Time

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Time is never lost, it’s only abused.

Giving your time away is a form of self-abuse.

You can’t lose time, you can only misuse time.

Are you guilty of time abuse?

Consider it before you say yes - is it a good use of the time?

Videos

Zoom out (seeing your entire life from start to finish)...

Another Take

Considering viewing yourself as time, capable of enduring any challenges (just as time marches on objectively). Stay connected to one's true self and become aware of the natural rhythms of life. By practicing this, it becomes easier to face and overcome difficulties, and even find enjoyment in all moments, regardless of their nature. Avoid external substances or distractions to numb or hide from the pain of what is.

1. We own all of our time.

At any given moment, you are doing what you most want to be doing.
We are always in control of our own time.

If you don't have the time to do something, it's not a priority to you. It might be a priority for someone else - and if you're a people pleaser like me, you'll feel guilty. And if your a vampire, you'll manipulate people to make it a priority for them.

2. Hell yeah or no

From Derek Sivers - and it's something I've been struggling with more and more. There are way more opportunities and ideas to pursue than there is time to do them all.

And it's a 'gut' metric - do I really want to do it? If the answer isn't an enthastic 'hell yes', then I have to be confident enough to say NO. To let it go. To be firm in my decision. Again, as a people pleaser - it's hard to disappoint others, so this is an area I really struggle with.

Success is doing more of the things you enjoy and less of the things you don't. ~ Paul Kyriazi

Take a look at your daily schedule - do the items fill you with a sense of excitement & urgency? Or do the fill you with dread?

3. The daily highlight

From the book Make Time. It's the ONE THING you need to get done today. This is related to RAS and begins with deciding on what that ONE THING is when there are too many choices available. I've expanded this to 'My 3 Things' for the day, but agree, you need to decide on the FIRST THING on the list. And be sure it's something within you control.

4. Use a to-do list

I agree a physical todo list is best and I'm a fan of Rocketbook - specifically, the Rocketbook Mini which I use like a tiny whiteboard I can always have with me. I only allow myself to write one task per page so I can stay focused on it.

5. Time blocking in the calendar

Aka: Time Boxing. The first you should do each day is to schedule your daily highlight in your calendar, giving it enough time to complete (with a 20% buffer). His point is while 1-thing may seem unimpressive, when you do your one thing every day, you'll have made major progress 365x (over the course of a year).

6. Parkinson's law (Work expands to fill the time we give it)

Set artificial deadlines. The reason I was working out more was because I was signing up for classes - I was never as consistent just going to the gym... the power of deadlines with real penalities (if you don't show up for a yoga class you reserved a spot in, you get charged $10).

What is equally important is the END time. Again, back to my consistency of yoga, the class is one hour. After the hour, my time is UP. I don't keep doing it past the hour. What's important about consistency is honoring both the scheduled start & end time. Even IF you want to keep doing something, failing to STOP doing it will come at the expense of others things on your todo list. This is why IF you want to do 3 things instead of one, you need need to honor the stop time so you can begin the next item on your list.

I find personally that as long as I am moving the ball forward on a project, that project eventually gets done. And that 'moving the ball forward' is the extent of what I have control over: meaning I can put the ball down and pick it back up later or I can hand it off, such as when I assign it the status 'Pending Client Action.'

7. Have protected time!

I have been doing this for the last couple years - it's from 6 to 10am. It's also my 'prime time.'

8. Delegation

Figuring out how much your time is worth. If it's $125/hour, then you should be delegating any task that someone who charges a lower rate can do instead. It's why it may make sense for you to hire a housecleaner or gardner - unless you enjoy those tasks, if you can sit down and earn enough to pay them to do it, then hire them to do it (just be sure you ARE utilizing your 'freed up' time effectively).

9. Automated scheduling (Calendly)

Insist that partners & customers use your online scheduler.

Taking this a step further, what if you could automate the scheduling of your tasks? I'm working on a way to integrate milestones in AuthorDock with my calendar.

10. The choice to be satisfied

I once wrote: I can

Is your self-worth based on unrealistic expectations? True love has no expectations.

...and I feel like the higher my expectations, the more I beat myself up. It's conditional love when it's based on the idea of being anyone else. So why would you choose to love yourself conditionally?

Unconditional Love In Action: Always Enough & Never a Problem.

