Life Outside of Loans: Take Time to Make Time

I grew up with three brothers, all of us within five years of one another. You can imagine, especially when we were all teenagers, how much the grocery bill must have been.

It was a near constant race to get the “good” food before it was gone – like when our parents would splurge on special cereal, or name brand Mac & Cheese. Even to this day, I still have impulses to guard or hoard my food because of this.

Many people have a scarcity mindset – around food, money, etc. They grasp onto what they have for fear of not getting more.

But have you ever thought that way about your time?

Intellectually, we all understand our lifelines are limited. But even though time is such a precious resource, the majority of people don’t plan for it, like they might make a budget for their money. We live very reactively when it comes to our time, as if we’re waiting to see what life brings to us, when we should be out there creating what we want with our lives.

Here’s a few tips for how to better allot and maximize your time:

Spend time planning. Seems counterintuitive when we’re trying to achieve more to slow down and plan, but it’s necessary to have a road map. Choose a goal and break down the individual steps that need to be completed.

Commit to keeping the plan. The plan itself is great, but it’s completely useless if you don’t execute it! It’s key to write down or type in each of the components into your schedule, and treat those like firm appointments.

Restrict yourself to just one or two goals at any given time. Self-explanatory—the more time you have to commit to a goal the better, so it’s best not to spread yourself too thin with too many targets.

Banish buffering. Buffering is activities like watching TV, scrolling through social media, snacking, etc. These can be some of the biggest time-wasters that we face, and mostly don’t provide us with any real, tangible benefits.

Try these techniques for even a few weeks, and you’ll likely be amazed at your increased productivity levels!

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four-hour days.” – Zig Ziglar