Think you could improve your fitness goals, learn to play the guitar, launch your side hustle dream if you hadmore than 3-months of wide awake and alive time to work on it each year?
You already do.
Here’s the scariest,or most empowering, wasting time math equation for your life:
If you work a full-time job (or go to school), take care of living responsibilities for 3-hours each day, and sleep sevenish hours every night,
Is this pretty close to your typical week?
- 50 hours of work and commute (Ten hours for five days)
- 49 hours of sleep (7-hours per night)
- 21 hours of showering, meal prep, dishes, etc. (3-hours per day)
What this means is you currently have around 120 hours of “have to’s” or duty time that you can not avoid, yet.
Why do you need to stare 120 hours of duty time each week squarely in the face?
How Much Time Are You Wasting?
Because every week, you arehanded a talent of time,168 hours. When you subtract your sleeping time and duty time, 120 hours, from that figure—168 hours, this means:
- Every week you have 48 hours of awake, non-sleeping time available to you.
In thelast year, you wastedhow many daysof awake, non-sleeping, time?
48 hours X 52 weeks = 104 days
How do you direct and manage these over 3-months of FREE time (a quarter of your life) next yearinstead of allowing them to drift away, again?
Today you are going to learn appropriate tools to stop wasting time in two ways.
- First, mental shifts to begin right now (likely all you need!).
- Then, a simple hack to begin to end wasting time for good.
Let’s dive in.
Why are you wasting time?
1 – You Focus on the Fear of Wasting Time
When you are worried about wasting time, this becomes a more serious problem than most realize.
Why?
When your attentionfocuses on the fear, worry about it, or invokes hurry, you stand zero chance to manage your time like a boss.
This is the mental game the demons love to play on you:
Cause your focus to be on worrying and fear instead of the problem itself.
The important takeaway is this,focus on how to manage your timeinstead of dwelling on the fear of wasting time.
Likely, this one positive shift is enough to trigger forward progress in ending this wasting time stuckness.
2 – You Don’t Know Your Life Purpose
You haven’t made controlling your time a primary aim of your life because there has not been a reason to … yet.
When you know why you were born, what you were put on the earth to accomplish, wasting time becomes a drudge. A weight that holds you back from accomplishing the dreams, goals, and plans you desire to achieve.
The now so fun irony of it all is:
- In order to discover your purpose, you have to manage your time.
Click here to begin this other difficult but extremely worthwhile goal, discovering your purpose.
If you want to increase your motivation to end wasting time for good, there’s not a more worthwhile endeavor you can begin!
3 – You Wake Up at the Wrong Time
One of the most important reasons to quit wasting time is if you are not in control of your time,someone else will use your time for their benefit.
- bosses,
- spouses,
- family members,
- friends,
- complete strangers
will all use you for their agenda and it has to end.
Think about your mornings last week, why did you wake up when you woke up?
You skipped a morning routine for yourself and instead: someone else determined the time you ate breakfast, the time you took a shower, and brushed your teeth.
When you start your day for someone else’s goals, you are coming from behind at every moment for the rest of your day.
From here on out, create a custom morning routine you love,instead of using the first second of your day for someone else’s life.
4 – You Research Instead of Create
Because of information overwhelm available online, “researching” feels like work occurs more often than you realize.
Research is helpful, but there is a difference in“researching” what you need now, vs. what you might need, someday.
How can you tell the difference?
You can tell the differencebetween necessary research and researching to waste timein a few ways
- Are you looking for “just in case” information?
- Or are yougenuinely stuck and can not move forwarduntil you get a specific tool, answer, or another type of solution.
Most of the time,you are looking for, just in case.
When you begin to create instead of consuming, you shift from researching “just in case” to rarely spending time on researching.
5 – You Don’t Use Parkinson’s Law
What is Parkinson’s law?
Parkinson’s law is pre-determining the amount of time a task will require and sticking to it. The official law states:
- “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
What this law means in life is that when you go to write a blog, make dinner, or help your neighbor, that duty will take the amount of time you set to complete the task.
How will Parkinson’s law help you to quit wasting time?
