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Summary
We spend so much of our lives chasing dollars and cents that we can lose sight of the truth that time is truly the most valuable currency of all. No matter what we do, there’s nothing we can do to regain a lost or wasted moment. And yet so many of us waste minutes and hours in ways that we would never dream of doing with our checkbook.
Even if you are slammed with obligations to the office and your household, I’m confident that you may well have a considerable number of hours in your day that you aren’t using to your full advantage. Read on to learn more on strategies for how you can maximize each and every moment in your day.
Transcript
Fortune favors the bold. While it pays to be frugal and careful with your money, anyone who attains big success knows that you need to roll the dice on investments. It really does take money to make money and you’re unlikely to earn outsized returns if you sweat losing any dollar or cent. The key point that risk takers keep in mind is that they can always make more money later as a return on their investment.
The same, however, is plainly not true of time. It’s the great equalizer between all of us. No matter how much we make or what our background is, we all have the same amount of time. As often as you hear folks say that time is money, it’s not true. Time is infinitely more valuable. Each second is here once and gone forever. There’s simply no way to bank it up and save it for a rainy day down the road.
The Great Equalizer
It’s liberating in a way to consider that you have the same number of hours in your day to make your mark as Henry Ford or Steve Jobs or anyone else that you may admire in the business world. In fact, with the advent of technology today, we arguably have freed up more time for ourselves than any other time throughout human history. Yet we still all face the same constraints on how much time we’re given. And none of us know exactly how much we are going to get, which makes it even more essential that we make the most of what we have each and everyday.
It is easy to get into the habit of not truly examining what you are doing with your time. Do you find yourself sometimes bored or unable to find something to do with your free time? You might closely monitor your investment portfolio. But do you take the same care in monitoring how you spend the hours in your day?
Find More Of It
Today most of us are busier than ever, between work and family. But if you’re like most people, I suspect that if you took a full and honest accounting of where your hours are going each day, you would be able to find as many as ten hours a week that are unproductive or simply wasted.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not expecting you to spend all of your time slaving away on work. We all need to relax and enjoy our passions and loved ones. But is that truly what you are doing with your free time? Or are you still spending a portion of that on activities that don’t build memories for you and that don’t add anything meaningful to your quality of life? It’s different for everyone, but common culprits are pastimes like mindlessly surfing channels or scrolling through social media. With all of the options for entertainment and leisure time that we all have at our fingertips now, we must be vigilant about not falling into the abyss of information and data that are just huge time sucks. Successful people come from all walks of life and adopt very different approaches to amassing wealth, but I’ve found that a consistent trait of these high net-worth individuals is ruthlessly being efficient about how they spend their time.
Unfortunately you may well have to break some bad habits and thought patterns that have likely been instilled in you as an employee. In our modern work culture, we too often associate our productivity with how much time we put in, rather than the return on investment for each minute that we spend. In short, most workers have little incentive to get more done in less time because their hours are tied to their billability.
Opportunity Cost is Opportunity Lost
It is also critical that you continually factor in the opportunity cost of your time. Your time isn’t just important for what you can get done during a particular time frame. It also matters because it is taking time away from other things you could be doing or other opportunities you could be pursuing. Every decision that you make about how to spend your time is also, in effect, a decision to not do something else. This means that you really need to make sure that the way you spend your time is reflective of your highest priorities and the best usage of your talents. I think some of us miss that insight. We tend to strive to do more and more, without considering that we are spreading our gifts around and achieving far less than if we just focused.
And as we all know, we can never get that time back.
Just Say No
That’s why the word “no” needs to be key in your vocabulary. We need to resist the urge to jump at every single opportunity and invitation that comes up. “No” can help you stay on track and steering toward your ultimate goals. It can be a bit uncomfortable at first to turn down requests, especially if your natural inclination is to be a helper. But you don’t want to be treading water just because you were reluctant to disappoint others. Adopt the habit of taking time to think and deliberate before you automatically say yes to a commitment. Ask yourself what it is that you hope to get out of it and evaluate it against the opportunity cost of those other ways that you could be spending your precious time.
Optimize Your Time Usage
So how will you personally get started on making better usage of the time that you have afforded? While there’s no way to create more time for yourself, you can make it feel that way by carving out more time on the margins to focus on your priorities. Figure out whether you are better inclined to be an early riser or a night owl and then find uninterrupted time at the beginning or the end of the day that you can use to tackle your top objectives of the day. Make better use of commuting and travel time by listening to educational podcasts or reading actionable materials. Think of how you could be better harnessing every moment that you have to use to your advantage. When you look closely, you may find that you actually have much more time at your disposal than you imagined.
You might also consider keeping a time journal, at least for the weekdays or when you are working. Keep close track of how much time you have poured into various activities and then review it at the end of the week. Ask yourself the tough questions. Is that two-hour block of television each evening really the best use of your time on the planet? Do you really care about writing if you’re only doing it for a handful of minutes once or twice a week? By keeping track of your time and ruthlessly looking at the data, you can begin to implement a plan for maximizing every minute that you have to yourself.
You can also learn more by visiting my website: tonyneumeyer.com and registering to receive free trainings articles and more. Also subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me on Facebook. You can get your copy of The 7 Minute Millionaire and check out my other books at https://tonyneumeyer.com/books/.
