The time is forever fleeting. The day we are born is the day we begin to die. Your life slowly going away. You’ll never get it back. Every choice you make is you trading that day you have, this very day for whatever you get done that day. So much to think about, right?
So serious, but we don’t think about the days like that. We don’t think about how valuable our time is and how much every minute really means to us. And how we can turn those minutes into things that mean more for ourselves and the rest of the world, and our generations to come.
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So obviously you are watching this video because you at least have some understanding of how important time is. And you want to know how to better manage and understand where it’s all going. And that’s exactly where you need to start. Awareness. You’ve probably heard it before.
You’re probably sick of it and maybe even did a little of it but really and truly until you have a breakdown of at least 15 minute chunks of what you’ve done for the past three weeks, you do not have enough fidelity in your daily activities to know where your time is going and what you’re focusing on.
You don’t need fancy tools. You don’t need software. You don’t need any type of moleskin, awesome binder, or any of that crazy stuff. You don’t even need skills. You print out a piece of paper. You make a column.
You put some times down the side in 15 minute chunks and you put a two to three word blurb of what you’re doing that 15 minute chunk. And I’m not saying you have to carry this paper around and keep track of everything that you do.
Maybe just recap every couple of hours. Or you can even use your phone. Either the audio recording function or to do list or a schedule or just a note pad and jot it in every couple of hours or at the end of the day. Although I recommend doing it a little more frequently than that because, at the end of the day, everything can kind of seem like a blur.
And well, that’s not going to be that helpful but, if every hour you can say for a short 10 second burst of “Well I’ve got audio recording.” which I think is a really good idea because it’s so easy to just blurt off words. At the end of each hour, at the end of every other hour and say, “Hey this is what I did for this, this, this, and this.” Okay I’m done. And that’s it. And then at the end of the day, or at the end of the week, you recap every single one of those audio files. Wright it down and clean it up later.
Don’t put any resistance in the way of you recording time because any little bit of resistance is going to stop you from wanting to do it and that is not what you want right now. You want the path of least resistance so you can get the data you need to figure out the patterns where all the time is going.
That’s the next step after you’ve cleaned it up and put it all together you will start to see the patterns that pop out. There’s no signs to it. You’re going to start seeing, “Oh hey, I did facebook for this long.” “Oh hey, I did that new t.v. series for this long.” “Oh hey, I went out this much.” And it’s going to become obvious.
So where do you get that time back? Well, you cut back in percentages or set limits for the things that are taking up so much time. Now, of course, that’s not going to be family time. It’s not going to be sleep. It’s not going to be eating and what not but it may be travel time. It may be that entertainment time.
It may be that time that you’re out doing stuff that is not as productive or as focused on the goals that you have for yourself. Those will be your prime targets for optimization and cutting back 25% and applying that 25% you freed up on the things that are aligned with your goals, success, and future.
And then you just repeat this on a monthly or a bimonthly process and eventually you’re improving on the top percentage of your time and efficiency to where you just are multiplying and applying percentages of improvement on top of each other and it becomes this compound effect of awesome time management that really can’t be experienced until you do it yourself. I mean I don’t have the words for it other than you become a machine of awesome productivity of time management. And then being able to choose where you put your fun in.
Get to recording. Get to optimizing and see what the patterns tell you. You are in control of the time that is going away. Do the steps you need to get there. And good luck. Bye.