Can You Get Back Time

GETTING BACK TIME

Introduction: Time Matters

Not to get too philosophical or sound too dramatic but the reality is that life
is made from time. In fact, some thinkers suggest that consciousness itself
is tied closely to time.
You are given a finite amount of time on this planet and as far as we know,
that’s all you’re ever going to get. Life is an incredibly precious and amazing
thing and you owe it to yourself to make full use of this time while you
have the chance.
As we grow older, we are left with less and less time to enjoy. But we are
able to revisit the time that we’ve experienced in the form of our memories
and this is where the slightly subjective nature of time becomes apparent.
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Time can slow down to a crawl at times or it can speed up and appear to
disappear in the blink of an eye. Time seems to speed up as we get older
and it gets even faster when we are enjoying ourselves.
But although time moves faster when we are engaged and having fun, this
‘type’ of time also lasts much longer. When we are engaged with novel
stimulus, our brain lays down and creates more memories and more neural
connections. When something incredible happens, it leaves a deep imprint
on our brains that won’t be subject to fading over time.
Conversely, when we take part in the routine and the mundane, there is
nothing worth remembering and it fades into one.
So when we look back over our lives, it is only the exciting, the novel, the
new and the interesting that is retained in our databanks. This is the time
that we’re able to ‘get back’ then in the form of memories. And thus living a
full and busy life becomes the secret to having not only a rich life but also
what seems like a full and long life.
If you do the same thing every day, then your time will be compressed into
one long blur of work and nights on the couch.
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If you keep doing new and exciting things, if you keep challenging yourself
and if you keep surprising yourself; then looking back on your life will reveal
a rich, meaningful tapestry that takes your breath away.
Why There is No Time Any More
So you need love, learn, explore, discover, experiment and take risks. And
yet the irony is that most of us find we don’t have the time to do all those
things. We are so busy running from one important job to another and so
busy fulfilling our different jobs, that we never get the chance to slow down
and smell the roses.
We are literally losing time…
And this creates other problems too. Being in a constant rush means we’re
constantly stressed and burned out. This can place strain on our health and
it can place strain on our relationships.
Ironically, it also means that we’re likely to be less successful in our careers
as we spend more time rushing to solve problems and never get the time to
actually work at getting better at our jobs or improving our organizations.
We’re constantly working ‘in’ our business and we never have time to work
‘on’ our business.
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When you think about it, this type of living pretty much renders the whole
thing pointless. You’re working this hard so you can afford to feed yourself
and your family but in doing so, you’re leaving yourself with no time to enjoy
life or to spend with your family. What’s the point of earning money
when you never get to spend it on anything you enjoy?
What’s the point of living to work?
It would be unfair though to say that work is the only thing that takes up all
our free time and leaves us with none left for ourselves. Just as guilty are:
• Social commitments
• Commuting to and from work
• Washing, cleaning, tidying
• Dealing with admin
• Everyday chores
• Cooking
Imagine if you could get just a little bit of this time back. If you could save
yourself 15 minutes a day, that would give you 105 minutes a week or 420
minutes a month! You could use this to learn a new language, to get into
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better shape, to pick up a skill like painting, to go out for a nice meal with
your partner, or to take your children out for a fun day.
Either way, you would be adding to your life and your memories and developing
yourself as a person.
It’s time to take that time back then and to start living your own life!
And here’s how we’re going to do it…
What You Will Learn
In this book, you will learn…
• Why energy management is incredibly important
• How to give yourself more energy so that you wake up in the morning
ready to go!
• The basic fundamentals of lifestyle design and how to design your job
around your life (instead of vice versa)
• How to automate tasks and get things done more quickly
• How to cut down on communication overhead
• How to budget your time correctly
• How to negotiate hours to suit you at work
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• How to fill your new time with exciting and amazing experiences
• How to learn new skills and even new languages in shorter time
In short, you will learn the techniques and skills you need to stop being reactive
and to start being proactive. Instead of waiting for retirement, you’ll
learn how to make your life your own right now and start living it to the fullest!
And it all starts with spending a little less time washing up the dishes…
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Chapter 1: The Importance of Energy Management
I’ve just spent the whole introduction waxing lyrical on the importance of
time and why you need to make sure you are managing it wisely and giving
yourself lots of it. Now it’s time to reassess that for a moment and explain
that actually, in many ways, time management isn’t as important as you
think.
Or at least that is to say that there are other factors at play here and some
of them play a much larger role than you might expect.
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In particular, one of those factors is energy. Your energy is tied closely to
your time but the two are still distinct and you still need to consider them
independently.
Because arguably, you could say that you actually have a lot of time. Most
of us have a lot of time anyway; otherwise how did you manage to watch
that entire boxset of your favorite TV series recently? When did you
squeeze in watching all that junk TV?
And even the busiest of us usually find time for sleep!
The point here is that time management only works so far without energy
management. If you don’t manage your energy, then you’ll find that you’re
coming home and feeling completely wiped out at the end of the day. You
probably have ample time to work out, to learn, to play with your family; you
are probably just so busy at work and with everything else that you can’t
use that time productively.
This is why we end up crashing in front of the TV and it’s why we don’t live
life to the fullest! Unfortunately, this then goes on to make us even tireder
and less energetic because our bodies adapt and become much less efficient.
This literally happens; our cells lose their number of mitochondria and
become less adept at converting glucose into useable energy.
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And a lot of people simply don’t recognize this point. People forget that energy
is a finite quantity too.
The very best example of this is when someone comes up with a new training
regime to get into shape. They take a look at their current lifestyle and
they realize that they’re spending a couple of hours in the evening watching
Game of Thrones. So adding an hour of exercise most evenings shouldn’t
be a problem… right?
Thus they come up with an ambitious training program that they think will
get them results quickly. This will often include five hours of running/lifting
weights a week and probably a commute to and from the gym for each
session. At the same time, they will cut down on carbohydrates.
This might sound admirable on paper but in reality… it’s completely delusional!
If you’re currently not getting as much exercise as you think you should be,
then it probably means that you’re too tired, too low on energy and too
stressed from work. If you weren’t, then you would likely be more active in
the evenings.
