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I Don’t Have Time is a Myth

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I Don't Have Time

“I don’t have time” is a myth.

The statement, “I don’t have time”, really gets under my skin.

Why? Because you do have the time.

Get up early. Cant? Go to bed earlier.

Stop watching TV shows and YouTube channels that do nothing to help you progress in your dreams.

Stop playing video games.

Stop going out to the bar.

Stop wasting time reading news websites, Reddit, surfing Facebook or Instagram for hours.

You have the time. Its right there in your hands. Use it.

How much time would you get back if you stopped doing all of those things above? You’d be blown away by how much time you’d get back. In fact, let us dig in a little bit deeper …

Watching 45 Days of TV Per Year 👎

The average American spends 3 hours a day watching TV.

3 HOURS A DAY!

Some reports show an upwards of five hours a day.

Let us be conservative and stick with 3 hours.

That’s 21 hours a week!

90 hours in a month!

1,095 hours in a year.!

That’s over 45 days of watching TV for 24 hours straight!

This is just watching TV. This does not include time spent looking at your phone!

That’s just insane.

“I don’t have time.”

 

Pffft. Whatever.

 

No, you do have the time – you’re just choosing not use it for the things you say “You don’t have the time for.”

The magic of time optimization

Is life hard sometimes? Yes, it is. Oh god yes. It can feel completely overwhelming and you might feel like you can’t get a breath. But … you still have time … if you don’t waste it.

Single mothers and fathers exist and they make magical things happen. They work multiple jobs, have little or no help from family and they have to do everything themselves. Somehow, they make magic happen.

You know what? I bet you most of these folks have “more time” than most.

Why? How?

They optimize their life to maximize their time.

Furthermore, I bet you they read more books than most too.

Imagine being one who catches the bus at 6:30 am after dropping the kids off at early-drop off and/or daycare/preschool. So what do they do with that next 10–30 minutes of commuting time (before and after work)? They probably use that next 10-30 minutes to listen to a book or podcast or watch a video tutorial that they downloaded on their phone instead of passively looking out the window or on FacebookInstagramRedditNewsetc.

They have the time & you have this same time.

Maybe you don’t commute via train, maybe you drive to work.

Same thing.

Use that time to learn, grow, etc. Maybe you work at home? That’s cool. Listen to books/podcasts while driving/walking to the grocery store or dentist/or wherever you’re driving.

For example, let’s think about the time in the shower. Could that be put to use? Hell yes, it can. Put an audio book on while you’re in the shower. That’s 10-15 minutes a day. 10-15 minutes a day for 30 days is 5 to 7.5 hours. You can easily listen to a book a month simply by listening to it in the shower. Use the Audible app to download books and listen to them on the go.

“I don’t have the time.” Yeah. Ok.

“… but I don’t have time to eat healthy and work out”

Maybe you want to work out and get yourself into better health and don’t have time for the gym. I get it. Do a bodyweight program by any number of fitness trainers 3-5 days a week at home. There a TON of them online for free. Eat salads for lunch. The best shape I got into in my life I worked out two days a week and ate healthy (salads and steamed veggies). The diet did more for me than working out did.

Maybe you don’t have a ton of time for meal prep. Ok, I get it. Then follow intermittent fasting – it helps you learn how to control your hunger and is proven to be very good for your health. Fewer meals to prepare – eating less and improving health? Yes. I’m in. Eat steamed veggies from the microwave for two meals a day with lean grilled meats. Do a meal prep day on Sunday. There are always options.

I once knew a girl in college who would cook beans and rice every Sunday and have that for lunch because she didn’t have time to make lunch every day and bring it to college. She did the work on Sundays. She found the time, owned the problem and fixed it – even on the cheap.

Finding Time is Easy

Finding time is easy if you look hard enough. It’s everywhere. 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there. Before you know it you have an hour or two each day you can use.

If you feel like you don’t have time try to find all the spaces where you’re not doing anything (dentist office waiting, doctors office waiting, at a kids drama practice, waiting) and then use that time to push the ball a little further down the field. I bring my laptop everywhere, just in case I have a free moment to crank things out. In fact, I’m writing this post at my accountant’s office this AM while he’s preparing some documents for me.

