Does any of the following sound familiar to you?
- Have you ever been wanting to hit the gym, but then had to cancel on yourself because there just wasn’t enough time?
- Or maybe you really wanted to go out for a walk in the nice weather? But we both know there’s no time for things like that!
- Perhaps you wanted to cook a really nice dinner, but you had to stay late at work, and…
- You guessed it – There just wasn’t enough time to do it?
Today, I’m going to share a well kept secret.
If you look at ANY top performer or super entrepreneur, you will notice a couple of things that stand out.
Firstly, that they seem to have so much time.
They travel the world, appear on red carpets, keep their body in perfect physique and start new companies – all at the same time! How is this possible?
Everybody on this planet has the same amount of time, the same 24/7/365. How come that some people seem to have at least twice as much time as we do?
For instance we’ve got Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, who run’s a whopping 400 companies! How is that even possible?
If you dig down a little bit deeper, you’ll notice that people like Richard are super generous with their money. But you will also see that when it comes to time, they are likely to be very conservative. Why is that?
Your most valuable asset.
I’ve been around long enough to know that TIME is the single most valuable asset I have in my life.
Time is the one thing that I can’t get any more of. No matter how hard I work, at the end of each day I’ll have one day less of driving Ferrari 458 Italia’s, one day less of riding my 215hp Seadoo, and one day less to change the world.
What can we do then, in order to make the most out of the limited time we have?
What are some of the things that we can do in order to perhaps even produce more of this magical asset?
Keep on reading, and I’ll tell you both what and how you can do it – Because there is a way!
The 5 steps to cracking the code of time production.
Of course, there are several things that can be done to maximize the time we’ve all been given.
In my promise to keep this post short, to the point, and juicy here’s a list of the TOP FIVE THINGS that I do:
- I optimize all of my waken time
- I became a morning person
- I have coaches to keep me on track
- I accept my limitations
- I schedule guilt free relaxation time
Let’s go through them all, one by one!
1) Optimizing Your Time
I’m going to be quite blunt with you here. Just know, it’s because I really care about you. OK? Deal!
So, to the point: YOU. ARE. LAZY.
There, I’ve said it.
The thing is, we’re all lazy in one way or another. But todays average person is so lazy it’s ridiculous, there’s even research to prove it.
There’s no sugar coating this. Optimizing your time is nothing but hard freckin’ work. If you’re ready to put in the necessary hard work in order to learn how to produce more time in your life, then please keep reading!
However, if you’re not ready to put in the long hours of hard work, then I’m sorry, but the rest of this article is not for you. Are we cool? Cool!
Firstly: Every hour I spend, I always consider what I could be doing with my time instead. And more importantly, what I should be doing.
For example, if I’m about to just mindlessly surf Facebook, I’ll usually think “What should I do instead of checking videos of kittens right now?”.
Trust me when I say that there’s always things that you should do, things that tend to be WAY more productive in your life than [enter random time-consuming activity here]. How about making a call to someone you like? Cleaning your apartment? Making yourself a really good dinner? Or my personal favorite: Follow through with that new training regime you’ve been thinking about for ages!
Secondly: About eight years ago, I did something most people would think is insane. I stopped consuming news altogether. Across all media channels (TV, Paper, Radio). As if this wasn’t enough, I also stopped watching TV. By now, some of you are probably staring at your screens in utter disbelief “Is this guy crazy? I can’t give up Fresh Prince of Bel Air!?”.
Don’t worry, you won’t have to. Let me elaborate!
The news part is easy. In my humble opinion, there’s NO reason what so ever to consume news in any form. Why? Because the people who’s putting together the news segments make money only if someone actually watches/reads/listens to the news.
We all know that there’s one social trigger that attracts more views, clicks and listeners than any other – Fear. Sure, every now and then there’s a segment about a dog that just had 24 puppies, and that’s great.
However, virtually 99% of all news out there is there in order to set fear in us.
Here are some examples (I just looked at one random big news website at the time of writing this article):
- Man found dead in his own backyard
- Here’s a list of the most dangerous drivers in your area
- Construction strike spreading across the country
- Man found dead in hotel room
My conclusion is that all of this hatred, violence and terror can’t be a good way to feed your mind. Instead, I usually listen to a TED talk or any kind of life enriching audio book!
Now you might ask: “But Victor! What if I miss out on super important news? Won’t people think that I’m stupid? My friends and colleagues would laugh at me!”
Two words: Don’t worry. During the course of the last eight years, I’ve always caught up on EVERY major news subject, usually within minutes of arriving at my destination for the day (work/school etc). And I’ve yet to be announced “stupid” by anyone for not hearing about the latest news from somewhere else.
In fact, my observation is that people even enjoy telling you big news first hand! Most people love provoking reactions from their peers, and telling big news is a great way of doing just that. Ergo, by not consuming news, you’ll be the hero of the day!