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So if you’re currently struggling to do anything in the evenings: what makes
you think that you’re suddenly going to be able to add 5 hours of intensive
activity in one go? Plus lots of driving? And all while consuming fewer carbs
which are what give us energy?
Do you see the problem here?
Time is only useful insofar as you have the energy to make use of it and
unfortunately there’s no getting around the fact that you need to rest and
recuperate. Your plan may be to spend less time chilling in the evening but
unfortunately the reality is that most of us can’t touch that time. It’s spoken
for. Recharging when you’re out of energy is sadly not negotiable!
This then leaves you with two options:
1. Find ways to increase your energy levels so that you can get more
‘useful’ hours in the day
2. Prioritize by taking other things out of your routine to free up both
time and energy for exercise or whatever else it is you want to spend
your time on
Chapter two will discuss how you can cut back and prioritize more. In the
next section, we’ll address the first point and see how you can increase
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your energy levels so that you have more to use on exercise and other activities.
How to Get More Energy
Energy is the absolute key to success.
Look at any of the most successful people in the world and you will find that
they’re immensely disciplined and that they work incredibly hard to accomplish
what they need to in their lives. A great example of this is to look at
someone like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. The Rock went from humble
origins to becoming an incredibly successful wrestler and then took that
success further to become a highly paid actor and a very prominent figure
on social media.
And the clear reason for his success is his work ethic and his energy and
enthusiasm. Watching him on video it’s hard to imagine that he has ever
been lethargic or disinterested. And as his Instagram can attest, he gets up
every morning at 4am to go and train in the gym.
The same kind of discipline and enthusiasm can be seen when you look at
someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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And where does this discipline and enthusiasm come from? From energy!
When you have the energy to direct into the things you want to achieve,
you gain the upper hand on everyone else and you start to see your
dreams become a reality.
So how can you give your body an energy upgrade? Here are some suggestions…
Exercise
One of the first things you can do to boost your energy levels is to exercise.
When you exercise, you place aerobic demands on your body and require
more energy more quickly. This forces the body to adapt and to thereby
become more efficient and more effective at delivering from the glucose in
your blood. You develop more mitochondria, your veins get thicker and
your heart becomes stronger!
Of course the challenge is forcing yourself to begin working out when your
energy levels are low. We address this in a subsequent chapter (Ten Minute
Workouts You Can Do Anywhere) but another tip is not to start with this
change.
Sleep
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Unless you are like The Rock and you’re going to be working out every
morning at 4am, sleep is another crucial tool you can use to increase your
energy levels and to start getting a lot more done.
Most of us do not give our sleep the attention and respect it deserves and
therefore we find ourselves running on half a tank of fuel most of the time.
The purpose of sleep is to allow our bodies and minds to recover from the
challenges of the day, to grow new tissue and to lay down new neural connections.
When you don’t get enough, it leaves you feeling groggy, lethargic,
moody and unfocussed. You may even experience headaches.
The first thing to do then is just to give your sleep more priority. Make your
sleep sacred and ensure that you’re going to bed at the same time every
day and staying there for the full 8 hours.
Fight the urge to have more wasted time by staying up late when you’re
tired and go to bed so that you can have more useful hours tomorrow.
Once you find yourself unable to exercise or engage in other physical activities,
consider yourself spent.
Being consistent and giving yourself enough sleep like this will make a
huge difference to the way you feel and the way you perform. But there are
a few other things you can do to give yourself more of a fighting chance.
For example:
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• Make sure your bed is as comfortable as possible
• Have half an hour of downtime before bed where you don’t look at
screens of any kind and do something like reading or writing a diary
instead
• Make sure your room is perfectly dark
• Try taking a warm bath or shower just before bed – this will help your
muscles to relax and help you regulate your body temperature
• Make your room slightly cool, this will again help with your body temperature
throughout the night and encourage sound sleep
Light
Something else that fuels us with energy is natural light. This is why it’s
such a shame that so many of us spend long hours in front of a computer,
shut away in a tiny office!
Try to make sure you get at least some sunlight during the day and it will
recharge your like Superman. What’s more, is that it will help your body’s
circadian rhythms, again ensuring that you’ll sleep better at night.
Light also affects our hormones and our production of vitamin D, which
contributes to our energy levels and to our mood. This is particularly true in
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the morning, when natural sunlight helps to flush our body with cortisol and
nitric oxide to help us wake up.
One of the worst aspects of modern living is the way we treat waking up in
the morning: by setting an alarm to sound loudly and startle us out of deep
sleep. This causes sleep inertia because we’ve gone from deep sleep to
wakefulness and it leaves us feeling shocked and full of stress first thing in
the morning. If the room is dark when you wake up, then your body will be
telling you to roll over and head back to sleep!
So instead, try investing in something called a ‘daylight lamp’. This is a type
of lamp that creates light with a similar wavelength to the sun. This will
flood the room slowly as it gets gradually brighter in the morning and that
will help to bring you out of deep sleep and into a lighter stage.
It sets your body’s circadian rhythms and tricks your brain into thinking it’s a
nice day, combating ‘SAD’ (Seasonal Affective Disorder). When the alarm
eventually sounds, you’re already somewhat awake in a nice bright room.
This makes a huge difference to the way you start your day… so try it out!
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Energy and Mental Discipline
Stress is the great sapper of energy. When you are stressed about something,
your body produces adrenaline and norepinephrine along with other
hormones that tax our body and our mind. You end up giving a lot more focus
and energy to things that do not need them and this leaves you burned
out at the end of the day.
We’ll be talking a lot more about stress later in this book but for now, recognize
that everything is less tiring when you aren’t stressed about it. Thus,
if you can use meditation, CBT or other techniques to rise above the stress
and not let things affect you that are out of your control, you will be able to
walk throughout life while expending far less energy.
Learn which battles are worth fighting and when it’s time to just roll with the
punches!
Likewise though, it’s also important to sometimes be able to ignore tiredness
and wake yourself up. If we accept that we’re tired and give in to it,
then it can become overwhelming. If you give yourself a little energy boost
by recognizing that this is ‘just a feeling’ then you can often wake yourself
back up!
