One of the major components to living a life on purpose is the ability to manage your time.
This month on the podcast I want to bring the focus to time. We are going to explore what time is. How to manage it. How to use time to create what you want in your life. How to stop procrastinating. How to get out of overwhelm and how to get shit done.
Earlier this year in a book club meeting I made a brief reference to how I plan my time. The general consensus from the group was that they wanted to learn more. So here we are.
This month is all about time.
In book club we are reading Time Warrior by Steve Chandler. This is such an amazing book and great food for thought to get you approaching how you think about and manage your time.
Next week I have the amazing time coach Lauren Cash on to teach you the basics for a time management process called Monday Hour One. This is the process I use and teach my clients. I learnt it from Lauren and love having guests on so I thought it would be so fun to have her on to chat about it. This process is life changing. If you want to learn how to get shit done.
The first step to anything I teach is awareness. So before I throw you into the deep end of time management this month I want to set you up right. I want you to have awareness around what you think about time so you can understand why you get the results in your life that you do. I want to take the time to explore what time is? What are the common barriers or challenges we face with time?
I have created a workbook for you that goes along with this episode so if you are driving in the car don’t worry just click here to get a copy.
Let’s first start by defining what time is?
Time is a social construct. Just like money. We as a collective people have decided the parameters of time. We have all agreed that there are 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year. We use the Gregorian calendar but there are other calendars in use around the world such as the lunar calendar, and we didn’t always use this system. We used to use the Julian calendar. Just like money right? We have made it up and agreed on it as a society.
Time just is.
Time is constant.
We never have more time or less time.
We always have the same amount of time.
We don’t get more or less time than anyone else. Beyonce has the same amount of hours in a day!
I want you to think about time like you have $24000. Everyday you have $24000 how are you going to spend it? If you don’t use it up, it goes. You don’t get to save time for later. So, in fact I believe time is our most valuable resource. We can’t create more. Once it is gone it is gone. So how do you want to spend/use your time?
The next question I have for you is:
What are your thoughts about time?
Do you have thought like these?
- I don’t have enough time.
- I have too much to do.
- I can’t fit it all in.
- I have too much to handle.
- I never have enough time,
- Time just went so quickly.
- I get distracted so easily.
Or thoughts like these?
- I have all the time that I need.
- I create time
- I decide how to spend my time.
- There is always enough time.
- I choose what to focus on with care and stick to it
When it comes down to it. We can’t manage time. Time just is. What we have to learn to manage is our mind.
What we think about time.
So let’s increase your awareness about your thoughts about time.
Do you have enough time? Why? Or Why not?
Pay attention to your answers here because this is what you will be creating for yourself in your life. When we tell ourselves we have too much to do or that we don’t have enough time. Often this generates feelings of overwhelm or pressure. These are not feeling that will drive actions to getting shit done.
In general when we feel overwhelm, we ruminate on everything we have to get done. Put work off by procrastinating and avoid doing all the things we have to do because we are sitting in overwhelm. Guess what? We just confirm for ourselves that we still have so much to do and not enough time.
What uses up your time?
For me it is procrastinating, confusion and not making decisions. How about you? We waste so much time in indecision. When we don’t make decisions and hang out in confusion we don’t move anywhere. We are so afraid to make the wrong decision that we do nothing. Or we think we don’t want to waste time doing something that is not the right thing but you are wasting time already by not doing anything. Making decisions moves us forward. By committing and doing we find out if it works or not.
What creates more time?
For me it is making decisions as it moves me forward in my life. Managing my mind is what creates the most time as when I am focussed and not busy thinking about everything I have to do and actually making a plan and doing what I have to do, I get so much done and I have so much more free time.
There are plenty of hacks here too. I have spoken before about paying for services that opens up that time for you to do other things. Like having a house cleaner or assistant in your business. Where can you create more time by accessing other resources.
Was it Robert Kiyosaki who said something like 'rich people create more time with money and poor people use time to create money'? You can’t create more time so if you get paid a certain amount of money per hour you are capped with how much money you can make as there are only 24 hours in a day. When you make money by creating value and don’t attached it to time, you are only limited to how much money you make by how much value you create. If you create more value you create more money. Value is created in our mind not by time. We put the value out in the world through initially using our time deliberately. Like right now I am using my time to create value for you listening right now. I have scheduled on my calendar to create this podcast and workbook. However, in a few hours this will be all complete, but this podcast will continue to exist for years to come. Someone might be listening to this in 2021 or 2022. But alas creating value for money is a topic for another podcast.
Let's move on to the next question.
I’m going to leave you with an exercise you can do that will be so helpful for you in regards to managing your time.
And remember I have created a workbook for you so you can simply grab it here.
How did you spend the last 24hours?
Write down as much detail as possible. How many times did you check Facebook or Instagram. How many times did you check your email?
What did you do first thing in the morning? How did you spend your evening? What did you do in the middle of the day? Try to be as detailed as possible.
Then on a separate piece of paper or in the workbook I want you to write down your top 5 TIME priorities. Notice I said time priorities. For example I love my family to pieces but I do not want to spend 24 hours a a day with them.
Get really clear on the top 5 things you want to spend your time doing.
Now once you have this list compare it with your day yesterday. Does it match? Does how you spend your time align with your top 5 priorities?
Game changer. Because for many of us our top 5 time priorities for example don’t include watching Netflix or scrolling Facebook for 3 hours. Right? This is something I am consciously working on at the moment because I certainly don’t have social media in my top 5 time priorities and yet I seem to spend quite a bit of time on social media. Now this isn’t to beat yourself up about it’s simply and exercise you can do to create awareness about how you are spending your time and is it in alignment with how you want to live your life? Do you want to make some changes.
Okay that is all I have for you today.
If you are ready to start creating the extraordinary life you want to live on purpose and want some help to get you there faster in less time. The first step is to book a consult with me here this is a 45 minute complimentary session for you to talk about what you want to create in your life. I ask you lots of questions and let you know if we would be a good fit.
Until next time have a beautiful week bye bye.
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Episode references
Get your Time Workbook here.