We are the sum total of what we pay attention to. We are time.

Everyday you get a fresh page to write more of your life story. Keep a close eye on your pen, people will always want to borrow it. ~ Eric Bartosz

Why I am so obsessed with time? Because time is life. Our entire lives are a reflection of how we've applied cumulative time up until this point. Our history has created who we are. And it's with time that we can shape our future.

Collectively - all the events in time have conspired to bring us to this point in time. And by the the time we realize it, this point is in our past. And just like that, the impact of our how we spend the present becomes a permanent part of our past. We are living into our future's past.

We can only change who we are by how we spend out time. Time and life are forever bound together. The possibilities we can imagine can only be manifested through time, until our time runs out. Infinite possibilities collapse when we decide & act.

There is a life occurrence or a sequence of events unique to each of us. How we apply the time available ultimately defines us.

I do not fear death, and time will eventually run out for all of us.

If we knew how much time was left, would be better about how we allocate our time?

I reflected on our last vacation and crazy productive I became with the deadline (that would take me out of the office for over a week).

The deadline drives focus, attention, and forces us to decide what to do with our time (life).

I believe a big reason of why I fail to excel in any one area of life is because I don't want to be locked in to a single decision. I tend to keep my options open... and with so many 'open options,' I spread myself thin making less of an impact on the majority of them.

A strategy I'm using to counter this is mini-deadlines and time blocks. I am using the first part of my day to set the coordinates of the waypoints I aim to touch on my way through my day.

Late to Start

A recurring dream and a recurring theme in my life... I show up to a triathlon (I used to race a lot), and I miss the start. Last night was the first time in a long time I had that dream.

Time is running out...

The grim reaper is coming...

Everyday, it's your responsibility to take action and tip the scales towards realizing your goals...

Every decision puts weight on the one side of the scale or the other. Your actions weigh you down (keep you stuck & hold you back) or move you forward (and close to realizing your ideal).

How you spend your time exposes you or promotes you.

How often do we ask ourselves: "Is this the best use of my time?"

What's actually happening today is the sheer amount of information is begging for our attention. When we give 'em our attention we give 'em our time.

Car sellers use a tactic known as sunk cost. The longer they keep you at the table, the more likely you are to finally give in. Timeshare sales people do it as well. It works best on those of us who are impatient. The concept is that the more time we've invested into something, the less likely we are to want to let it go.

Toilet Paper Time Machine

"I don't have a square to spare". - Elaine from Seinfeld

You know how toilet paper is perforated?

"Perforation facilitates the detachment of consecutive sheets by the user. The compromise between the strength required to detach a perforated sheet and the strength required to break a sheet affects the perforation efficiency."

It got me thinking that time is like that. At the top of each hour, it's like the perforation of toilet paper. But what occurs after we pull a square?

Now you have a reminder of saying no: "You don't have a square to spare."

Reimagining Time

There's been talk about ditching daylight savings time. Why not revisit time all together? Given the pace of life today, it's high time we redefine time. In reality, an hour today moves much faster than it did 1000 years ago.

Weekends and holidays will to be revisited. It makes no sense that we all have the same days off. There are simply too many people on the planet. Let's be smart about this. If your last name ends in A-M, your days of are Sat & Sun. If your last name ends in N-Z, you are off Mon & Tues. We all work Wed-Friday.

We've been getting hit with a premium for holiday travel for too long. Ever notice how much more you have to pay to travel around the Thankgiving holiday? No more traditional Thanksgiving. If your last name ends in A-M, you are on schedule A. If your last name is N-Z, you are on schedule B. Schedule A celebrates Thanksgiving in November. Schedule B celebrates 6 months earlier. While we still may experience a bit of a bump in expenses due to increased demand, it'll be nowhere near what it is today. Best of all, the entire system will be under less stress.

Given the fact our borders are no longer limited by space, why limit them by time? A universal clock makes way more sense. No more time zone. There is only one time zone - UTC. UTC is the coordinated time of all beings in the universe. If you are New York and we schedule call at 1pm, no matter where I am in the world, I know exactly when to call you.

As a layout my own timeline for the day, I need the ability to quickly zoom in (⌘+) and zoom out (⌘-). To see my timeline (hour,day,week,month,year).