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Nutrition
Finally, one of the easiest and best things you can do to get more energy is
to improve your nutrition. Nutrition is absolutely crucial for energy and if you
eat the right ingredients you will find that it boosts your energy efficiency in
a wide number of ways.
For example: did you know that garlic contains nitrites? These trigger
vasodilation, widening your blood vessels and allowing more blood to get
around your body!
Did you know that vitamin C, like tryptophan, is a precursor to serotonin?
This helps the brain to create happiness hormones that make us feel more
energetic and which even combat pain! Vitamin C also strengthens our
immune system, giving us more energy by helping us to avoid colds and
other illnesses that tax us.
Red meats contain creatine – a substance that lets us recycle used ‘ATP’
(adenosine triphosphate). This gives us fractionally more energy for lifting
weights and other activities before we need to use other energy systems in
the body such as the aerobic system. Red meat also contains CoEnzyme
Q10 which is well known to increase mitochondrial efficiency.
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Also increasing mitochondrial efficiency are PQQ, leutine, resveratrol and lcarnitine
– all of which you can get from a healthy and balanced diet. The
mitochondria make all the difference to our ability to keep going and in fact
it’s thought that these are what make the difference between toddlers who
are always full of energy and the elderly who often feel tired.
Vitamin B complex vitamins are crucial for allowing the body to get more
energy from glucose and sugar. They also help us to create more red blood
cells (as does iron) thereby circulating more oxygen around the body.
Pineapple contains bromelain, a digestive enzyme. This helps us to extract
more nutrition from our food by digesting it more efficiently. At the same
time, bromelain is thought to increase testosterone which leads to increased
muscle and reduced fat. Saturated fat is also very important for
improving our absorption of fat soluble vitamins.
I could go on and on and on. Now you could start taking a vitamin supplement
and that would probably do something for your health. But much better
is to get your nutrients the natural way – from your diet. This way you’ll
find your body is better able to absorb and use them and that you enjoy
much more energy and health as a result.
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The easiest way to quickly boost your health? Just grab a smoothie on the
way into work!
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Chapter 2: Cutting Back and Prioritizing –
How to Budget Your Time
Now you should have more energy to get a little more done in the day. This
won’t happen overnight though: try to introduce changes to your routine
slowly and one step at a time.
Next, you need to look at how you can manage the energy and time you
have. One way to do that is to cut back on the things that you don’t want to
do or that aren’t helping you get where you want to be. Another is to manage
the things you’re already doing.
We’ll start with the latter…
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Understanding Your Body’s Rhythms
Just as you can’t fight the fact that you need to rest sometimes, you also
can’t fight the fact that your body has natural rhythms, natural ebbs and
flows and natural peaks and troughs when it comes to energy.
Thus, one of the most important facets of time and energy management is
to know how to time your activities.
For example, when you eat, you will naturally find your feel tired and lethargic.
You won’t be able to do anything very active because you’ll be digesting.
And as soon as you sit down, you’ll find that it becomes harder to
get back up as your body reads this as you giving it a chance to rest.
So in other words, if you’re planning on working out after you’ve eaten,
you’re going to find that you’re making life a lot more difficult for yourself.
You come home tired after work but a bit wired, then you cook which takes
energy, then you eat which slows you down and then you crash on the sofa
and start to feeling dopey. Now you plan to get back up and workout? Right
before bed?
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Instead, try working out before you come home while you’re still in ‘go
mode’ and then you can completely crash after you’ve eaten. This is a
much more effective way to manage your time!
In fact, if you want to be even slightly productive after dinner then you
should avoid sitting on the couch. Sit at the table so you’re in an upright
position and you’ll find it much easier to get up and do a bit of washing up
straight after you’ve eaten.
And that in turn means you can wash up more regularly instead of doing it
all in one go, in turn meaning that you’ll spend a lot less time washing!
Likewise, learn how long it takes for you to overcome your sleep inertia. If
you want to do something useful in the morning, then recognize that it
takes X amount of time for you to come around. And try to identify the
things that wake you up so you can be more useful in this time. Many of us
perform better if we take a shower in the morning for instance. Move the
shower forward and you might feel awake sooner, thus allowing you to start
being productive sooner!
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Prioritizing
When someone says to me that they’re going to start a new training program
that takes more than a couple of hours a week, I normally answer
them by asking what they’re going to give up in order to make time for that
training.
Often they then look at me like I’m crazy but in fact it makes perfect sense.
It’s safe to assume that you’re currently as active as you can comfortably
be. If you’re going to start exercising, then you need to cut back on something
else so you have more time and energy.
The same is true if you’re planning on writing a book, starting a new side
project or learning a language. If you really want to do that thing, then you
need to prioritize it.
I find the easiest way to work this out is to properly budget time and to create
a timetable of when I’m going to fit things in. Think about how much
time it takes you to feel rested in the evening and make sure that this is still
included in your timetable. Then insert all your other commitments and
things that consume time: eating, cooking, commuting, playing with family,
seeing friends, going to after-work classes, doing important admin.
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Now try to find space to insert the things you want to do – whether that’s
writing, learning or training. And to do this, you’re going to have to remove
some other things.
What’s more, is that you should then treat these plans as being concrete
and gospel – as though you had made a social commitment.
In other words, if someone invited you out on Saturday but you were already
seeing a friend, you would apologise and say you were busy. Treat
your plans to work out or learn Spanish the same. If you’ve booked yourself
in to do that on that day then just apologise again and say you’re busy!
This may mean that you’re now spending a little less time with friends. Or it
might mean that you have to give up something you want to do – but the
point is you only have so much time and you need to prioritize.
But you know what you should really think about changing? Work!
Work is a big ugly commitment that currently takes up 8 hours a day and
that you probably don’t enjoy. Now you see that it is affecting your health,
your family time and your ability to pursue new goals. And that just isn’t
right…
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Chapter 3: What is Lifestyle Design?
Lifestyle design is a concept that has been popularized recently by Tim
Ferriss and his book The 4 Hour Workweek. The idea is that you’re going
to design your lifestyle to be just the way you want it and you are going to
make your work fit in around that. This is instead of going the opposite tact
of choosing your job and then changing your lifestyle to fit that.
Really this should be the obvious and ‘default’ way to proceed. Why compromise
your lifestyle just so that you can work more hours and satisfy an
organization? It doesn’t seem to make any sense!