I’m not saying to give up that time you spend with your family. That has importance too. Maybe one of your goals is to be a great parent and/or spouse. Then execute on it and find the time to be a great parent. Use the spare time for that. Same for anything else that you find that you want to accomplish. It doesn’t have to be “work” or “business”. If you “don’t have time to walk the dog”, then stop surfing Facebook or Instagram while you’re on the toilet (you know you do it too).

The moral of the story is – you do have the time, it’s most likely being wasted on needless activities that provide no real growth value to you.

Tips

One thing I advise is to try to get up earlier – before anyone else. I’ll admit, it’s not easy. One thing I do the night before is write down a couple of things I want to get done before everyone else gets up (could be work out/run, get task x done, read, work on your project, etc). You get such a head start on the day that you feel positive and happy.

Can you do the same at night? Yes, for sure. Maybe you’re a night owl and get most your work/etc stuff done from 9pm-3am. That’s fine too. However, I will say this – when you’re tired, it’s much easier to simply go to bed and miss out on those hours. When you get a head start at the beginning of the day you start off on the right foot. Waiting to get some stuff done at the end of the day can sometimes fall apart (bad day, super tired, made a bad decision by having few too many at happy hour, etc).

Next, focus on whatever you want to accomplish and execute until it’s done. Don’t lose focus. Do not get distracted. Kill all external distractions. Complete the task at all costs. Striking an item off a to-do list (even if it is mental) is a huge win. Build upon these wins and snowball them.
Be obsessed with your passions and goals. Its ok to be that way. Do you want to be the best parent in the world? Go do it. Don’t let anything stop you. Do you want to be the best long-distance marathon runner? Go do it. Do you want to be the best rheumatologist in the United States? GO. DO. IT.

No one is going to give you anything. You have to get it yourself. You have to take the risks. You have to make it happen. To do those things you’ll need to find the time and trust me, you have it.

 

Make it happen.

 

 

Photo credit: @loic

Make the Most of Your Time

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Make the Most of Your Time
Photo: Uroš Jovičić

Recently, a  friend of mine asked if I wanted to partake in a small side project with him. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to commit to the project so I politely declined.

He responded with:

Dude I totally understand. I’m single at the moment and pretty much have my ass alone to take care of and I can barely remain afloat. You are a rockstar. I don’t know how the hell you can do it.

What he’s saying is that he has no idea how I get so much stuff done with my situation (Married, 2 kids, consulting, founding a company, a podcast, presenting, writing, 3 dogs, 3 cats, etc etc etc).

So how do I get so much stuff done?

Time optimization, 100%.

Don’t get me wrong … I’m not some zen-productivity-master, not at all. I just value my time.

The way I see it is like this:

Time is your life.

Life is Finite

One time I did an exercise that scared me: I took a look at the average life span of a US Male (~78 years) and I calculated the days I had left in my life.

Hint: It’s not that much. 😯

After seeing that number it catapulted me into action. To check yours go here: http://www.countmydays.com/

I’m not being morbid about life, it’s merely factual.

 

Seeing the Number of Days Left in Your Life is Scary

My friend replied back with a shocked face:

I calculated the waking hours I had left in my life.

Holy cow, this freaks me out … 😮

I know the feeling. Every time I look at the number, it’s smaller. 📉 It never goes up. 😢

Not many people look into how many days are left in their life. They should though – as it’s a humbling exercise. I think it’s important as it helps keep yourself grounded and keep your ambitions high because, well, your time is limited. You have less of it than you think.

There’s a popular blog post titled The Tail End in which the author draws little pictures of how many months, weeks and days he has left. He goes on further to outline how much time we have left with loved ones, time left doing things you love, face time with children, etc. Read it, it’s worth your time (pun intended).

You probably never thought about this, but around 90% of the time that you will have spent with your parents was done from the ages of 0-18. So if you have kids – remember this. My daughter just turned 9 and I realized that I’m already 45% through the average time that I will spend with her in our combined lives. That really sucks, but it also puts urgency into what matters – being with my children as much as possible and not taking it for granted.

So … Why am I harping on this so much? 

I’m doing so because your time here is finite. You only have so many at bats and then the game is over. That’s it. All done. Why not give it all you have, all the time? Why not chase those ambitions and dreams? Fix those broken relationships? Say sorry instead of being stubborn. You get what I’m saying.