The TV part is… Even easier to explain!
I haven’t given up Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and you shouldn’t either.
However, I’ve given up entirely on commercials. Perhaps some of you can see where I’m going at here?
Don’t worry, I’ll explain!
Instead of watching that new movie or TV-show between countless hours of commercial breaks, advertising cr*p that you don’t even need, I simply watch stuff through ad-free membership services such as Netflix, HBO, Hulu etc.
This way, I can be sure that the time I invest in watching a TV-show I like, is actually spent watching… You guessed it! A TV-show I like (and not some ad on the new and amazing ‘Super Carrot Chopper 9000’)!
Bonus tip. By the way, it’s the same with music. Just ditch the radio once and for all and join us in the 21st century! Get Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music or any other ad free music streaming service.
No more ads and no more news. Aaaah, life is amazing!
2) Becoming A Morning Person
As some of you might know, I’m a crazy person (or at least, that’s what I’m often told).
“Why?” You might ask. Because I get up every weekday no later than 5am…
… And I’m loving it!
When it comes to time management, there is one basic thing we all need to agree on. No matter what time you start and end your day, the first waken hours are virtually always when you will be the most productive.
And if we’re talking about rising with the sun, like I do at 5am, there’s even research showing that this habit increases happiness. Which is great, because there’s also a bunch of research showing us that happiness boosts productivity. Astounding!
My personal take-away, that I have been using to great success in my own life, is that 2 hours in the morning is 10x more worth to me than 2 hours in the evening. During evenings, after a long day at work, the risk is extremely high that I’m tiered/lazy/hungry/low on willpower etc.
This fatigue then leads to: Not doing all of the things that I should be doing (ex: working out, writing articles, preparing for tomorrow, cleaning the apartment, eating healthy etc).
3) Always Take Shortcuts – Get A Coach
This point might be the most important one in this entire article.
And just for the record: No, I’m not a coach and No, I have nothing to sell to you. OK? Let’s move on!
Firstly it’s a well known fact that the best investment you can make is an investment into yourself. Whether that’s a college degree, a nice vacation, creating a startup or paying for a gym membership.
But don’t just take my word for it.
- Look at any successful entrepreneur out there. For example Steve Jobs (Apple), Richard Branson (Virgin Group) and Elon Musk (Tesla). If they wouldn’t have invested both time and money in themselves (i.e. their business ideas) they wouldn’t even have gotten out of their mothers’ basements!
- There are also countless influencers stating that investing in yourself is the #1 best deal you will ever make. Brian Tracy says “For every $1 you invest in yourself, the ROI (return on investment) will be a whopping $30”. And one of my all time favorite persons, Jim Rohn always used to say “Work harder on yourself than you do on your job” – Now that’s some powerful stuff!
To get back to the point here, I always take shortcuts if I can. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel.
One weekly shortcut I’m taking is utilizing a Personal Trainer to boost my productivity at the gym.
OK, WAIT!
Before you judge me here, at least let me explain my theory. Fair enough? Good!
The way I see it when it comes to working out, it’s all about minimizing risk.
The risk at hand is that I won’t go to the gym, even though I know I should.
However, with a Personal Trainer, the risk of me not going to the gym when I’ve got a time slot scheduled is reduced to being exactly ZERO.
What does this mean? Well, during the 4+ years that I’ve used a Personal Trainer on and off, I have never canceled one single session (and currently, I’m even paying a whopping $110/hour)! Why is this?
I’m a very decisive person, and I can push myself further than most people I know. So why then, do I need a Personal Trainer?
Because of two things:
- It doesn’t matter how decisive I think I am. My Personal Trainer always pushes me at least 50% beyond what I could have ever done on my own (And for the record, when you push yourself beyond what you thought was possible is when you have the greatest exponential results. Both physically and mentally).
- I never have to think. Again, it’s all about avoiding risk. A normal thought in my head when the alarm rings at 4.30am a Thursday morning: “Oh, I didn’t sleep to well tonight.. And I don’t even know what I’m supposed to work on today. Perhaps I should just rest up and hit it tomorrow instead?”. With a Personal Trainer, he or she does all of the thinking. They even know what weights you’re doing! So when that friend of yours asks “What do you bench, bruh?” just reply cooly with “Ask my Personal Trainer, because I only care about results”. BOOM (the sound of his mind being blown into pieces)!
I also want to be perfectly clear, that a Personal Trainer is just one example of achieving a specific result. You can hire a coach for almost anything these days (Digital scrapbooking, Virtual Summits, Watercolor Painting, Card tricks, Time Management and so much more).
The point I’m trying to make is that if you want to excel at something as fast as possible, but you’re limited on time (because you have a life) – hire a coach to help you. The investment will ALWAYS be the best one you can make. Because it’s in yourself!