The problem is that many of us take the approach of working for as hard as
we can, for as long as we can. And we think that by doing this we can enGETTING
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sure that our future will be secure and that we will be able to retire and live
the life we want.
So essentially you’re deferring your happiness. And by the time you’re able
to live that lifestyle that you want to live, you’re going to be old and grey!
Many of us also picture ourselves as becoming ‘successful’ if we work
harder though and of having all the things that we want. But again, this is
often misguided. After all, what do you picture yourself doing when you’re
successful? Probably having a much nicer home, maybe traveling, maybe
spending more time pursuing leisure activities…
…and all these things are things you don’t need lots of money for! You can
enjoy the lifestyle you’ve been looking forward to on your current budget.
Sure, you need lots of money if you’re going to drive a fancy sports car but
is that really going to make you happy?
As for cruising around in a beautiful yacht, you can get a crewed charter
yacht very affordably for the days when you want it and split the costs with
your friends!
And travel is becoming more and more affordable!
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So instead of working the job that you think is going to make you ‘rich’ or
‘successful’, instead ask yourself what is most important to you in life and
then get a job that supports that. Being a teacher is wonderful for people
who want to travel a lot because it means they can travel and see the world
during the summer holidays.
Likewise, you might decide that even though the job prospects aren’t amazing,
being a dustbin collector suits you a lot. You’ll have to get up early but
it’s well paid for what you’ll be doing and you’ll have your whole afternoon
and evening free to do what you want! That might mean you can train and
get into great shape, or it might mean that you just spend more time with
your family!
Changing the Way You Think About Work
There are a surprising number of jobs out there that are highly flexible and
that will allow you to work more convenient hours. Look for jobs that offer
flexi-time for example and you can clock in two hours early and go home
two hours early!
Or how about trying to find a job that lets you work from anywhere? There
are some counseling jobs for instance that let you work through Skype!
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You could even discuss working 4 days a week at your current job and use
something small on the side (like the Skype counselling) to make up for the
lost income.
Or you could work two part-time jobs! Decide how much time you need and
when you need it and then just pick the job that fits in with that!
And meanwhile, you should also stop defining yourself by your career.
The objection that a lot of people would have to working as a dustbin collector
would be that it doesn’t offer them much in the way of challenge, or in
the way of career progression.
But then why does your job have to be where you get your sense of satisfaction?
Instead, why not have a side project and use that to pursue the
things you’re really interested in?
You can work all day in a quiet convenience store if you like work that lets
you feel rested and chilled and then you can come home and work on the
next great novel, or paint and try to sell those paintings on the side!
Are you a checkout assistant? No – you’re a painter! One day you might
earn enough money from the painting to give up the other job but in the
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meantime you can just enjoy a quiet lifestyle that leaves you plenty of time
and energy to pursue the things you’re interested in. And you’re still a
painter because you paint!
Oh and likewise, don’t think that your salary and your wealth has to be
completely tied to your job. Want to earn more money but don’t want to
take on more responsibility at work? Then why not try selling arts and crats
in the evening, or selling your writing online? You could become a piano
teacher alternatively, or cut the neighbor’s hair or their lawn.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the only way to get what you want
from life is to sink more and more hours into a thankless job!
Another tip is to try going on lots of shorter holidays. A lot of people dream
of going traveling but don’t have the means to give up work for a whole
year and don’t like the thoughts of being away from everyone for that long.
But who’s saying that you can’t just travel for a month by taking a short career
break? Or for three weeks by saving up all your annual leave? If you
speak with your employers, you might be surprised how flexible they can
be.
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Or alternatively, why not take shorter trips throughout the year for long
weekends and the like? You can go away for three days at a time and see
some incredible things. It probably won’t cost you much more than visiting
home (budget flights are becoming cheaper and cheaper) and you’ll be filling
your life with all those incredible memories that make it worthwhile!
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Chapter 4: Ten-Minute Workouts You Can
Do Anywhere
As we’ve seen, one of the best things you can do to increase your energy
levels is to work out. The only problem? It takes energy to work out and it
takes time. This creates something of a vicious circle: you’re lethargic because
you aren’t active and you aren’t active because you’re lethargic!
But instead of trying to rectify this with a massive training regime that takes
up hours of every week, why not instead try introducing exercise more
slowly into your daily life?
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How to Work Out in Ten Minutes
The great thing is that you can actually get some quite impressive results
using exercise that lasts only 10 minutes. In fact, in terms of energy production,
training for 10 minutes at a time may in fact be one of the very
methods if you use something called HIIT.
And if you do this first thing in the morning before your shower (after you’ve
had time to wake up though), then you won’t have any ‘extra’ time taken up
by washing or by having to commute to and from a gym.
So what is HIIT? HIIT stands for ‘High Intensity Interval Training’ and this
basically means that you are going to alternate between periods of intensive
activity and periods of light activity. So for example, you might run at
90% of your maximum heartrate for 1 minute and then jog very lightly
around 50%MHR for 2 minutes and repeat.
This actually allows you just enough time to recover before you go flat out
again and overall, you’ll find you actually end up training harder and more
intensively than if you had just trained at 70% the whole time.
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What’s more, is that going into 90% pushes you into an anaerobic state.
This means that the body is now demanding more energy than the aerobic
system (oxygen) can deliver. Thus the body has to look to other areas in
order to get the energy it needs – which means it starts using up all the
glucose in the blood and which means the mitochondria have to work more
efficiently.
And as an added bonus, HIIT leads to something called the ‘after burn’ effect.
This means that your body continues to burn calories throughout the
day because you have used up all the available blood sugar and it now
needs to look to fat stores in order to continue powering your movement.
In just 10 minutes a day, this type of training can help you to burn more fat
and it increases both the quantity and efficiency of your mitochondria helping
to give you the energy levels of a young, hyperactive child (theoretically
at least!).
One form of HIIT actually takes only 4 minutes in total. This is called ‘tabata’
and it basically involves going flat out at 90%MHR for 10 seconds,
resting or engaging in ‘active recovery’ (such as plank or walking) for 20
seconds and then repeating. You do this for a total of 4 minutes (so 8 circuits)
and you can use any kind of exercise from kettlebell swings, to push
ups, to running, to skipping rope – as long as you are going at 90% or
above.
