How To Get More Time In Your Life Everyday

Do you want more time in your life?  If you had more time, what would you do with it?  

Most people are constantly stressed about not having enough time in their lives to focus on or do what they really want, and often use the excuse “I don't have enough time!”  If you're someone that's looking to get more time in your life everyday, then make sure to watch this video blog and read carefully.  This blog post will help you identify exactly where your time is going and how you can eliminate certain distractions or activities that are limiting you, while focusing more on the things that are most important for you.

Watch the video below:

(Click here to watch on YouTube)

Stop Lying To Yourself About Lacking Time!

The first thing you need to understand is that whenever you say, “I don't have the time to do _____”, you are actually lying to yourself and telling yourself a limiting story.  Now, before you get upset and decide to stop reading, let me explain to you why.  The one thing that is equal amongst every human being on this planet is time.  We ALL get 24 hours in a day.  Would you agree with me on that?  If so, then I'm sure it'd be easy for you to understand that it's not that we “don't have time”, it's more so “how you spend that time”.  

If you have only 24 hours in the day, then what determines what you'll spend your hours on?  It really comes down to what you're committed to.  Think about it, you really only spend the time that you have on things that you are committed to and feel are important.  So, if you are spending 8 hours of your 24 hours working at a job, then you're doing so because that's what you're committed to and what you've decided to spend your time on.  If you're spending an hour a day watching TV or on Facebook, then that's what you've decided is important to you and what you are committed to.  Make sense?

At the same time, if you say to yourself, “I want to workout everyday, but I don't have the time”, then the TRUTH is that it's not that you don't have the time… it's that you're more committed to your job, watching TV and spending time on Facebook.  If you were more committed to working out, you'd MAKE the time for it – you'd eliminate things in your life that could possibly be distractions or holding you back, and you'd spend that time on something like working out.

We make the time for what we are committed to.

It really comes down to what you value.  Some people value watching TV for an hour a day more than working out for an hour a day.  Others value their work or making money more than their health and well-being.  Others will value spending time in their career more than spending time in their relationship.  Whatever you value most is where you'll spend your time.  But, the most important thing is to dispel this limiting belief of “not having enough time”.  You DO have the time, stop telling yourself that story, and tell yourself the truth that it's because you're just not fully committed to it.

Listen, there's people on this planet that are much busier than you and I, and they still find the time to do things.  There's people that are running multiple businesses, have several children, are single parents, etc… and they still make the time to exercise, or spend time in their relationships, or to do a morning ritual everyday, or to do whatever.  Presidents of the United States, top executives of companies, and many people you look up to that have hectic schedules still make the time to exercise everyday – if they can do it, you can too!

Distractions vs. Activities Of Importance

In order to get more time in your life, you must first discover where you're spending your time.  It's important to understand there's really only two types of activities: distractions and things that are actually important.  

A distraction is anything that is a way for you to escape.  Perhaps you spend time eating junk food, doing drugs, drinking, watching TV, spending time on Facebook, watching porn, watching movies, having meaningless conversions with people, etc…  If you indulge in any of these activities and they don't enhance your life in any way, then they're distractions.  The reason why we distract ourselves is to get out of pain that we're feeling in our lives.  We aren't fulfilled, so we'll look for the immediate comfort and gratification through a distraction.  These distractions can often consume A LOT of our time and creates the illusion that we are busy.

Activities that are actually important is anything that enhances the quality of your life.  It could be your business or career, exercising, reading books, spending time with loved ones, doing a morning ritual, setting goals, meditating, spending time in nature, taking a class to improve yourself, learning something new, etc…  You always feel good after doing something important, because you know your life is much better for having done it.  Whereas with distractions, you always feel worse off because you know your life isn't any better.

The goal is to ensure that you're spending the majority of your time on things that are actually important to you in your life, if you want to be fulfilled.  I'm not saying you shouldn't have any distractions – not at all.  In fact, it can be healthy to indulge in those activities at times.  But, you just want to make sure it doesn't consume much of your time – no more than 10 or 20%.

Where Do You Spend Your Time?

Here's a quick exercise for you to do to really discover where you're spending your time on a daily and weekly basis.  Take out a pen and paper and write down everything that you did in the last week.  Make sure you include EVERYTHING.