It's time to redefine time. If we are time, then each of us would have our own unique place & time relative to when enter & depart this world.

Building off the wikipedia definition of time:

Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. The physical nature of time is addressed by general relativity with respect to events in spacetime.

The numerical value of time is different for different observers. In general relativity, the question of what time it is 'right now' only has meaning relative to a particular observer. Distance and time are inseparable.

Time is a coordinate, like a GPS coordinate.

Life exists in time & space, so without time, life as we know it, ceases to exist.

When does time stand still? When we are in a state of flow.

When was the last time you lost track of time?

I see time as a deadline. The final deadline is when we take our final breath and we live on limited time. I might even argue that everyday we get is 'bonus time.' Once you discover your purpose, time becomes your most valued asset.

What gets done is driven by time.

You can't make additional time, so it's up to you to decide how to use the time available to each of us. We all have equal amounts of time.

I am struck by the fact that of all the other people born on the same day I was. I am not sure exactly how many, but a google tells about 350,000 others share my same birthday. As of today, those of us still living have been alive for 19,147 days. We have the same number of days up on which to use. It's not the number of days that differentiate us, rather how we use them.

What matters is what we do before we die.

What happens tomorrow is impacted by what we do today.

Do your best today and tomorrow will take care of itself. There's no point in beating yourself up for what you did or didn't do yesterday. In fact, the more time you spend in regret, the less time you have for today. Today is all that matters.

The final deadline we will all meet is our own death.

How we spend our time is of course how we spend our life.

Who or what is holding you accountable? When you are hypersensitive to accountability, you are hyperaccountable?

To meet the major deadlines in our life, we must meet all the minor ones first.

Revisit Deadlines.

There will never be enough time, but we find the time for what's most important to us. When someone is too busy for you, it's not that they don't have the time, it's that they choose to spend it elsewhere. That is, something is more important to them right now. Don't take it personally. You can't possibly find the time for everyone who wants yours either.

To the creator, the time we are given in this life is precious. Not just time to create, but time to experience, assimilate, and appreciate. Time to love our creations and the creations of others.

Flipping the model

I pay for a yoga studio where I can sign up for classes. I have the option to buy a 'punch pass' that for example would give me 10 passes to use towards future classes. Or I can pay a fee to get unlimited classes every month. After I signup for a class, depending on my preferences, I get an email reminder and/or text reminder.

I can login and see my schedule, but it doesn't have the option to link up to my google calendar (because my google calendar is not public). I do however get reminders via email that let me add the class to my calendar:

If I miss a class I signed up for previously, I get penalized and charged a $15 fee. In a gamification model, this makes perfect sense. The owner had to institute this system because too many people would sign up, reserve a spot, and then fail to show up (because there were no consequences for failing to show up). Brilliant!

What if a system like this existed for your workday? What if you all your commitments where booked in the same way? What if your calendar existed where others could book an appointment with you, and you charged for your services?

What if there was a system where you could build your own daily schedule, and have it nearly emailed to you.

What if there was a dropdown option to assign an agent, allowing you to build their daily schedule?

What if everything you did was tied to a deadline? And if you failed to show, you'd be penalized? But when you did show, you'd be rewarded?

You'd get paid just for showing up!

What agreements are you willing to make?

The digital handshake is your commitment.

And when you fail to meet your commitments, you will be penalized.

You can change your mind 24 hours before the event, but within 24 hours, the schedule is locked in.

You might want to build in some buffer, don't you think?

How might a system like this temper your goal, aspirations, and expectations?

Time is 2-dimensional, yet life is 3-dimensional.

"The key is not to prioritize your schedule, but to schedule your priorities." ~ Stephen Covey.

Significance

You increase your time the same way you increase your wealth - by investing it wisely. The key concept in Procrastinate on Purpose is that you shift your focus on ways to multiply your time, instead of being more effective with your time.

Pay yourself first is one of the basic rules of investing. So, invest your time first in the TMs (Time Multipliers).

It's the significance of the tasks that you choose to work on with the time you have that make the difference. It requires a deloading phase as Tim Ferris talks about.