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This might sound very easy but by the end of this short session your heart
rate will be through the roof and you’ll be surprised just how many calories
you can burn this way!
Bodyweight Workouts
Another option is to use a resistance workout and form a circuit with it. For
example, you might do 25 push ups, followed by 10 pull ups, followed by 10
jump squats, followed by 20 sit ups and do 2-3 rounds in total with no
breaks in between.
This is a light aerobic workout but actually it’s something that won’t cause
you to sweat too much. That in turn means you can use this anywhere and
at any time – even just before work or during your lunch break! And you’d
be surprised what amazing effects just a little resistance work for your
muscles can have on your energy, your power and your weight loss!
Incidental Training
If you think about the way we would have exercised or trained in the wild,
then of course that wouldn’t have involved being largely motionless for
most of the day, only to then workout intensively for one hour before returning
to inactivity!
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Rather, we would have been constantly staying active, constantly moving
around and constantly facing new challenges. This is how our bodies are
supposed to be used and if you really want to get the best performance out
of yourself, this is how you need to act as well!
Incidental training just means turning regular activities into training opportunities.
So if you’re waiting somewhere at a curb, why not use that curb to
do some calf raises? If you need to head to the shops, why not jog rather
than walking? And if you are carrying bags, why not shrug them?
This also means making smart decisions by taking the stairs instead of the
lift, or walking from the bus stop before your own. These changes might
seem like they cost energy in the short run but in the long term they will
make you more efficient and give you more time and enthusiasm for the
things you want to do!
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Chapter 5: Get More Done by Outsourcing,
Automating and Being More Efficient
Here is something to recognize: everything you plan to do is going to take
much more time than just doing it.
This is one area where a lot of us go wrong when we first start making
plans for how we’re going to use our time. The thought goes like this: ‘I
have one hour to spare this evening, I will do a one hour workout at the
gym!’.
What people don’t realize however is that while your workout takes one
hour, the whole rigmarole takes much closer to 1:40. Why? Because you
need to drive, cycle or bus to the gym, then you need to get changed and
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then you need to work out. After that, you will then need to shower and after
that you need to head back.
And following that one 1:40 you are now going to be tireder and less efficient
than you were before. That ‘one hour’ ends up becoming your entire
evening.
This is why we introduced the 10 minute workouts earlier and recommended
doing them from home and before the shower. It’s just more efficient!
There are many other ways you can make other time drains much more efficient
too. For example, one of the worst culprits when it comes to underestimating
how long something takes is the prototypical celebrity chef. Ever
bought a cook book full of ’10 minute meals’? How often are they really ten
minutes?
In all likelihood, this 10 minute estimate doesn’t take into account the time it
takes to dice the onion (it normally just says something like ‘take your diced
onion’) or the time it takes for you to wash all the veg.
It certainly won’t include the time you spend washing up and tidying in the
kitchen before and after cooking and it won’t take into account the time it
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takes you to go out and buy the ingredients either. These 10 minute meals
are in fact much more likely to be 1 hour meals and that’s if you do everything
perfectly the first time.
How can we rectify this? One option is to cook ahead of time. If you cook
ahead of time, then you can save several Tupperwares full of your meals
and then just reheat them as and when you need them. Slow cookers are
also your friends.
At the same time, you can also look into making your life easier by investing
in equipment that can help to take some of the flack for you. Tired of
dicing and pealing? Then how about investing in a food processor to do
that for you? Spending too long washing up? Buy a dishwasher! A nonstick
pan can also make a big difference.
If you really want to make your life easier, you could even consider using a
service that delivers ready-made meals (using fresh ingredients of course)
right to your door. These services are perfect for the busy professional.
Again, this is all about prioritizing and asking yourself if you really want to
spend lots of time cooking every day. Some people will be happy to spend
more in the kitchen, in which case great! But if you’re trying to get into
shape or you’re trying to set up a side business, then using a service that
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has your food prepared for you could just help you save the time that you
need!
There are many other areas in your life where you can make things more
efficient and save time. Cleaning your home makes a huge difference for
example as it helps you to find things you need much quicker and easier.
And if you use the right systems to organize your home with, then you’ll find
that this helps you to keep things tidier without putting in so much work.
One thing that makes life massively easier? Just throwing things out! Throw
out half your wardrobe and you probably won’t miss it – but now it will be
much easier to put your clothes away and to choose clothes in the morning
saving you more time!
Outsourcing and Automating
Earlier we discussed getting a dishwasher in order to spend less time
washing up. This is an example of automation – using an automated system
to complete work for you. There are plenty more examples of this too:
why not use a robotic vaccum cleaner in order to keep your home clean for
example? Or why not use smoothie maker to make easy smoothies instead
of buying them yourself? (The Nutribullet is particularly effective in this
role.)
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Outsourcing is similar but slightly different. This essentially means giving
the job you need to do to someone else and asking them to do it (delegating)
or hiring someone to help you with a job.
Often we think of outsourcing and delegating as terms we would use in a
business setting but you’d be surprised just how relevant and just how useful
the concepts can be when applied to your personal life.
For example, if you are about to make an important vote and you don’t
have time to spend ages reading up about all the people who are running
for the position… just ask your friends to give you the basic overview.
Choose friends you trust and ask a couple with opposing opinions and you
should get a balanced view while simultaneously saving yourself a lot of
time. This is a perfect example of ‘outsourcing’ and it hardly feels like it at
all!
Another example of outsourcing is to hire people to do jobs that you don’t
want to do. For example, you can outsource the maintenance of your lawn
to a gardener and you can outsource your cleaning to a cleaner. Getting a
cleaner in fact might just be one of the best decisions you ever make.
No one like living in squalor and it can be very stressful when the home is
constantly untidy. Then again though, we also seldom have time to spend
ages tidying everything ourselves. When you hire a cleaner, you are basiGETTING
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cally ‘buying back time’ while at the same time getting a better job done
than you could probably have accomplished on your own.
If you’re paying a cleaner $15 an hour, you’re basically saying you value
your time that much. What better to spend money on than time? And especially
when you consider that a good cleaner can do much more than you in
an hour!