The value of my time is a primary driver in my decision to work remotely. I know I only have so long with my kids, my wife, my family. Why waste that valuable resource commuting to and from work just to sit at a desk? To me, that’s absolutely insane.

Unfortunately, even though this information is quite eye opening, sometimes people will still avoid doing what they want to do due to fear.

Fear of failure.

Fear of rejection.

Fear of success (yes, it’s really a thing).

Break Down Your Fears and Do It

One of my favorite things to use to combat fear is to utilize a technique known as “Fear Setting“. I picked this up from Tim Ferriss, and you can watch a video on it here – Fear Setting by Tim Ferriss (Ted Talk). It helps you determine what you’re scared of and helps you realize it’s usually not that big of a deal. The video is very important, so please take a few minutes and watch it. Queue it up while you eat your lunch, etc. One of the quotes he uses in the talk is this one –

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality. – Seneca

This is so true. Using quotes like this and a mix of Stoicism to remind you of important things in life makes it easy to appreciate what you have, and how much time you have left and what you can do to maximize it.

Lastly, Steve Jobs has a quote that I often refer to:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. – Steve Jobs, Stanford 2005 Commencement Speech

I’m not a huge Steve Jobs fan, but this speech really helped ground me. I have a recurring calendar event every 3 months to watch this speech. It always helps course correct me when I’m wandering in the sea of life.

Yeah, I know … you’ve heard that life is short, but seeing it in numbers is humbling and action inspiring, no doubt.

So, how do I get so much done?

I remind myself that life is finite.

 

I’d like to thank Kaushik Gopal for reviewing this article.

 

The Rule of Thirds

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Photo by Aaron Escobar via Creative CommonsPhoto by Aaron Escobar via Creative Commons

I learned one simple thing years ago that helped me more than I think anything else I’ve learned in awhile.

What is it?

You can’t make everyone happy.

 

I’ve tried. It just doesn’t work.

When you do try to make everyone happy you eventually end up feeling defeated and burned out. At the end of the day you’ve wasted part of your life on trying to please people who do not want to be pleased.

I eventually learned to accept what I call the rule of thirds. I’m not the first one to come up with this, but it is very useful so I thought I’d share it here.

The Rule of Thirds

The rule of thirds is a mental system which you can apply to your day to day life to help alleviate the mental load of worrying about making everyone happy.

The rule of thirds is as follows …
When you create something in life (a business, products, a presentation, public speaking, an idea, something at work, etc – it doesn’t matter .. its anything) people are going to react in one of three ways:

  • 1/3 of people are going to be positive about it
  • 1/3 of people are going to be indifferent about it
  • 1/3 of people are going to be negative about it

As soon as you realize that this is the way the world works, the easier things become.

Give a presentation on XYZ Topic at your local MeetUp? Most may like it, some may hate it, and some are indifferent.

You can’t make everyone happy … and that’s ok.

Thats why this world is great. We all have different opinions, emotions and things we enjoy. Everyone is unique.

So the next time someone trolls you online about something you’ve done, just realize what bucket they’re in and move on with your life. Don’t let it disrupt your day.

Staying Sane and Productive While Working Remotely

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Here’s some tips I can give you after working remotely for nearly 10 years.
4051398710_8985c07e0e_o
Image by jnyemb via Creative Commons

Read REMOTE by Jason Fried and DHH

Read (I highly advise listening to it on Audible): REMOTE: http://37signals.com/remote

Alot of what I say is regurgitated in the book above. When I listened to the book years ago I thought to myself “Whoa, OMG, these guys think the same way I do … I’m NOT ALONE!!!!” – so I’ve been recommending it for ages.

Stick to a Schedule

Schedule. Schedule. Schedule. Stick to a schedule when starting out. It will save you.

I get up at the same time every day, just like if I had a on-site job. I take a shower, get dressed and wear a collared shirt (think Golf shirt) and pants (usually jeans). I do my hair, and “get ready for work”. This is PURELY MENTAL. It prepares your mind and gets you into the mindset of work. Futhermore, being presentable goes a long way in a video call!

Preparation

I then get the tea/coffee ready, grab some snacks, some water in a water bottle and head off to my “office”. This again, is mental. I grab drinks and snacks so that I do not have to leave the office for awhile.