Examples of TMs (Time Multipliers): * Setting up snippets in Atom * Building a workbook for my class * PubWriter

I'm also looking at the things that cost me time (and often money). Let's call these the time wasters. Compare it to

Saying no to jobs that don't allow me to multiply my time
Saying yes to events that drain my energy.
Anything that will commit me to a 'time debt' owed to others (saying yes to matchers)

More random thoughts on time (aka scraps)

Time is an incentive for action.
Without time, there are no deadlines.
Without deadlines, there is less to live for.
We tend to cast judgement on ourselves when we measure ourselves against time.

Time in duration of days on earth

What if instead of looking at the time as 2pm 9-28-17, you looked it as the number of days you've lived? It would be a number like this: 47-4-24 (Years, Months, Days). It would continually count up. And it would be unique for you (but you'd share it with whomever you share a birthday with):

Lifetime Countup

You can calculate your own unique day by heading to https://www.tickcounter.com/countup and entering your birthdate as the start day.

You can also use this URL format and replace the date with your birthday: http://www.convertunits.com/dates/from/today/to/May+5,+1970

Run a countdown timer to your next milestone:

Fifty Years Old Countdown

Your milestone will be here before you know it. They are literally counting down every minute (this is a nice visual reminder).

Focus on the next 100 hours. This is best managed OFFLINE and in print.

How many of those hours are billable?

Create a list of must do actions in the next 100 hours.

Each year, you lose another life. You don't know how many you've been given, so you better try to win with every life you've got!

Taking this further, you could count down to when the day ends (Midnight). It would be like your own personal longitude and latitude in time.

Latitude: 47.4.24 Longitude: -9.50 (hour/minute) written as: 47.4.23, -9.50

It's code for the current day & time: 9/28/17 2:09pm

It could be decoded.

Waypoints

Another way to use your lifepoint is to define waypoints toward a desired location.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waypoint

A balance sheet for time

A basic financial balance sheet contains 3 columns:

Assets
Liabilities
Equity

In regards to our time, you can break it down as follows:

Assets: Time available for our most important projects.

Liabilities: Time we are indebted to by obligation to work on other people's priorities. The financial debts that we owe can be tied to an obligation of time to earn to pay off the financial debt.

Equity: Time accrued is essentially unused assets. If you are employed, it's the paid time off you've earned by haven't yet used. It's the time you've blocked in the future for important projects and R&R.

How many of us are in the plus column when it comes to time?

What if before engaging a partner, we could look at their time balance sheet?

As you look at your week ahead, look at the time available as you would money in the bank. Where are you investing time? Where are you spending time? Where is the time predefined by existing liabilities?

What important projects (and people) are being neglected because you've failed to take into account your current time liabilities that must be first attended to?

When you start looking at time as you would a balance sheet, you will see who (or what) steals time, and importantly how to get it back.

Just like smart retirement saving, pay yourself first is the mantra to live by. Automatic investing is when deductions are taking directly from your paycheck and funneled to a retirement account. The money you save today is accrued (with interest) to be used later in life when your income earning days have ended.

The automatic investing for a seasoned time pro reflects auto calendar repeats for the important projects. The idea that I often plan my day around my yoga and meditation is a key example of this. If I sign on to support a project, it's vital that I allocate time in my week to work on those projects. It's also why deadlines on a project are so important.

As you begin your week, let's assume you have 40 hours available. You may have more or less, but for the purpose of this example, let's assume you are given 40 hours at the start of each week.

Make time for your existing priorities before making new commitments. Conflicting priorities arise when something potentially more important arises. Deal with it and recommit.

Time Debts

If you feel like time is a debt, then you've made some bad investments. Cut 'em loose now. You wouldn't hang on to a stock that lost have it's value would you?

Unbound

You are not bound by time. You are bound by the decisions you make on how you use your time. I've learned work begets more work. When you work yourself so hard that you're overwhelmed, stop working. It may seem like a paradox, but it works. Work begets more work!

Your time recipe

What does an ideal day look like? How much time would you spend on what? I love to read, write, and listen to music. I like to meditate. I like to eat. I like to hike. But would I enjoy those things if it's all I did all day? Not likley. This is the reason why what is fun as a hobby often loses is luster after it becomes a job. A job indicates obligation. A hobby indicates choice.

We are each unique, and rather than look at an ideal day, I choose to look at an ideal week. I use the LifeCycle App to help me get a better sense of where I'm actually spending my time.

My calendar is a plan. My log is reality.