Another type of outsourcing you might consider is to use a ‘virtual assistant’.
This is someone who is capable of doing any kind of work that they
can do for you online and without any specialist skills. Think of them like a
PA who you never meet in person – a digital dog’s body. Often these professionals
are located in India and other foreign countries, so their rates will
usually be incredibly low (think $5 for an hour). It also means their English
might not be the best in the world but this won’t be a problem for most
tasks.
So what can you get a virtual assistant to do for you? Well, you can always
get them to help you with your work. If your job is taking up valuable home
hours then you can get a little help by using a VA in order to make calls for
you, arrange appointments, gather research or perform basic data entry.
There are stories of people who outsourced their entire jobs to VAs! Of
course this might not be strictly by-the-books depending on your organization
but no one needs to know…
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Likewise, you can also use a VA for all kinds of personal jobs and chores!
For example, if you’re struggling to think of a gift for your partner then why
not outsource it to your VA? If you’re spending ages hunting down the best
car insurance quote, why not outsource that too? Need a hotel for the stag
party you’re organizing? That sounds like a job for a VA!
Why spend your precious time doing basic admin when there are people
out there who will do it for a couple of dollars?
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Chapter 6: How to Cut Back Work and Negotiate
Flexi-Time
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Because it really doesn’t matter if you’re finding ways to shave 10 minutes
off cooking if you’re still coming home late from work.
Here’s the first thing for us to address right off the bat: you must not spend
more than your contracted hours at work! If you’re currently working until 7,
8 or 9pm when you should finish at 5pm, then that is something you need
to change right away.
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Of course this kind of ‘commitment’ is the culture in some places. But my
advice in that case? Find a new job. Seriously: why would you sacrifice an
additionally 3 or 4 hours of your time willingly?
So you can get a slighty higher salary?
But then also work even longer hours?
So that you can do what? Drive a Ferrari? Remember we’ve already seen
that you can live the lifestyle you probably dream of right now without having
to make millions first. Again, it’s a matter of prioritizing the things that
are most important to you and that should always mean your own time,
time with your family and having exciting new experiences.
And really, you should be able to complete all your work in the hours you
are given! If you can’t, then this really only suggests that you have too
much work (the company needs to hire more staff, not your problem) or
that you need to change the way you’re working.
Make sure you only work the hours you’re given and don’t worry if eyebrows
are raised when you leave at 5pm. If you do the job that you’re
given, then on one will ask any questions.
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Meanwhile, why not try and take this even further by asking your boss if
you can move on to ‘flexi-time’ (meaning you can move your working day 2
hours forward or back). This not only gives you the freedom to engage in
more activities that might start earlier but it also gives you the ability to do
things like skipping the rush hour – which can save you money and make a
huge difference to your stress levels (and give you the ability to work on
that book on the train).
Your office might not offer flexi-time officially but ask your boss or manager
anyway. The worst they can do is say no!
And you may even find that if you’re cheeky you can push them a little further
and work at home some days (depending on the nature of your work).
This too will make a huge difference to your routine and the amount of time
you spend travelling.
You’ll likely find you actually get more work done from home as you aren’t
chatting around the water cooler and you have more incentive to work
faster. My advice is to work not actually from home but rather from a local
coffee shop where you can get some peace and quiet and get away from
the distractions and temptations that you’ll get at home.
If your work isn’t playing ball and if it isn’t possible – then consider changing
jobs for one where it is. Again, try not to think about your job not only in
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terms of what you’re doing at work and not only in terms of salary; think
about it in terms of how it fits into the lifestyle you want to lead.
Because it might well be worth taking a big pay cut if your new job has flexihours
or if it is 10 minutes closer to home (meaning 20 minutes saved
every day). Think about what will actually make you happiest and make
that the priority!
(On a related note, the same goes for choosing a house. When you choose
your home, think hard about how easy it will make all the things you’re doing
on a regular basis. If you live somewhere where it’s easy to run out and
buy milk and where you can easily see friends, that will probably make you
a lot happier than if you are just focussed on the investment potential!)
Becoming a Digital Nomad
The way that many people use lifestyle design is to become a digital nomad.
This is the ultimate expression of lifestyle design: it means that you
are working online and making a living on your computer. In turn, that
means you can then work from anywhere as long as it has an internet connection
and a power socket.
These people then take their laptops in a backpack and travel the world –
seeing incredible sights during the day and spending their evenings typing
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away on their computers in bars and soaking up the atmosphere. Because
the cost of living is often a lot less in the places they visit, they often don’t
have to work all that much in order to fund the lifestyle!
This is something you can do yourself, you just need to learn a little about
how to work online. That can mean running a blog and getting a small
amount of passive income when you start out, or it could mean selling web
design, programming, writing, marketing or other online skills. There are
plenty of sites that explain how to do all this.
But again, you don’t necessarily have to see this as a ‘one or the other’ decision.
I personally live life as a digital nomad but I like my creature comforts
and am happily married. Thus I don’t really want to spend my whole
time on the road and sleeping in hostels. This is fine too!
I live in London and I use the freedom that my job affords me in order to
visit sites and work from outside St Paul’s or in the British Library. Meanwhile,
I get to go into London with my wife and meet up with her for lunch
and I get to work outside when it’s sunny. And I travel a lot more in mini
breaks – this year I have been to Dortmund in Germany, Switzerland,
Spain, Lisbon and Mauritius and I’ve taken ‘staycations’ to Cornwall (twice)
and Kent. I’ve done all this while buying a house and seeing some exciting
developments in my career.
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It’s all about deciding what you want your life to look like and recognizing
that money is only a very small factor in making that happen. Want to be
less stressed with money concerns and debt? Living more simply is a better
solution when it comes to having less debt than trying to get a raise!
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Chapter 7: Multitasking to Do More
Another tip is to consider multitasking in order to get more done. There are
some situations where this isn’t a good idea – but in the right scenario it
can help you to save a ton of time. For example, if you are walking somewhere
to visit a friend, why not call them on your phone’s hands-free kit as
you head there in order to get more than one thing done at once?