When you realize everything you set your hands to do takes the amount of time you allocate for its completion, you canget more done in less time by pre-determininghow much time it will take you.
6 – You Don’t know the 5-Burner Theory
It’s obvious when you think about it; you can’t accomplish everything you want to achieve all the time.
The 5-burner theory (others call itthe four burner theory) will quickly show you your life priorities.
How?
Think of your life as burners on a stove, different from a stove though; you can not have every burner of your life on high.
Here are the five burners,
- Health
- Family
- Friendships
- Spiritual
- Work
100% of your life, time, is divided up into these burnerswithout you currently realizing it.
How do you use the five-burner theory?
You attach a number to each burner, and the sum of those numbers need to add up to 100.
Thisshift’s goal is to determinein each season, what are the priorities for your life right now?
Is health more important than friendships? Is work or a side hustle more critical than health, right now?
Determining your five burners will provide a north star for how you want to spend your time in this season.
7 – You Don’t Kill Distractions
Everythingis pushing against your willpower to take control of your time.
But, on average,you willingly allow these distractions against your willpower 96 times every day.
Where do these96 distractions occur every day? Your cell phone.
From emails to social media, calls and text messages, you are addicted to being in touch with the outside because there is very little going on inside.
Facebook and email are the largest diversionsstealing time from your life and you willingly permit them, even deeper than that,
- You allow their objectives and goals direct access to your ears and eyesvia notifications on your phone, watch, and often your desktop computer.
It’s pretty obvious when you think about it,this is the number one reason you don’t write, play music, meditate, or exercise, let alone know your purpose in life with all of this noise.
8 – Your Phone Controls Your Day
How do you stop wasting time on your phone?
It will rift you wrong initially, but you will be very thankful for this decision in a little while.
You stop wasting time on your cell phone in three ways.
- Turn off all notifications, icons, scroll in previews, lock screen previews, anywhere a signal promoting someone else’s agenda can be sent to your eyes on your phone or watch, kill it.
- Use do not disturb.
- Determine blocks of time, a routine for checking your cell phone.
Do not disturb is an incredible feature you are not utilizing. With do not disturb your wife or others you let into this time control game can reach you any time by simply calling twice back to back but,
All others, you see their calls, voicemails, texts, and other reaching outs when you havescheduled time in your day to check these interruptionsto your purposeful life.
When you do this, these messages are no longer interruptions, they are the welcome correspondence from friends, family, and debt collectors? lol.
But this doesn’t fix the social media problem. How do you do that?
You learn the game of their empire.
9 – You Don’t Know the Empires Agenda
What is Facebook’s goal? YouTubes agenda? Instagram, Pinterest, or Twitter?
To make as much money as possible.
How do they make more money?
They make the most money by getting you to wastethe most time on their platformso they canincrease their revenue by showing you the most ads.
More time on their platform =more cash earned from you wasting time.
When theylearn you because of an algorithm, how to feed you what sucks you in for hours instead of a few minutes, they have won and then can earn more money from you wasting your time.
Know this:
The empire’s entire agenda is tobuild a world for you to lose track of time, to get lost in the millions of files stored on their server, and consume the most content on their platform.
10 – You Don’t Reset Fast Enough
What are you saying when you embark on a weight loss challenge, New Years Resolution, or begin taking piano lessons?
You are saying; I want to learn how to control my time to receive a new identity: healthy, good looking, or proficient in playing the piano.
Why do you never receive these or any other worthwhile identities?
Because you start and quickly stop, then wait until next New Year or another compelling time of year to try again.
What’s the fix?
How do you achieve every worthwhile endeavor you desire to accomplish?
Reset and forget each week.
Let me explain with this question:
What if you woke up today with all of your strengths and knew none of your prior failures, misses, or weaknesses?
You already ignore or push past them every January 1st.
What would happen when you do this every Sunday?
Each week, bring forward motions gained from prior explorations and forgetting what failed?
As Thomas Edison once said about his many lightbulb “failed” attempts :
“I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
If he only tried every New Years or maybe in preparation for swimsuit season:
- It would have taken him thousands of years to invent the lightbulb.
Explore, analyze, adapt is how to achieve a successful life.