Distractions are abound in your house, you need to limit your exposure to them.

 

By preparing these small things you are getting yourself into the mindset for work. Let’s be100% honest here, there is no way in hell you can be effective with an interesting movie blaring in the background and working in 2 hour chunks through the day. You need to be in the mental mindset and have a schedule.

Now, work your 6, 8, 10 hours or whatever you deem a work day. Get up and use the restroom, sparingly. When you eat lunch, spend 30 mins to 1 hour. Prepare your lunch before work if at all possible. Again, this is to limit distractions.

Make Time For Exercise

During lunch, fit in a workout in the garage if you can (or go to the gym/fitness group/etc – see below). Health is important. You don’t commute, so pick up some freaking weights or run or row, etc.

Don’t have equipment?

Go for a run. Do Calisthenics, etc.

If you need help here, I can help you – I have tons of fitness programs I do on the road, visiting family, in my garage, all with no equipment. I’m no Hulk, but I’d say I’m “in shape” somewhat, so it must be working.

Eat Healthy

This is key! Eat healthy! Tip: Eat ONE salad per day. I don’t care when. Only requirement: Do not soak it in dressing. I recommend Olive Oil and vinaigrette or some variation. Not ranch or thousand island or any of those heavy variants. Eating one salad a day will do insane things for your health and mindset. Doing this alone will make positive changes in your diet and health.

Understand and Recognize Cabin Fever

Cabin fever is real.

If you live in a city, get out for lunch at least once a week. Go to a taco shop, meet a friend, have a lunch date with your wife/girl[boy]friend/husband/etc.

Get out of the house.

Plan to work out of the house 1-2 days a week.

Time Block Your Tasks

List a couple of tasks that you want to complete that take about 2-4 hours to complete, go to a coffee shop or coworking space and get it done. It will do an insane amount for you mentally and creatively. Do that a couple times a week. I find that sometimes doing one task at one coffee shop and then going to another place (library, etc) and doing the other one will also help break the monotony.

Outside of Work (AKA: Social Life)

Outside of work – do something that requires you to get out of the house. Join a fitness group – yoga, pilates, CrossFit, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, etc. You’ll get that social connection that way. I highly recommend it to be fitness or martial arts related.

Fitness and martial arts communities are very tight knit and you’ll find a vast array of individuals you can connect with that have differnet backgrounds. Through these groups I’ve become friends with Lawyers, Doctors, Dentists, stay at home mothers, Insurance Reps, Students, you name it – they’re all there. Fitness and martial arts crosses all boundaries. It will be worth your while. Trust me on this one.

Create Some Mental Space

Try to meditate. Not into meditation? Try the free 10 day guided meditation from headspace.com (download the app and try it out).

If you haven’t noticed yet, this is all mainly mental.

Communication when Remote

As for your typical day to day work routine …

You are going to have to communicate about 3x-4x as hard as you did before.

That’s the way it is.

Being remote means you have to be way more proactive.

Don’t hear from your boss/teammate/etc and you’re stuck?

Pick up the phone. Text. Call. Blow up the slack channel. Anything. i.e. – Clear your own road.

When you’re remote you’re not visually there and sometimes you have to be loud before others respond. Voice your opinions.

The goal is to communicate very well.

TLDR;

Its all mental.

You need to create a schedule, stick to it, take care of your body, create the proper mental mindset and cultivate it (day in and day out). You need to create “out of band” social connections so you don’t go crazy. Do that with a fitness/martial arts group. Break work into chunks and get out of the house a couple times a week. Lastly, communicate the hell out of everything. If you’re not sure if you communicated enough, do it more. Annoy people if you have to, you’re remote and sometimes people forget about you if they can’t see you.

Follow those simple steps and you’ll thrive in a remote atmosphere and you’ll end up enjoying life 10x more than you ever did before.

Finally, if you ever have a question about remote working – email me – I’ll help. I’ve been through probably almost anything you’ve been through working remote.

Standing Desk – Three Years Later

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Its hard to believe its already been 3 years since building my standing desk for $22.

I gave a two-week update about 3 years ago, which you can find here.

I’m still using it daily and here’s what I’ve found on top of the regular productive boosts/etc.

