Preparing your mindset for success starts with taking control of our perspective as it can change how we show up in our business and in life. Then we need to know how to reframe negative thoughts to get past blocks that keep us from taking action. The next block in your way is time and the difference between spending time vs investing time and how to make more time for what’s important.
Make More Time: Spending vs Investing
One of the things we’re realising is how much time we actually had before the pandemic hit. And we became acutely aware of how we filled up our time with all sorts of things. The question is – were we investing that time or just spending it?
This is one of my beliefs – that we go through periods of spending everything – money, supplies, time, energy… Often this includes spending time in ways where we don’t get anything back. Things like:
- zoning out while watching Netflix
- scrolling through social media and not even contributing to a conversation
That’s the difference between spending and investing.
When you spend time, you don’t get it back. Just like when you spend money on frivolous things that decrease in value.
But you can also invest time.
Investing means you ARE going to get something back. Investing time might look like taking time to put a social media post on Facebook that will actually invite people to your clinic. Or it’s going to invest value into your audience and then they’ll give you value back in the form of money.
So your first mindset shift here is to think about your time in terms of Spending (getting nothing back) vs Investing (where you do get something back).
Track Your Time For 3 Full Days
Now, the only way we can really discover whether we are spending or investing our time right now is by tracking it, just like you would with your money.
You may think you have a good idea but the reality is, you don’t truly know until you actually track an entire day. And the first time I did this, I tracked my time for seven days and wrote down what I did every 15 minutes.
But you can do it just for 3 days.
And remember – focus on what you CAN do, not on what you can’t do.
It’s just the same as when you track your food for your nutrition qualification, or if you’ve got clients keeping a diet diary. We don’t want to write things in the diary, do we? We want to just skip that little bit there.
Be Really Honest
You’ve got to be all in on this if you want to learn how to take control of what’s happening in your business, your life, and your world. To understand where you’re spending or investing your time when it comes to family, business, and life in general – you have to track it ALL.
For instance, when I did this the first time back when I was running my clinic, I realised I was spending time at my clinic rather than investing it in my family at dinner time.
This was the Thursday night when I was supposed to finish up at seven and go home for some downtime with my family and investing that time in bedtime reading and things like that.
But instead, I’d spend it at the clinic doing all sorts of odds and sods I could easily have done the next day. Things that were not going to give me anything back.
Challenge: Track your time over the next 3 days and write down every 15 minutes what you’re doing
You may realise where you’re spending time after tracking for just half a day. Or you might even already realise where you’re going wrong.
But really, you won’t truly know where you’re wasting time instead of investing until you do the exercise and write down every 15 minutes exactly what you’re actually doing.
Listen To The Internal Stories & Watch For Trends
As you do this, listen to all the internal stories and negative thoughts that come up for you. Sometimes, even before you’ve even written down what happened in the past 15 minutes, you’ll have a story popping up in your head!
Being human is so funny, isn’t it?
Once you start writing down what you’re doing in 15-minute increments, you’ll also start to see trends.
The trends will depend on who you are and what you love to procrastinate on. Are you a procrasti-baker or a procreasti-cleaner?
There are so many different ways to avoid what’s uncomfortable, aren’t there?
Quantifying The Time You Spend
You need to quantify how much time you are spending, then ask yourself, could you spend the $30 per hour for a house cleaner to do those things while you make $100 in that same hour by:
- serving your clients
- finding people who need to hear from you to invest in their own health
Or find other ways to invest that time instead of spending it?
This exercise can be a real eye-opener.
Let’s do the math.
We each get a certain number of hours in each day. And during those hours, you have the potential to:
- earn $100 by seeing a client in consultation
- create an eCourse you can sell for passive income
- or invest time in building your business or finding people who need to hear what you have to say
You are the one with a zone of genius in your particular field, with your particular way to help people. And if you’re investing that time wisely, you get it back in other ways. For instance, selling your eCourse over and over and over again without you being there.
So it’s important to consider how you use your time and the best way to do that is to track it.
Top 3 Time-Wasters
There are some trends I’ve seen from the hundreds of mentees who have done this exercise. See if any of these ends up in your list of top-time-wasters:
- Social Media – It’s something we consume AND something we can create. Focus on creation before you consume.
- Working In Your Business (instead of on it) – It’s easy to get obsessed and spend too much time on things like treatment plans. If you’re spending 8 hours per person, that’s way too much for the $100 the person just paid you.
- Procrastinating – It’s so easy to procrastinate, in so many different ways. Remember your big WHY to stay focused on what’s important to your goals and building a business that will help you achieve your goals.
Take Action
Make an agreement with yourself to do this exercise and find where you can stop spending time and start investing it instead. Figuring out how to make more time for what moves you forward is an incredible way to start making more progress in your business and building the life and business you dream of.
Leave a comment below to share your results. I’d love to hear what you discovered!
Oh and if you’re keen to explore passive income options for your business, I’ve got the perfect little DIY course for you. See it here.
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