Why should you care about time?

You can’t own it, but you can use it.

You can’t keep it, but you can spend it.

Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back.

TIME.

Time is the most valuable asset on the planet. It is not a renewable resource. Once you have lost it, you can’t get it back. 

How about money? You can lose all your money, and then you can make it all back. That’s why many of those who are successful, rank time as the most valuable asset in life.

Your life is just 28.000 days long.

If you assume the average human’s lifespan is 75 years, then it translates to approximately 28,000 days long. Not much, right? If you are 33 years old, there is just half left. 

I am telling you not to scare you or spread panic. I want to sensibilize you, to make you think about how to use your time more effectively. 

The goal is to gain control over your time so that you can allocate this non-renewable resource more effectively to the things that you want.

Imagine you are chaotically running your business working 80-120h per week and still you aren’t getting the results you wanted. This means your input produces just a small amount of output.

Reality:

Input ( time, energy) > Output (money, results)

What you want:

Input ( time, energy) < Output (money, results)

Whether you want to work 1 hour a week or 100 hours a week, you still want to get as much output for each given hour as possible.

How to use time more effectively? BRING IT ON!

There are a TON of techniques one can apply to use time more effectively, to be more focused, and to get greater results with less time. 

Here is just one!

Let’s START!

The first step to managing our time well is to figure out where you spend your time and measure it. The same applies to money. Do you know how much and what you spent $ last month? If you want to save money, you have to calculate your expenses first, right? 

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t control it”

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”

Why do you give me just ONE tip? 

Simple, I don’t want to overwhelm you. This is also one of the reasons why people procrastinate and lose their time.

ACTIONS:

Just do this next week. 

Track your time. The purpose of this exercise is to know what you spend your time on. Afterward, you will see what actions you can apply to optimize and gain more time.

Here are some tools you can use to track your time. Choose whatever is easier for you:

1. Paper and pen. Write down every action you do during the day. Eating, commuting, emails, calls, meetings, shopping, facebook, working-out, etc. Next to the actions put the minutes/hours, you spent

2. Super simple Focused app 

3. More advanced Toggl app 

4. Alternative Pomodoneapp

Even if you think you know what you spend your time on, you will still be surprised by the results.

When I did it the first time more than 1 year ago, I was surprised at my time perception was different from reality. I thought I was working productively more than 80h per week, in reality, it was just 32h.

What are your most time-consuming actions during the day? Emails, meetings, commuting, planning, eating? Let me know in the comments.