Likewise you can chat to someone while you’re washing the dishes and
you can work on your novel while commuting home on the train. That latter
option is actually a very good use of your time as the commute for some
people can sap 1-2 hours of their life! If you’re currently just using it to sit
and stare forward that’s a huge waste! You could be reading, learning a
new skill or starting a business on your laptop.
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And if the train is too busy? Then consider taking a longer route that will
give you a table to yourself. Again, sometimes getting more time to do the
things you love means thinking outside the box! You’re actually getting
home later but if it means you get more time to spend doing things you enjoy,
then that’s a good thing!
You can also multitask when you’re doing things you enjoy. So for example,
if there’s something on TV you really want to watch then you could always
do some bicep curls while watching it. Likewise, watching your favorite
TV show while you’re washing up in the kitchen means you’re now getting
some enjoyment and value out of that time!
Another smart trick is to multitask with your socializing. Socializing takes up
a surprising amount of time and one of the things you’re going to have to
get very good at when it comes to prioritizing your time is simply saying no
to people and turning down invitations. It feels hard at first but you’ll find
that it makes you hugely happier in the long term and much less stressed!
(You also have to prioritize which people you want to see…)
But to multitask and get more done when it comes to catching up with
friends and keeping in contact, something you can do is to have more
group meetings – even try introducing your friends to each other. If you’re
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struggling to see everyone you want to see, then invite everyone to a big
meal and you’ll have ticked everyone off your list in one go!
Another option is to do things with your friends that you would have done
anyway. The perfect example of this is going to the gym or working out. If
you’re struggling to see your friend as often as you’d like, then just invite
them to come to the gym with you once a week. Now you’ll be in better
shape and you’ll get twice the value out of that hour because you’ll be
building your friendship as well.
Likewise, if you want to start a class, why not suggest doing that with a
friend? Again, you’re getting double value because you have the fun of
seeing the friend and the benefit of the class. It also makes you more likely
to stick to whatever class it was that you were interested in doing.
And as one more excellent strategy, why not get your friends to do the
things you don’t want to do with you? If you’re struggling to stay in contact
and get quality time with a friend who lives nearby, then why not suggest
that you do your weekly shop together? Or why not suggest that you both
go shopping for clothes together? You can even time your commute correctly.
Now jobs that you had to do and that you were dreading have become
worthwhile, fun and rewarding activities!
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Chapter 8: How to Fill Your Time With Exciting
and Worthwhile Activities
So now you’ve started to free back a ton of time using lots of different
strategies and tips. The next question is what you’re going to do with all this
new time that you’ve earned yourself.
Because if you’re just going to spend all of it lying in front of the television
then you really may as well be working or spending time tidying up in the
kitchen!
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So how do you start filling your time with worthwhile and exciting activities?
How do you create that rich tapestry of memories that reflects a full and
long life?
Adventures and Exploration
One thing to do is to keep filling your time with novel and new experiences.
As we said in the introduction of this book, novel experiences are more
likely to be ‘stored’ in the mind as vivid, long-term memories. This means
that you appear to have done more even in a shorter space of time when
you think back over the past weeks and months.
So make sure that you are open to as many exciting new opportunities as
you can be and that you seek out the things you think are worthwhile. And
don’t let yourself make excuses: money, time and energy should no longer
be excuses and if you are trying to save money but won’t go on the trip that
you’ve always dreamed of, then you are really making the wrong priorities
again.
And keep in mind too that you don’t need to travel far or spend lots of
money to have an amazing adventure. If you live in the US then there are
some incredible sights and adventures to be had through short-haul travel
whether you visit Alaska, Disney Land Florida, New York, Vegas, the
Grand Canyon, Canada, Mexico…
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And if you live in the UK or Europe, then why not take a short flight for less
than a long train journey and visit the Swiss Alps, Southern France, the
Leaning Tower of Piza, London, Rome or the mini desert in Gran Canaria?
And there are probably things just down your road you haven’t don’t yet
too! There are probably stunning walks, hidden cafes and restaurants, museums
and nearby beauty spots. Very often we take for granted all the
things right on our doorstep!
And what about all the activities you could be doing, free and otherwise?
Have you ever been bungie jumping? Paragliding? Skinny dipping? Sand
boarding? Skateboarding? Trampolining? Horse riding? Star gazing?
While it’s a bad thing to live your life through Facebook, this can nevertheless
be a good barometer of whether you’re having an adventurous life
right now. Take a look over your pictures and ask if they’re exciting or if
you’re constantly doing the same thing. If it’s the latter, then have a think
about what you could do easily to change that!
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Other Activities
Likewise, you should also think about the other activities and goals you
want to pursue. Many of us seem to think our options each evening are to
watch TV or go to bed. But if you look on your bookshelf, you’ll probably
find you have lots of unread books. You probably have games you haven’t
played. And when was the last time you played a board game with your
family? Or how about the last time you made something out of clay?
Try to rediscover that child-like enthusiasm for doing creative and unique
things in the evenings and challenge yourself to learn, experiment and
grow.
The problem here is capitalism. While capitalism isn’t a bad thing itself, it
unfortunately encourages hundreds of companies to invest an awful lot of
effort convincing us of all the things we need. We work hard to buy new
DVDs, new games and new magazines even when there’s so much we
want to do that we haven’t done yet. Thus we work harder, push further
and continue to not actually stop and enjoy the things we have.
From now on try keeping a list. Each time you think of something you’d like
to do, write it down. And then, instead of sitting down to watch TV in the
evening, try doing something on that list instead!
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Oh and as a challenge, I want you to try and go without TV for one week.
You’d be amazed at the creative ways you find to enjoy yourself in the evening
and how much more memorable and fulfilling those are!
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Chapter 9: Accelerated Learning – How to
Learn New Skills and Start New Projects in
Less Time
Learning is one of the very best ways to use your time and many of us
state that the reason we want more time is so that we can learn a particular
topic or a language.
But a lot of us just don’t know how to go about learning things efficiently
and thus this ends up taking more time than we think it will too.
In short: you probably already have the time you need to learn German or
electronic engineering – you’re just putting it off.
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Here’s how to get started…
Start
The first and most important tip is simply to start right away. That initial
point where you actually get started will often seem like a big deal until you
bite the bullet and it becomes apparent that you were dreading nothing.
