Have you ever been scrolling through your Instagram or Facebook feed, saw pictures of your friend from their amazing trip to Ireland or the Caribbean and thought to yourself “I need a vacation. I don’t have enough time in the day to even relax for an hour!”?
If that sounds like you, continue reading this post and I’ll show you how you can create more time.
What is the one thing that you, the waitress in the cafe down the street and the millionaire next door have in common? TIME! We all have the same amount of time each day. Warren Buffet only has 24 hours in his day. So does Arianna Huffington, Elon Musk, Sara Blakely, Mark Cuban and Richard Branson. Do you know who else has 24 hours in their day? YOU! If you don’t start to respect and value your time, nobody else will either. Start thinking of your time as the most valuable asset that you have.
One of my mentors, Peter Voogd, always stresses that “if you take care of your days, the weeks take care of themselves. If you take care of your weeks, the months will take care of themselves. And if you take care of your months, the year will take care of itself.”
Let’s break it down. There are 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week. No more. No Less. Let’s assume you spend 7 to 8 hours each night sleeping, that’s 52 hours. If you are in school or working full time, that’s about 50 hours a week, including commuting. The average person spends about 18 hours eating per week. You can take 24 hours, an entire day, relaxing (playing games, hiking, going to a movie, watching TV, having family night, etc.) plus 4 more hours of sports or church per week. That’s only 148 hours total. You could watch 5 more hours of mindless TV and still have 15 hours unaccounted for!
Average person watches 4 hours of TV – a day! That’s time that you could be spending being productive and improving your quality of life.
The one truth that will always be is that you will ALWAYS have time for what is important to you.
Start by utilizing your calendar. I prefer Google Calendar. Each Sunday I sit down and plan almost every minute of each day. The following Sunday, I look at how my week went and I subtract and add where necessary for the upcoming week. This is an easy habit that will completely change your productivity week after week. But you must be 100% honest and stick to the schedule you lay out. Your calendar is a reflection of your integrity.
By cutting out some of the less important noise from your week you can create the time to play with your kids or go for a stroll through your neighborhood. Remember either you’re running your weeks or your weeks are running you.
Check out this recent video from Chase Jarvis for his take on this.
Exercise
Take an audit of your week. Write down everything that you did this past week, how much time it took and look at where you are wasting your time.
Where are you spending your time? Did you watch 4 hours of Netflix? Did you spend an hour and a half at the store because you didn’t have a grocery list? Comment below and tell me what you are cutting out of your day to make more time for in the future.