4) Accepting Your Limitations
So honestly, it’s almost time to reveal my un-challenged #1 pro tip if someone tells me that they need more time.
However, before I share my #1 pro top there’s one thing that you need to know about me… One of my most well kept secrets… Something that I don’t really want anyone to know, but I’ll share it with you guys anyway…
OK, here goes: I’m insanely pedantic. To give you a brief understanding of how pedantic I am; I’m working actively on becoming less pedantic. I’m honestly working on becoming more dirty (that sounded all wrong, but you get my point)!
Now, we’re finally ready to move on to the #1 pro tip for magically producing time!
Aaaand, here it is: Buy it!
Wait, what?
Yes! You heard me! Buy more time!
It all ties back to the headline of this specific part in the article “Accepting your limitations”.
Even though I’m a pedantic person, I’m really not a fan of cleaning. And I can’t say that I’m particularly good at it either. I just don’t like when my home is a mess. So what can I do, that also happens to free up a lot of my time? Any thoughts?
That’s 100% correct – Hire someone to do it for me! That guess deserves a *high five*!
And that’s exactly what I did, 4 years ago. Let me break it down for you below!
- My cleaning lady, let’s call her Consuela, comes once every other week.
- She is here for 3 hours (even though 2 hours is more than enough for my apartment).
- She bills me $15 / hour. In other words a total of $90 / month.
What’s the magic in this? Well, we need to do some additional math to realize just how powerful this help is to me!
Let me break it down for you even further.
- Firstly, since I’m booking her for 3 hours every other week (when she really only needs ~2 hours) she is more than happy to help out with some additional things once in a while. These things could be to fold freshly washed laundry, making my bed, cleaning out my refrigerator once every 6th months, and so on.
- Secondly, what Consuela does in her 6 hours would likely take me at least 10 hours.
- Thirdly, Doing some quick math that means that I’m literally buying time at a rate of $9 / hour ($90 / 10 hours). Now that’s a bloody bargain, if you ask me!
Finally, to drive this point home I’ll share a story of how I look at this purchase (and other similar ones, that I will list further down).
Let’s say that you’re on your death bed. And someone runs in to the room and says:
“Hey old person! I’ll sell you more time. My rate is $9 / hour!”
Who in their right mind wouldn’t reply with a heartily: “Shut up and take my money!”.
Again, hiring help to clean is just an example. This can be applied to so many areas!
For instance, I also pay the local cobbler to fix my leather boots and shoes once a year (instead of properly taking care of them myself…) and I also found a guy in town who washes my entire car – inside and out – by hand, at a flat rate of $30 – What a bargain!
The time that I save by NOT doing these things, I instead spend on things that I know I’m good at.
Here are some examples of what I can do instead:
- Writing this blog post.
- Staying an extra hour at work (often times earning 5-10x what I’m paying for the service in question).
- Spending time with family and friends.
Again, it all comes down to optimizing your time. Why should you spend 1 hour doing something that you’re 1) bad at, and 2) hate doing? There’s no reason for it! Pay someone to do it starting today!
5) Guilt Free Relaxation
The final part of this article, which I hope have helped you realize a couple of seemingly magic ways to produce time, is about relaxation.
What do you do when you finally have all of this newly found free time, and how do you make the most out of it?
What we usually encounter with free time, is that we have so little of it, that when a rare occasion of free time does appear…
… It’s gone before we’ve even had time to say hi, and let alone do something productive!
But don’t worry – I’ll let you in on a secret technique. One that I’ve been using the past 9 years of my life, and found great pleasure in utilizing. I call it The Guilt Free Relaxation Technique.
It’s very simple, but does – as most things in life – require some work from your side. Let’s go through it together, below:
- I keep a calendar of essentially everything that I need to do on a daily basis. Both for my work and personal life.
- However, on weekends, early mornings and evenings – when I’m done with whatever I need to do in order to dominate my goals. If the calendar is empty, that means I can do WHATEVER I WANT!
Your eyes did NOT deceive you! If my calendar is empty, you can bet your pension that I’m going to be playing video games, having a beer with the guys, taking someone I care about out to a nice dinner or any other leisure activity of your choice!
The power of The Guilt Free Relaxation Technique is just that – IT’S GUILT FREE. You can do whatever you want, without feeling bad about wasting your time. And in my humble opinion, that’s the whole damn point of being alive – To have experiences you will never forget, and to spend time with people who empower you!
Final words.
If you like (or hate) this article – Please drop a comment bellow! I would love to hear your feedback. I truly want to become a better writer, and promise to read and respond to every single comment. Of course, it also helps me out if you share this with someone you KNOW needs more time in their life!
Until next time (hehehe!)
-Victor