Do you manage your time like you do your money?

Most of us think carefully about how we invest our money, but how many of us put as much thought into how we invest our time? You can always earn more money, but when time is gone, it’s gone. You’re the only one who can spend YOUR time, and how you spend your time reveals your true VALUES.

Some might say their health is important to them, but they’re too busy to exercise or eat properly. We would then question how truthful they are being about their values right? Another person could say their career is important, but they never invest any time in networking or personal growth. Again, we would question how truthful they are being about their values. Before you spend any time on a task, take a moment to think about your values. And ask yourself, “How truly valuable is this task?” Time is a resource that needs to be understood. Click To Tweet

But it’s a different kind of resource. You can’t rent it, borrow it, store it, save it, renew it, or multiply it. All you can do is spend it. So you need to spend it wisely and not allow other people to waste it. There is no way you can “save” time. When people say they are “saving” time, they simply mean they’re spending less time on a task, or they are outsourcing or delegating it. They’re not saving it for future use because all time must be spent now.

We all have the exact same amount of time. It’s the only aspect of our lives where we are all truly equal. Dr. Denis Waitley said it quite eloquently, he said “Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent more hours.”

Time to start think seriously about what you want out of life and then take some immediate action. Start tracking how you spend your time. Are you moving the needle forward or just killing time? Are you adding value to your life? Can someone else do it?

You can have the best ideas in the world, but if you don’t do anything about them, they will remain just that. Ideas. Whatever you want to do, start … Now … yes, right now. Don’t wait until the perfect moment, it will never come.

Most of us have a list of “I want to’s” but far fewer of us go any further than that. Why? It’s not because we can’t, although sometimes we like to tell ourselves that. It’s really because we don’t want to bad enough. It’s because we seek comfort over change.

It’s time to take inventory and decide. Who do you want to become? What do you want to achieve? How can you make it happen? It’s never about resources, it’s about resourcefulness. There are tons of resources like ours in your area that can help you buy back time and make a plan.

Every success comes at a price (time, effort, attention). You just need to be willing to pay it.

Here are some tips to help you start to manage your time better:

• Identify your peak times and try to schedule especially difficult work for those times. For most people, it’s the first thing in the morning.
• Don’t schedule every minute with a task. Schedule 5 hours of real work as deadlines move and things creep up. This will reduce tension and keep your productivity high.
• Focus on that ONE thing at a time. We try to do too much, and we end up doing far less as a result.
• Outsource. There’s a reason that businesses and people in general work best when there’s a team involved. When you try to do it all yourself, you end up spending so much time on the things that aren’t your strengths that it really takes away from the great work you do when you play your strengths. I say this at every single event I attend: outsource, outsource, outsource.
• Make a Plan: Without a plan, it’s just wishful thinking. Mr. T from the A-Team said, “A promise is nothing but a comfort to a fool”. Like taking a road trip to a destination unknown. You need a map and a plan of how you are going to arrive at your end destination. Same applies to life. Make a plan. Start now. We can help!

Don’t be a didn’t.