How well are you budgeting your time?

One of my favorite quotes is from Jim Rohn who said “Unless you change how you are, you’ll always have what you’ve got.” You have to change what you are thinking and what you are doing if you expect to change the results you have been getting.

I do not care what your present circumstances are. You cannot let your present dictate your future. As the saying goes, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Your brain is a wonder of nature, a wonder we have yet to fully understand, and your brain wants to be used. The more you challenge your mind the more it develops. Scientific studies have shown that the brain is not static at all; the brain is elastic and can continue to develop throughout your life – as long as it is worked. Your biceps will only get bigger if you continually add weight and stress the muscle. Over time the muscle gets stronger and larger. (ask Arnold Swarchenegger if you don’t believe me.) Your brain is similar – it may not get larger (so no, you will not be able to impress the chicks by flexing your brain) but it will get better at calculating, creating, expressing, wondering, exploring, etc., etc.

The biggest obstacle to developing your mind and drastically improving your life is you, and the way you budget your time. Do you even think about time in terms of budgeting or do you simply let each day float on past. Do you come home in the evening and plunk down in front of the television. TV is junk food to your brain. There is no challenge to watching a bachelor slowly weed out prospective mates, or starry-eyed want-to-be’s audition and compete for a recording contract.

You need to STOP! Stop wasting time, stop wasting your life. We all get only so much time on this planet. 24 hours a day until our time is over – and the real kicker is that you have no idea when your time runs out. There is no countdown clock on your forehead or chest (although that might help with motivation). Everyone gets 86,400 seconds per day. Richard Branson gets 86,400 seconds and he has used them day after day to start and run 300 different businesses and amass a fortune over a billion dollars. What have you done day in and day out with your precious seconds? We will not all be a Richard Branson, but I know we can all make huge strides in our lives when we focus on what we want.

You have to get out of the mindset of not having time. Bull-pucky! You have the time; you are simply not using it to your advantage. Perhaps by choice, perhaps by ignorance.
You will never “have the time” to do what you need to do in order to change your life if you do not get focused and stop wasting your time. When you stop a time wasting activity you open up a chunk of time. The more you stop unproductive activities, the more time you suddenly have available. You have not created more time on the clock, but you have taken control of the time you have. And with this control comes the opportunity to completely change your life: to improve relationships, to expand your understanding of business and finance, to regain your health and vigor, or to become the person and have the life you have always wanted.

Think you are not wasting time? Try this for the next week. Keep a small notebook with you and make a note every 30 to 60 minutes about what you are doing. You have to be honest with yourself here – do not alter your routine just because you have to keep track. At the end of the week add up the time spent on various activities. Look at the list of activities and ask yourself the following question about each one – Is this activity helping me to attain the type of lifestyle or become the person I truly want to be? If the answer is not a responding yes you have found an activity you should stop.

Next week’s post will discuss how to start using all the time you are going to discover you have. Until then, get your notebooks and start recording.