Today, more than ever, can we ever afford to 'kill' time? Time was never free. Your life is loan and you have pay it back with interest.

In my work, I always seek ways to work more efficiently, but more importantly, how we do can make a greater impact.

Time is always on my mind. I know it's running out and few things are as irritating to me as a wasted hour. But I also have days when I awake and I feel like a misguided missile. I am like a heat guided missile chasing every hot spot or bright shiny object.

Because time is our scarcest resource, wasting it is the greatest crime.

The older I get the less time I have left to waste. Why did I ever waste time to begin with?

I think we waste time pursuing other people's goals because we've never taken the time to define our own.

A high payoff activity (HPA) is when we get to spend our time with the people we enjoy on what is meaningful to us.

Time is like Tetris

Like Tetris, time keeps moving. There is no 'pause' button. The blocks keep falling. You are rewarded when your blocks align and a row falls away. When that happens, you have more whitespace. The whites represents possibility of what you can do with the time that hasn't yet fallen.

I see each hour as a Tetris block. And when those blocks align - like completed a set of tasks that complete a milestone, there's a sense of completion. And with that completion comes reward.

Eventually time runs out at the game is over. Until then, the more rows you clear, the higher your score. The higher your score, the further you advance in life.

Time as a catalyst

Time as a co-create friend? Why not? When you carve out time for creating, you give yourself permission to create. The key to adapting a consistent daily practice is to make time for it. Here's what I've found. Sometimes, you've got to through your hat over the fence (and then you have to go get it). Performance can be a catalyst for improving. One performance is equal to seven rehearsals. You'll never know just how good you are until you put yourself out there. Use time as a tool and gain the confidence each time you do!

Past, Present, and Future

When you bring the past into the present, you are living dead. When you bring the future into the present, you are living absent. How you live in the present creates your future. Living in the present is the only true experience you can have, so live authentically. Learn from the past, but be fully right here, right now. Anticipate the future, but don't obsess over it. While you were busy planning, life was already happening. The future is already here. Live it. Love it.

We are time and the time is now

The less you have, the less others can take away from you. Favor that which can never be taken away: inner peace.

Finding more in less!

The past has already happened, so why fret in the now?

Time to develop a talent
Focused time
Free time
Show time
Practice time
Any time is a good time
Bad times
Fast times
Time for love
Time for music
Time to read
Time to learn
Time to watch
Time to listen
Time to go
Time to achieve
Time to acknowledge
Time to thank
Time to care
Time to share
Time to shine
Time to think
Time to meditate
Time to contemplate
Time to reciprocate
Time to wait
Time to fly

The right time Time is right Time is tight

When it comes to what’s important:

You don’t find time, you make time.

We are not running out of time, we are running through it (Trevor Hall).

Everything is exactly as it’s going to be, but we worry anyway!

When We begin To bend

Passing time vs. spare time

What do you do with your spare time?

It’s always the right time to do the right thing (MLK).

There’s always time for the important things in life!

Live like you and everyone in it is dying because it’s true

All we have is time, All we have is life

Don’t let the time of your life pass you by.

Want to see a preview of your life? Look at your calendar - the events that make up your future are life itself because you are time.

Are you excited about the future? If not, change what’s on your calendar!

How you schedule your time is how you schedule your life. One can happen without the other… so you must carve out the time in advance for what you want or life will pass you by (or rather the time of your life)

Make time for yourself : self care

Time to keep you on track

How will you spend your time?

Replace the word time with live (or life).

No matter how you spend your time (life) it’s time spent.

Every cent of time is spent - it’s all about how you spend it! Spend it well my friend. Why would you waste it on anything you don’t want?

Time is spent time, never lost. We only misspend it!

Don’t miss our on getting the most of every cent!

It’s not on you how others spend their time … just like it’s not on you on they spend your money.

But when others spend your money on things you don’t want, you are giving your life in the form of time??? The dream is getting paid for the time you enjoy. And you can enjoy every second … no matter what you do.

It’s not what you do but how you do it!

Consider time spent suffering is time wasted. Why do you suffer?

Let go of time, let go of yourself.