And once you’ve actually started, you’ll find it’s much easier to carry on and
that you actually want to devote a little more of your time to learning these
new skills and abilities.
DiSSS
Tim Ferriss is a name we haven’t come across yet in this book but we owe
him much. He is the author of The 4 Hour Workweek which was one of the
first best-selling books to deal with the topic of lifestyle design. More recently,
Tim wrote another book called The 4 Hour Chef which deals with
learning a new topic quickly (he uses cooking as an example). He outlines
four steps you need to take to learn any new topic efficiently and uses the
acronym ‘DiSSS’ to describe them. They are:
Deconstruct
This is where you break down what it is you want to learn into essential and
reproducible parts. So for example, if you were learning something like
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wakeboarding you might identify that you need to learn the posture and the
terminology while developing grip strength. Likewise, you also try to identify
the most crucial skills to master and you can do this by asking experts what
they would tell a beginner to learn first for maximum results.
Selection
Next, you are going to take a look at all those parts and decide which ones
you are going to learn. It might be that there are certain things you can
learn that will allow you to save time or by-pass other tasks entirely. For
example, Tim recommends that when learning a new language, you start
out by first learning the 200-or-so most commonly used words. Because
these common words make up such a large part of our language, this
means that you can actually get by in a lot of conversations using them.
Even if your grammar isn’t ideal, you’ll at least be able to identify what people
are talking about and this is better than nothing!
Sequencing
Deciding the order to learn things in is also a very good idea. Tim points out
that sometimes the best sequence isn’t necessarily the most obvious one
or the one that is usually taught. For instance, he believes that you can
learn chess faster if you start with the finishing moves and work backwards.
This way you better understand the end point so you can fill in some of the
blanks to learn how to get there.
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Likewise, he says that dancers should learn how to dance as though they
were the opposite sex. This teaches them what effect they’re trying to create
for the other party!
Stakes
Finally, Tim recommends setting stakes in order to force yourself to learn
the subject. For instance, you can give money to a friend and tell them to
donate that money to a charity you don’t support if you fail to complete your
objective. This incentive might just be enough to speed you up!
Have a Goal
Finally, this tip is not related to DiSSS but comes from my own personal
experience: always have a goal to work towards. In other words, don’t just
try and ‘learn a subject’ but instead learn that thing in the context of trying
to achieve something else. This will give you more of a structure to your
learning and will help you to better understand what everything you learn is
for and how it fits in in a practical sense.
Don’t learn programming – set out to make a simple app and learn as you
go. Don’t learn German – learn enough German to be able to order your
meals and shop on a holiday you’ll go on at the end of the year. This also
makes the project more meaningful and rewarding and that in turn helps to
motivate you!
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Chapter 10: 10 Ways to Save 10 Minutes
Every Day
Of course there are many more ways you can save time and buy back
minutes and hours of your life to spend doing things you love!
The aim of this book has been to help you to understand the principles of
saving time – as well as to understand why saving time is so important and
so useful. You can then apply those principles yourself to get the desired
effects.
But likewise, let’s finish up by looking at a few more strategies you can use
to save a little more time…
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1 Team up
If there’s a job you are spending too much time on and someone else is doing
a similar job – why not share the burden? For example, get your friend
to do your weekly shop every other week and you do there’s. It takes less
time to add things to a cart if you’re already out than it does to go shopping
twice as often!
2 Order online
To be fair though, the best way to save yourself this time is simply to order
your regular shopping online. You’d be surprised just how many of your
things you can get on a standing order and just how much time this can
save you!
3 Eat the same lunch and breakfast
While it’s fun to eat different, exciting meals every dinner time – your breakfast
and lunch are really just practical meals. Why not save yourself time
and ‘decision fatigue’ by having set meals at these times. It also makes
shopping easier and makes it easier to manage your diet!
4 Time yourself
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We often go slow in the mornings when leaving the house as well as when
washing up. An easy way to speed yourself up is to set a timer and to try
and beat your best times when you do these kinds of tasks.
5 Check email at set times during the day
If you are checking your email throughout the day, then you will be ‘responsive’
in answering those messages. Instead, try to stay proactive by avoiding
your email until set points during the day.
6 Make lists
Lists save time by giving you a clear set of tasks/goals to carry out in a set
period of time.
7 Buy in bulk
One more shopping related tip: buy in bulk! This is an easy way to reduce
trips and to reduce those annoying times you spend searching for more
batteries.
8 Get your kids to chores
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We discussed outsourcing earlier and the ideal people to outsource to
around the home are your children! Get them to sweep the drive, wash the
car and more for pocket money. Don’t have kids? Hire the neighbors!
9 Make sure your computer is fast
We waste an inordinate amount of time waiting for our laptops to turn on
and for programs to launch. Either replace your laptop with something
speedy (look for a SSD harddrive) or clean your old one up!
10 Wake up 10 minutes earlier
And go to bed ten minutes later. I promise you, you’ll make better use of
those 10 minutes in the morning than the 10 minutes you had in the evening!
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Conclusions
And with that, you should now know how to start saving time in your routine
and spending less time on things that don’t offer any value. Your aim is to
fill your life with exciting and interesting things that make you feel as though
you are really living: but you can’t do that if you’re working until 7pm and
then spending over an hour cooking!
We’ve been over a ton of tips and ideas and we’ve seen how you can outsource,
delegate and optimize a lot of the small chores you’ve been doing.
We’ve also seen how we can save time and get more value from life by doing
things with friends, or by learning to say ‘no’ to invitations we don’t
really want to accept. And we’ve also seen the very key role that energy
plays in all of this.
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The key message of this book though can really be summed up with one
simple instruction: learn to prioritize.
And that doesn’t just mean prioritizing your health over spending more time
at work. It doesn’t just mean prioritizing certain people in your life because
you don’t have time to make everyone happy.
What it really means is understanding that your time is your most valuable
asset – and that this should always be your focus and your priority. Don’t
allow yourself to waste your years working and don’t focus too much on
making money.
Look for a job and a lifestyle that leaves you with more time to do the things
you love and you’ll be happy – regardless of financial or material gain. This
is the big secret to life and now you know how to make it work for you!
Good luck and have a great time.