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Ready for a LIFE CHANGER?
What’s our
number one problem? Your
number one problem? We never have enough time, right?!
So the question is: how do we find more hours in a day?!
We read a book by Laura Vanderkam called 168 Hours: You Have More
Time Than You Think
that’s been a game changer for us.
Convicting, applicable and e
mpowering
all at once.
We have SO many takeaways from the book, that we
really encourage you to read it on your own, but we’re going to share
our biggest bite-sized takeaways here.
Laura’s a journalist who researched the time habits of Americans and
found that most people say this:
I don’t have time for _______________.
While the most successful
people would rephrase it like this:
I have time, but it’s not my priority.
In essence, she argues, even if we sleep eight hours every night, work
a full 40-hour week and devote three hours per day to getting ready,
eating, commuting and household responsibilities, we still have FIFTY
non-sleeping hours per WEEK to do whatever we want.
But I don’t have time for _______________ (we all say.)
We do, Laura says. We're just not making _______________
our
priority.
The most convicting part about the book for us is when she challenges
every reader to track their time in 15-minute increments. (You can get
her official time-tracking sheet on her website.) At
first, we didn’t want to do it. Because we normally don’t like to ask a
question when we don’t think we’ll like the answer — and we were pretty
sure we wouldn’t like the answer to this question:
How are we REALLY spending our time?
More importantly, What are our spending choices keeping us from?
But we tracked it anyways.
And we were right! We didn’t like the answer.
When we listed out the priorities
in our life, iPhones (social
media scrolling!) and Netflix weren’t on it, yet they were unknowingly
consuming dozens of cumulative hours every week that were keeping us
from the things we actually cared about.
The worst part? We didn’t even realize it. Because it was subconscious.
If we were wasting a total of three hours per day on internet browsing
and TV/streaming alone (which is actually below average
, if you can believe
it), here’s the math on just that:
3 hours x 7 days x 52 weeks = 1,092 hours per year.
ON NETFLIX?!
It gets worse.
When you divide 1,092 hours by 40 hours, you get TWENTY-SEVEN full
workweeks.
That's a part-time job!
Just. By. Cutting. Netflix.
Those numbers startled us and forced us to ask ourselves two
simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating questions:
1. Where else
were we wasting time?
2. What could we accomplish if we actually aligned our time with our priorities
?
They were real take-an-honest-look-in-the-mirror-and-cut-the-BS-excuses
kind of questions for us!
But the answers are exciting because simple fourth grade math gave us a
sense of control again, that we had the time AND money to make our
priorities happen if we did one simple but hard thing:
Actually make sure that the way we were spending our time REFLECTED
our priorities
.
So, in response to the two statements we hear from people all the time:
I can’t afford _______________.
I don’t have time for _______________.
We’d encourage you to ask yourself the two questions that we did:
What are my real
priorities?
AND
If I stop wasting _____ hours
every day on _______________,
that’s _____ hours
this week/month/year I’ll have for
_______________.
With that time, I can do
_______________ or earn _______________
that will allow me to do
_______________.
OR
If I stop wasting _____ dollars
every day on _______________,
that’s _____ dollars
this week/month/year I’ll have for
_______________.
With that money, I can afford
_______________ or earn
_______________ that will allow me to afford
_______________.
Here are three examples
to
get you started:
MONEY
:
Old way of thinking: I can’t afford to go on a family vacation this
year.
New way of thinking: One of my priorities is to go on a family vacation
this year.
Then, do the math:
If I stop wasting $5 dollars
every day on Starbucks
,
that’s $1,825 dollars
this year that I’ll have for a family vacation
.
TIME
:
Old way of thinking: I don’t have time to exercise for one hour every
day.
New way of thinking: My priority this year is to exercise one hour each
day.
Then, do the math:
If I stop wasting 3 hours
every day on Netflix
, that’s 1
hour
today I’ll have for exercise
— and I still have two
hours to watch Netflix
!
NOW, LET’S LOOK AT TIME AND MONEY
:
If I stop wasting 3 hours
every day on Netflix
, that’s 1,092
hours
this year I’ll have for a part-time job
.
With that time, I can work at Starbucks
and earn $15 per hour
which is $16,380
that will allow me to do a lot
.
Plus, my coffee will be free — which saves an additional $1,825
.
How empowering is that?!
Amy & Jordan
p.s. We'd love to connect with you on Instagram at @amy_demos and
@jordan_demos!
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