Mindset
There are three forms of currency we use every day in our lives, one of them is limited, one requires constant consideration and monitoring, and the other has no limits.
The one we often think of as being limited is money. We only have so much, we have to earn it, if we don’t have it we get stressed, and if we need it we become desperate.
But when you think about it, it is truly limitless.
There is no effective limitation to the possibilities of how much money we can have or accumulate.
You may not believe this if you don’t have a lot of it, but listen to this and hear it.
Money is not your problem, how you manage time and energy is your real problem.
These other two forms of currency are far less abundant, and yet we spend far less consideration on how we manage them.
Time is functionally restricted.
We all have 24 hours in each day, we all get 365 days in a year, and depending on our life span if we’re lucky enough to live to a ripe old age of 90 or 100, we will have roughly 40–45 million minutes on this earth to live out all our dreams and aspirations.
Oh ya, and if you spend 6–8 hours sleeping each night, which we all need to do, you can cut that number down to roughly 30 million minutes of productive time.
Energy, the third currency, is like a gas tank, there is a certain amount available to us each day, and we need to manage it, we need to re-fill it each day with nutrients, sleep, rest, etc. But we generally only have so much.
Ultimately, it is this over-fixation of acquiring the first currency that eats up our available time and energy. So we need to become far more considerate of how we use these more limited commodities in our lives.
So the first thing you need to do is to understand where you are bleeding time and energy so you need to time audit your day.
For at least three to five days, write down in a log either by hand or in an EXCEL file, what you did for the last hour through all your waking hours.
Once you have this data, look for the dead spots (watching TV or spending time surfing social media), the spinning wheels spots (when you appear to be doing things, but are really achieving nothing valuable), the circle back spots (where you keep revisiting the same problems or stuff and you are not being productive) and the energy out elements (when you are doing stuff you hate doing).
I bet you dollars to donuts that you will find that when you do this, you will be spending much more of your time doing a lot of the stuff in that last paragraph rather than being productive, enjoying energy in the elements, and recovering your energy so you can come back and do more when you need to do more.
Once you have a handle on how you are using your time, the second thing you need to do is take a longer look at where you are spending your energy.
There are things you are passionate about doing, they make you feel energized, sometimes you walk away from them (which can be hard to do) feeling like you are on cloud nine. These are energy IN elements of your life.
Take out a sheet of paper, or make an EXCEL document again and create a left column and a right-hand column.
What are your energy in elements? List them in that left-hand column.
Now list your energy OUT elements in the right-hand column.
Look at it for a while.
Digest how much of your life you spend doing things on the right-hand column, and how much of your life you spend doing things on the left-hand column.
Scary isn’t it? Shocking!
We all spend far too much of our precious currencies wastefully or inaccurately.
So the third thing you need to do is reconstruct your day so that you are wasting less time.
Get rid of the time wasters, or position them and understand their role in your day.
For example; if you want to watch TV, try to determine an amount of time for your indulgence, and choose programming that is positively affecting you. If you come away from the show motivated, uplifted, and rested, then keep it in your day, but if it’s only serving to increase your blood pressure (the news of the day!!) or leaves you disturbed or stressed, then get it out of your play list.
The fourth thing you need to do is maximize energy IN elements and begin to remove, allocate, or authorize others to take care of those things for you. If you hate cleaning the house, then see what a house cleaner will cost you. If you don’t like doing business bookkeeping, look for a bookkeeper.
What’s that, you say, you can’t afford them? Is it that you can’t afford them, or you haven’t prioritized these costs so they open up time and energy flows for you?
Craft your day, own the time you spend, and pump it full of energy IN essentials.
Finally, the last thing you need to do is to take stock regularly and review how you are doing with your schedule and your elimination of energy OUT, and injection of energy IN.
- Plan IT
- Execute IT
- Review IT
- Revise IT
- Run IT again
- And be consistent!
These five things, if really considered thoughtfully, and constructed with you in mind, will yield huge results, and you will be amazed how much the first currency will appear to rise in your bank account! Give it a try!
P.S. There might be someone out there who you think this post can help, please consider sharing this with them so we can all reach higher!
