Leveraging Your Time

How many times have you told yourself that you don’t have enough time to do all of the things you want to do? I can tell you for a fact that Shaun and I say that way too often. Even the things that we try to prioritize, we struggle accomplishing it on time. This blog is the perfect example of that, I should have had this done before it gets posted at 6 am but I didn’t. I can even tell you things that I could have done differently to get it done on time. There are ways and things you can do to give yourself more time or more productive time so you can spend more time with your family or doing the things you want to do!

The first step into figuring out how to leverage your time better is by writing down every single thing you do in a day. When I says EVERY SINGLE THING, I mean it. If you cheat on this, you are cheating yourself on some valuable feedback. So, write everything you do in a day and put time stamps on them, for example:

6:00 – Alarm went off
6:10 – Crawled out of bed
6:12-6:28 – Shower and brushed teeth
6:28-6:38 – Got dressed
6:38-7:02 – Made coffee and food
7:02-7:14 – Ate breakfast
ETC, through every little thing

This will shower you where you can improve on some of your habits. Why does it take me 10 minutes to get out of bed? Did I need to shower for 15 minutes or would I be faster in the afternoon when I am more awake?

These are obviously little things that seem like they only add up to minutes, but I bet you there are enough things in your day that you could carve up an hour of your time for freedom. I know for a fact, that I spent over an hour on my phone this week that I could have not done and gotten this blog in time. But here I am, reflecting on it and I’m going to work towards correcting those actions. Shaun and I probably spend 3 hours a week doing dishes. We decided we would rather spend that 3 hours with Mimi, so we now put are dishes in the dishwasher right away and run it every 3 or 4 days. This cut the time down to only 15-25 minutes a week, which is put the dishes in and pulling them back out. We leveraged our time.

After you are able to cut out most of your habits that don’t benefit you, then you can decide if you want even more time leveraged. I understand that some people aren’t able to do this, but there are people out there that can make more money working in an hour than what it would cost to have someone do it for you. So let’s say it takes you 6 hours a week to clean everything in your house, and you make $50 an hour. It would be worth it for you to hire someone to do the cleaning so you can work that extra 6 hours than you do it for yourself. Obviously, not all people make that wage or some places may have higher costs for a cleaning company or person. But look into it. It can be really surprising how cheap it can be to have your house cleaned by someone else.

For Shaun and I, we want to use that extra time we are getting to hang out with Mimi and go on some small adventures with her. We want to leverage our time as much as possible so we can make her life and ours so much more fulfilling.

To end if off, just pay more attention to your actions and see what things you can save time on so you can enjoy life more. We only have one life and we might as well make the most of it.

From Your Life Tutor
-Sam