Moving in time
Standing still in time
In good time
In good times and bad
Times of peace
Times of war
Time to fight
Time to run
Time to sleep
Time to wake
Time to be
Time to be present
Time to be patient
Time to be kind
Time to be cautious
Time to be relaxed
Time to be me
Time to be a good son
Time to be a good husband
Time to be attentive
Time to be compassionate
Time to feel… ?
Time to be angry
Time to be sad
Time to be resilient
Time to be resourceful
Time to be creative
Time to be forceful
Time to be quiet
Time to be tired
Time to be awake
Time to sit
Time to eat
Time to create
Time to play
Time to rest
Time away
Time to laugh
Time to cry
Time is up
Time to forgive
Time to forget
No time to regret
The time we share
Time to care
Time to win
Time to lose
Time is never lost
Only wasted
There is a time for everything

Plenty of time or never enough?

Strapped for time.

This is your time. It always has been.

Time sync or time sink?

Mind the time
Until your time
The end of time
Time the mind

In perfect time
I’ll find a rhyme

Floating through time

In due time
Your time is up
So let’s get going
And never let up!

Can you see now how we are time and our lives reflect how we spend it?

Working hard takes time
With enough time, anything is possible

Use your time to be your best and your best is yet to come!

To make the most of our time is all you need to know, sooner or later, the time is right.

You can't manage time, but you can manage how you use it

Time management isn't a luxury; it's a necessity. We want to run our day, not the other way around. One big culprit is our email. Our behavior might just be the Achilles' heel we've been ignoring.

I was listening to an audiobook, and the author threw out this mind-bender: he had mentioned checking emails 15 times a day. I would say I may be close. Now imagine checking your physical mailbox 15 times a day. Your neighbors would think you've lost it, but here you are, doing the digital equivalent with your email.

Sure, some jobs demand that kind of hyper-responsiveness, but for most of us, it's self-imposed chaos. Let's give this a try. For myself, I've set boundaries: 8 AM, 12 PM, and 4:30 PM are my email check-ins. Three times a day, and that's it. If the world needs me, it'll have to wait until one of those windows.

This is no different than stepping onto the track with a game plan. You don't sprint the first 100m of a 400m race, so why are we blasting out of the gates of our workday like it's a mad dash? Set the pace, maintain our speed, and finish strong.

According to a July 2019 survey of white-collar workers in the United States, 43 percent of respondents stated that they were checking their work e-mails every few hours outside of their normal work hours, while 10 percent stated to were checking them constantly.

This is just one example of a time suck but thought it was interesting so hope it opens our eyes.

Stoic philosophy reminds us that the obstacle is the way. Your email—or any distraction—isn't the issue; it's your management of it. Take control, set boundaries, and execute. Make this your new mantra: Manage your time, or it will manage you.

Make Time

You don't find the time, you create it!

The Make Time System:

Highlight: Start each day by choosing a single focal point that you'll tackle for sixty to ninety minutes at some point during the day.
Laser: Beat distraction to focus on your Highlight during an optimum time for you.
Energize: Take care of your body to recharge your brain and get the most out of your time.
Reflect: Notice what worked and what didn't and what you are grateful for at the end of the day, so you can adjust and improve your system every day.

The key ideas are to choose one Highlight for each day, use various techniques to increase your focus (often by reducing distractions) and increase your energy, and refine your process continuously by reflecting on what works and what doesn't.

The best way to choose a Highlight is to trust your gut to decide whether an urgent, joyful, or satisfying Highlight is best for today. Focusing on activities that fall between long-term goals and short-term tasks is the key to slowing down, bringing satisfaction to your daily life, and helping you make time.

Three Ways to Pick Your Highlight

There're three different criteria to choose highlight.

Urgency - What's the most pressing thing I have to do today?
Satisfaction - At the end of the day, which highlight will bring me the most satisfaction?
Joy - When I reflect on today, what will bring me the most joy?

Top Highlights

What’s the most pressing thing I have to do today?
If you have something that absolutely, positively must be accomplished today, make it your Highlight
At the end of the day, which Highlight will bring me the most satisfaction?

Time Apps

Timing for Mac. There's also an API for it.
Timeular - The free app will suffice for manual tracking (start & stop), otherwise, you need to purchase the device to auto track (it works best w/a mac).
The Countdown App for iOS

Books & movies about time

Synchronic

Songs About Time

Pink Floyd's Time

What are your thoughts on time?

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