70/30 Standing/Sitting Split

I work about 70% of my day standing up. The other 30% is sitting down. Initially, I had to take it down and put it back up each time, that was a pain. But I eventually grabbed my spare monitor, set it up on another file cabinet I had and I used that as my standing desk. When I no longer want to stand I’d move my laptop and wireless keyboard and mouse to my desk. Total transition time – between standing and sitting: 30 seconds.

 

Wear Comfortable Shoes

metcons

Personally I’m a minimalist shoe kind of guy. I wear Nike Metcons as my day to day shoe. Wearing shoes helps my feet become less fatigued through the day and helps ensure my feet are not banged up from being on them the majority of the day.

Use an Anti-Fatigue Mat

gelpro

 

Personally use a GelPro and I find it to be the best one I’ve found yet (other friends who use standing desks agree with me as well). This will help save your feet, lower back and posterior chain from major fatigue.

A Footstool is very helpful

Here’s a very simple utility footstool that works very well. Simply put the footstool on the ground and alternate putting a foot on it every once in awhile. This helps change things up and helps reduce fatigue.

I’m Ready for a Real Standing Desk

I was originally very apprehensive about spending hundreds of dollars on a standing desk.

What if I did not like it? What if it was the wrong size? What if my body didn’t agree with standing up a lot?

Well, I know that I’ll be standing and working for probably the rest of my lifetime after doing this continually for 3+ years.

There are soo many options out there for standing desks now. It’s hard to decide which one to choose. For me, I’m going off of intuition, some recommendations by other standing desk folks I know and some online reviews and gut feeling. I know, not too scientific, but … I can’t really go into a store and try them all out. That said, I’ve been working on a $22 stand up desk for 3 years so anything will likely be a major upgrade. Based upon those inputs I’ve decided that I’m going to upgrade by the beginning of the year to either an EvoDesk, Standesk or something I have not even found yet (soo many options out there!).

Considerations

A couple of things I needed to consider (and you will too if you’re looking for a standing desk) were:

What is the height of the desk? At full extension, is it tall enough for you? I’m tall, so I need the desk to have some excellent vertical height.

Programmable Memory Controller
A programmable memory controller has a few buttons that remember certain heights for quick operation. For me, this is a requirement because when I’m ready to work I want to just get to work – I don’t want to hassle with up/down/up/down/left/right/select/a/b/start combos just to get it at a perfect height. I want to tap a button, have the desk to go proper height and then I no longer have to worry about it. This minor thing may not seem like much and may be a way to shave a few dollars off your purchase price, but trust me … this is a luxury that you’ll be happy you splurged for.

During my hunt for a standing desk here were some of the options I considered –

Standesk

The Standesk claim to fame was a cheap standing desk. Unfortunately to keep the quality high the prices have gone up, but it’s definitely worth considering.

 

EvoDesk

To me, the EvoDesk one seems to be the “nicest” out of them all, but I’m noticing some reports of instability at tall heights. This is a concern for me. There definitely are better ones in the market but for the price and options it seems like a good deal.

 

IKEA Bekant

The IKEA Bekant was recently released and because of the price point I was considering this one first. However, after looking into it I noticed it did not have a programmable memory controller.

bekant

Varidesk

I’ve tried the Varidesk but I felt it was too low for me (I’m 6’4”) and it was too clunky and took up too much desk space. I’m a minimalist and I like to have my desk clean and clear. The Varidesk simply too up too much space. However, some of my friends have reported that they do love theirs – so definitely evaluate that option if you’re looking for a standup-sitdown option that is cheaper than a full blown standing desk (or just use the $22 IKEA desk like I did).

 

Should You Get a Standing Desk?
This is 100% up to you. However, I feel its a great investment for your health if you’re going to be working at a desk a lot (more than 30% of your day). If you’re like me and you’re very apprehensive to spend $700 on a stand-up desk, simply build an IKEA $22 Standing Desk like I did. I’ve been working with this one for over three years now and I still use it (though I will be upgrading soon).

Don’t have an IKEA near you and still want to try out a standing desk?

Grab an end table from around the house and put it on top of your desk. Place a couple of large books or a box under the monitor until the top of your monitor is at eye level. Make sure when you’re using your keyboard your elbow creates a 90 to 100 degree angle. That’s it, try it out.

Did you buy a standing desk? If so, which one do you have?