Here's an example:

• Sleep
• Went to work Monday to Friday
• Drove to and from work Monday to Friday
• Went out with friends Friday night
• Went to church on Sunday
• Watched TV everyday
• Spent time on Facebook everyday
• Checked and replied to emails everyday
• Read book on Saturday and Sunday
• Spent time with family on Sunday
• Cooked meals everyday
• Watched movie on Thursday night
• Watching random videos on YouTube

Get the idea?  This is a short list as an example, but when you do this, make sure you include as much as you can think of.

Next, you want to label each item on your list as either a DISTRACTION or something that was IMPORTANT.  Remember, did it improve your life in any way or not?  You also want to make sure you write down how much TIME you've spent doing each of these activities over the last week.

Here's an example:

• Sleep – IMPORTANT – 8 hours/night
• Went to work Monday to Friday – IMPORTANT – hours/day
• Drove to and from work Monday to Friday – IMPORTANT – 1 hour/day
• Went out with friends Friday night – IMPORTANT – 4 hours
• Went to church on Sunday – IMPORTANT – 2 hours
• Watched TV everyday – DISTRACTION – 1 hour/day
• Spent time on Facebook everyday – DISTRACTION – 1 hour/day
• Checked and replied to emails everyday – DISTRACTION – 30 mins/day
• Read book on Saturday and Sunday – IMPORTANT – 1 hour
• Spent time with family on Sunday – IMPORTANT – 4 hours
• Cooked meals everyday – IMPORTANT – 1 hour/day
• Watched movie on Thursday night – DISTRACTION – 2 hours
• Watching random videos on YouTube – DISTRACTION – 1 hour/day

As you can see from this above example, while this person is spending the majority of their time doing things that are important, they're also wasting a lot of their time each week on things that are distractions.  This exercise will help you discover where you're spending your time and help you develop awareness.

Want More Free Time?  Eliminate The Distractions That Aren't Serving You!

Here's some interesting data from the example above:

• The person is spending 7 hours a week watching TV.
• The person is spending 7 hours a week on Facebook.
• The person is spending 3 and a half hours a week on emails.
• The person is spending 2 hours a week watching movies.
• The person is spending 7 hours a week on YouTube.
• The person is spending 56 hours a week sleeping.

What if this person decided to only watch 30 minutes of TV everyday instead of 1 hour?  That'd free up 3 and a half hours!  Or what if they only watched TV three times per week for an hour?  That'd free up 4 hours!  With those 4 hours, what could the person do with that?  Those 4 hours could really make a huge difference in someones life if they decided to spend that time on something more important.

If they cut out Facebook to only 3 times per week, that'd free up another 4 hours.  The same goes with some of the other distractions on the list.  What about sleep?  Sleep is important, but there also comes a point when too much sleep can be limiting you.  What if this person decided to sleep only 6 or 7 hours a night?  At 7 hours a night, that frees up 7 extra hours a week!  At 6 hours, that's an extra 14 hours a week!  Wow, are you seeing where you have all this extra time now?

If you simply cut out some of the activities you're indulging in that aren't serving you, it can totally transform your life.  It will free up your time and you'll be able to focus and spend that time on things that are actually IMPORTANT to you and can benefit your life.

Chunking And Leveraging Yourself

You want to make sure you chunk things together as much as possible.  For example, let's say you want to exercise everyday.  Well, what if you invested in a rebounder or a treadmill and exercised for 30-60 minutes each day on it while you're watching TV?  This is being intelligent.  Instead of spending an hour reading everyday, why not get the audio version of the book and listen to it while you're driving to and from work everyday?  Instead of going out for lunch with your friend to connect, why not go to the gym together or go for a hike and connect while doing something important?  You can hit two birds with one stone by using this strategy, and it allows you to free up your time elsewhere.

Finally, you also want to leverage yourself as much as possible.  Perhaps there's certain activities that you can outsource or leverage to someone else.  For example, maybe you can hire someone to prepare your meals for you every week.  This would free up a lot of time you spend cooking.  Or you could hire someone to come clean your place once a week or once every two weeks.  This will save you time from cleaning.  Maybe you can hire someone to handle certain aspects of your business or research things for you or set up appointments for you.  The crazy thing is, you can find virtual assistants really inexpensively online for sometimes only $2/hour.  My favourite place to find virtual assistants is on Odesk.

The reality is, you DO have time – you just have to be more intelligent about how you're spending your time.  You have to carefully strategize time and make sure you're investing it in things that are actually important.  No more can you use the excuse, “I don't have the time!”, because remember, you always make the time for what you are really committed to.  If you are committed enough to do something, you will!