirement.  

Mr. Nothing will be talking to Mr. Lucky and learn that Mr. Lucky is done saving for retirement and will have a million in the bank to retire with, so he decides to get started at age 40 to do that too.  

Mr. Nothing will spend the next 27 years getting to age 67 and putting in the same $250 a month to get the same result but will come up short with a little less than $300,000, which is not even 1/3 of the amount that Mr. Lucky has at age 67.  

Mr. Lucky took 17 years to do what Mr. Nothing had to do for 27 years.  Why the 10 extra years and extra $27,000 to have less than $300,000 at the same retirement age?  TIME.  

Mr. Lucky learned to make time his friend and Mr. Nothing by waiting around made time his enemy.

Help Kids Realize Their Own DIY Luck is Within Arm’s Reach

This is the biggest reason that I started developing these success principle concepts into simple, life hacks for kids ideas that even a six-year-old could understand.  How many people don’t figure this stuff out until well into adulthood?  And by then, time is starting to think about eating you and has become your enemy.  

If you learn this early in life you have more time and then time is your friend because the more of it you have the better off you are.

More Successful Life Hack Examples

So let’s go with a health-related example. Because having a successful, awesome life is about more than just money, am I right?

Let Mr. Lucky eat enough to maintain a healthy weight and also do a little exercise everyday to keep his heart strong and lungs clear.  

Mr. Nothing will eat enough to maintain a healthy weight.  No exercise involved.  

Finally, Mr. Unlucky will add just one extra beer a night and increase his tv time by an hour a day.  

Compound that out to 40 years later.  

Mr. Lucky has a strong heart and lungs, is trimmed up, and has aged slowly physically.  

Mr. Nothing has a good weight but most of it is not muscle and his bones are deteriorating because time has been eating both his muscles and his bones.  

Over the last 40 years, Mr. Unlucky has gained a 100lb or more and now can hardly get off of his couch to even get to his bed.  

Do you see this?  Yes?  That is good.  So now let’s look at the whole formula.  

Insta-realm inspiration X small simple actions of creation X time = Real World results of GOOD LUCK. 

That is the formula for success.  

Whereas, Insta-realm inspiration X small simple actions of destruction, or giving up on inspiration, X time = Real World results of bad luck.

So let’s talk about time.  How long do I need to do the small simple actions of creation, you ask?  That is a good question.  

Let me ask you one. How long do you want to be successful for?  

Whatever your answer was is the answer to your question.  If you are not using time as a friend then it will automatically start to eat at you and your skills and your life in general.  

Does this mean if you skip one day on accident that you are doomed to instant death?  No, time is a slow and painful enemy and a slow and fruitful ally.  In both cases time is slow, but he never stops.  

But how long do I need to do a skill to become an expert in it.  The number I have been told is 10,000 hours.  That is of course an oversimplified and overused statement that is nonspecific in nature of only covering one variable (number of hours) and so it could be more or less depending on natural talent from genetics and of course, interest level.  

That being said let us use that 10,000 hours as a general average for a person who makes each of those hours a ‘deliberate working on improving moment’ and we have a ballpark area of time to work with.  

The break down is simple. 10000 divided by 3650 (10 years) is about 2.7 hours a day, or for ease, 3 hours a day.  This is of course for a skill that requires a little bit of talent, such as athletics or music or chess and the likes.   

The good news is the areas of success such as relationships, thinking, health, financial do not need talent to be able to accomplish because success is measured in growth and not destination arrival.  

We use goals and stepping stones to give us a direction to head in but the fact is if you grew and improved, you won, regardless of anything or anyone else in the world around you.  

So how much time?  Well, that depends.  That is going to be determined by your goals and how fast you want or need to accomplish them.  That being said, remember to make time your friend and he will help you.  The more time is involved, the less you personally have to put in every day because time will grow the rest.   

Relationships grow with every positive encounter.  Money grows with every positive interest incurred.  Learning grows with every added (and applied) piece of information.  

It does not take a lot, all at once, it just takes a lot of time, as much as you can give it, to make it as big and best as you can.  

The more time applied to creation habits, the better off you are.

Printable Worksheets for Real-World Application

Do you remember those goal-setting worksheets we went over last episode?

These worksheets are going to be a great resource in helping you and your kids decide what daily actions you need to begin taking now in order to accomplish your long-term goal (whatever that goal may be).

Set your 10-year goal. What success-related goal do you want to reach within the next 10 years what will ensure you have an awesome life? Breaking down that goal, what do you need to accomplish over the next 5 years, 2 years, or 1 month in order to stay on track?

When you break your goal down all the way, what is your one-day goal? This, my friend, is your daily habit. Perform this habit every day and you will be well on your way to creating your own good luck.

Life Hack Parenting Tip

So how does a busy mom teach this awesome life hack to kids?  Simple.  One step at a time.  And the children’s book, The Time Monster, illustrates this principle in a simple and child-friendly way.  Now, even your children can apply this useful life hack and create their own luck, one day at a time. You can buy the paperback copy of this book on Amazon, or if you’ve got a Kindle Unlimited membership, you can read it for free.  

If that isn’t a top-notch parenting tip, I don’t know what is.

If you found this life hack useful then share with three people the introduction video in this series so that the people you share with will be able to start at the beginning, which is the best place to start. 

Teach Kids This Time-Based Life Hack with a Children’s Book

So how do you plan to emphasize the importance and impact of time in our lives to your kids? You could teach your kids what you learned in the article and video all on your own…or you could buy the accompanying children’s book, The Time Monster, and read it with your kids. All purchases come with access to a free mp3 download of the author reading the book.

Or if you want to preview the book before you buy, take a look at the Time Monster preview below!

Next Up in our Free Life Hack Training Series

Next in our free life hack training series, we are going to be learning about the spill over effect and the importance of focusing on one goal at a time.

Click here to go to the next episode of free training.

Or if this is the first time we’re seeing you and you want to catch up, check out the first episode of our Life Hack training series, The Insta-Realm.

The introduction to the Life Hack Training series is also a good place to start.

Teaching Kids Life Hacks with The Time Monster – Episode 2