19.2 Minutes

Not going to go into detail, but back in 2021, I had a minor personal crisis. I had a friend who made himself out to be a guy who always helped other people—you need anything, I’m always here, man. Well, I called him once, twice, three times, and more. I would get text messages back—sorry, my job, my wife, my kids, my car. Eventually I gave up. I got through whatever I was going through at the time, and I ended up getting the help I needed, from someone else. Let’s just say we haven’t talked much since then.

I call this being jammed up on your own bullshit, which I think is a more descriptive term than self-absorption. We all have a lot of things going on in our lives: our jobs, our wives, our kids, our cars. It can be a bit overwhelming. We are all jammed up on our own bullshit, to a certain extent. I certainly have a lot of things going on in my life: managing money, a bunch of newsletters, teaching, writing, music, social and family obligations—and yet I still make time for other people. If someone asks for help, the answer is always yes.

If someone asks for help, the answer is always yes.

Now, “help” may not be something serious, like an existential crisis. If it is something serious, you’d better fucking help. Help might be putting a good word in at the job you are applying for. A small favor. We all get asked to do small favors here and there. The answer should be yes, and then you should do the small favor. Last year, someone asked me for a small favor, to provide career advice for an ex-military guy, and I said no. I said no for basically the only time in my life. And it was because I was in the middle of moving—I was going to be jammed up for a month. And me saying no hurt the friendship that I had with this guy—after all, all it took was like, a fifteen-minute phone call? I didn’t have fifteen minutes? Well, I really didn’t have fifteen minutes, but I suppose I could have squeezed it in somewhere. We all have fifteen minutes—right?

This comes down to being generous with your time. Time is our most precious resource, obviously—we all have a finite amount of it. I talk about this all the time—there are 24 hours in the day, and the most important decision we will make is what to do with the next 24 hours. The thinking is that you should give away 10% of your money to charity. The average person gives two percent of their money to charity, so instead, let’s think about giving two percent of your time to charity. There are 1440 minutes in a day, and two percent of that is 28.8 minutes. But we are asleep for eight hours, so two-thirds of that is 19.2 minutes a day. You should spend 19.2 minutes a day helping out another person—with time, not money. That is all it takes. If you cannot take 19.2 minutes a day to help someone, then you are what I would call jammed up on your own bullshit. Last week, I had two separate conversations with very rich people. One was a billionaire, one was in the multiple nine figures. I had 20-minute conversations with both of them, and they both gave me the gift of time—they talked to me with no distractions, no looking at email or surfing the web, and gave me their undivided attention. If a billionaire can give me the gift of time, you can give someone else the gift of time. I don’t think I’m saying anything controversial here. 19.2 minutes.

A lot of the things that we think are important are not all that important. The work thing you are doing can probably wait. The kid thing you are doing can probably wait. The church thing you are doing can probably wait. I will talk about getting a job. The reason you have a job, probably, is because someone went out of their way to help you out. That is the reason I got the job at Lehman Brothers—someone went out of their way to help me out. If you are sitting at your desk at you get a LinkedIn message from some kid at Okeechobee Swamp University, looking for a job, you have to evaluate it on its merits. Is the kid an idiot? Maybe, but you were probably an idiot at his age, too. And you can’t help out every kid in the country looking for a job. But if you are self-absorbed and jammed up on your own bullshit, you will probably just file it in deleted items. It would take you thirty seconds to respond to the LinkedIn message—not even 19.2 minutes. The whole ethos around looking for a job is that you should pay it forward—someone helped you out, so you should help out the next kid that comes along. Many people shirk that responsibility, because they are jammed up on their own bullshit—I’m so busy! The job, the wife, the kids, the car. I don’t have time for this. I hear about college kids sending out 3,000 cold emails and getting 10 responses. That’s a lot of people who are jammed up on their own bullshit.

Time is finite. We can’t help every person. We are being pulled in a million different directions. And my guess is that, over the course of a year, you will not be spending 19.2 minutes a day helping people, because 19.2 minutes a day over the course of a year is 7,000 minutes, and if you spend 7,000 minutes a year helping people, you are a saint. Chances are, you will be asked for help once, maybe twice over the course of a year. And if the answer is no, or more likely, the answer is that you ignore the email or call or text, then you are not a person who is very generous with your time. And I’m not talking about all the scams and bullshit that come through LinkedIn or email. I’m talking about genuine opportunities to help people. If someone needs a favor, the answer is absolutely yes. If someone needs real help, like, they are going through a bad divorce, the answer is genuinely yes. And if someone is suicidal, Jesus H. Christ, if you don’t drop everything and help immediately, then you suck balls. It can be messy to get involved in other people’s problems—most people don’t want to do it—who needs the drama? But you do it, anyway. I asked someone for help in 2006. I got the help I needed. It changed my life, and I have not forgotten, nor will I ever forget it. How long did it take to help me? About 19.2 minutes, to change the course of my life.

The people who give money to things end up on a donor wall somewhere. The people who give time to things, well, there isn’t a donor wall for them. You’re not going to end up on a donor wall for helping out the guy who is going through a terrible divorce. I am in the process of looking for a new literary agent, having ended a 16-year relationship with my last agent. (Any leads, please reply.) Five people have made some calls or emails on my behalf. That’s what a lot of helping people out is—connecting people. Putting people in touch, which can be done with an email. Three minutes out of your day, and if it lands, you have a friend for life. I have a friend who calls himself Mike The Connector. That’s what he does—he puts people in touch with other people. He has done it a couple of times with me, most notably, he got Bill Perkins, author of Die With Zero, to appear on my radio show. Malcolm Gladwell has written about connectors. When the kid from OkeeChobee U. sends you a LinkedIn message, if you can’t help, the least you can do is to point him in the direction of someone who can help. Takes two minutes. Won’t happen if you are jammed up on your own bullshit.

You can be jammed up on your own bullshit for 23 hours and 40.8 minutes a day. You can be selfish for pretty much the entire day. But for 19.2 minutes, you should be looking outside yourself and thinking about who you can help. Some of this is just maintenance on relationships. If you stay in touch with people, then you will be the first call when shit goes sideways. If you do your work and you come home and eat your chicken and sit on the couch and don’t talk to anyone and leave the rest of the world to figure out its own problems, congratulations—that’s what the vast majority of people do. People take an hour out of the day to work out, more, if you include time to change clothes and drive to and from the gym. No matter what happens, they won’t miss a day. But they get an email from an old colleague to “pick their brain” about something? Too busy. Let me guess—your parents won’t pick up the phone. Too busy. They are fucking retired.

Whatever you think “busy” is, I assure you that you are not busy. You are jammed up on your own bullshit.