How do you spend your time? If you were to sit down and map out the time you spend in a day then what categories would it fall into? I believe that one of the biggest limitations to people achieving their goals is that their goals do not align with their time spent. I want to show you why it's so important to be aware of how you're spending your time and give you some strategies to help you make sure you are making time for your goals.
Think back on how you spent your day yesterday. Where was most of your time spent? If you really sit down and plot out how you spend your time every day you will most likely find a ton of wasted time. From running back and forth to the store for things that you forgot, to gossiping at the water cooler, to scrolling through Instagram, to watching TV, there are countless ways that we waste our time every day. If we do not take control and plan our time out then our time will run us. We will not be in the driver seat of how our days go. A failure to plan is a plan to fail, as they say. A quick way to determine how much time you might be wasting daily is to check how much time you spend on apps in your phone (you can find this in settings). This can be a real eye opener when you actually see how much time you are spending on Facebook every week. If your goal is to be the best Facebook account in the world then this is right in line with your goal! If, however, you have different goals, then all of this time spent on Facebook is wasted time that could be spent on helping you achieve what you want to achieve. The first step is being aware of how you spend your time.
Knowing how you spend your time will not help you if you don't know what you want out of life. If you don't know where you want to go or what you want to do then how you spend your time won't matter. You will never get there. The first step is finding out a goal that you want to achieve. Let's take losing weight for example. If you decide that you want to lose 20 pounds then you need to make it a priority. You need to figure out a way to fit going into the gym into your schedule. You need to figure out a way to fit meal prep into your schedule. You need to find a way to fit in 8 hours of sleep into your schedule. This might mean taking an honest assessment of your day and finding out ways that you are wasting time. It is always funny to me that the people who are always saying they are busy are never the high achievers in life. The people who I know who are most successful in their business or life are the ones who always seem to have free time. Why is this? It's because they have figured out how to use their time efficiently and for the things that truly matter to them. They cut out the fluff. The people who are constantly running from one place to another and never seem to fit anything else into their schedule aren't actually being very productive at all.
So how do we determine what we need to be spending our time on and how to implement it? One thing that has been helpful to me is to divide my life into different categories that I want to focus on. Right now I am spending a lot of time on personal development and business development. I make sure that every day I am spending a significant amount of time in these two categories because I know that time spent in these areas is going to get me closer to my goals. Outside of my spiritual development and relationship with my girlfriend and my family these are my top priorities. I examine the time that I spent each day and make sure that I made progress in each of these areas. If I did not then I know that I wasted a day that I could be getting closer to my goals and I need to adjust my schedule so that I can get this work in. Let me give you an example from my life so that you might be able to relate.
For the last few years I have always trained from 10-12 in the morning. We have a group of people who train together at that time and that is just what I have done. Earlier this year I decided that I didn't want to focus so much time on training anymore because it didn't align with my goals. My goals had changed to wanting to grow the business and myself, and to help other people achieve their goals. I was still training at 10, however. What I was seeing was that I had a to do list of things that I wanted to get done that I was not getting done consistently. I would get a couple of things done in the morning and then the business of the day would happen after lunch and I wouldn't get much done. I was feeling a lot of inner turmoil because I had these goals that I wanted to achieve but was not spending much time working on them, while at the same time I was spending a lot of time training (which was not a big priority anymore). Something had to give. I realized that I needed to start doing the big things first and fitting the other stuff in when I could. This meant completely changing my schedule. I started working on the big picture things first thing in the day. Then I would get my workout in at the end of the day when I was done working on the things that were taking me closer to my goals. If I was not able to get to all of my training in I didn't worry because it was not one of my main priorities. I immediately felt a sense of relief and started looking forward to my days. I started making tangible progress towards my goals and towards the things that I knew would give me progress in the long run. The simple act of putting first things first completely changed my productivity level and erased my inner turmoil.
Where are you spending your time? How could you use it better? We all have the same 24 hours in the day and yet some people are able to get so much more out of it than others. If you have something that you want to achieve or a big goal that you aren't making progress towards then I would encourage you to assess how you are spending your time. Are you spending the time on it that you need to? If not find out what things you can change in your schedule to make sure that you do. Something as simple as an adjustment of your schedule can completely change your productivity. Small changes day after day add up to big changes over time!