Investing your time will impact your everyday life

Mahatma Gandhi said: “A man who works regularly, in a systematic fashion, never feels overworked or tired. He knows his limits and is able to do in fair time, all that he undertakes. It is not hard work that kills a man, but irregularity or lack of system.”

Have you ever asked yourself – “Why are some people more successful with their 24-hours than I am?” Of course, if you’re already living your best life, please don’t bother to read any further, just sleep and repeat!! However, for the rest of us – once we’ve slept, eaten, and done our errands, we are left with 12 hours in which we can invest in making our lives better or worse.

To get a return on investment (ROI) from your 12-hours you need to ensure that each week you know exactly what you would like to achieve and how you are going to go about achieving it. We all know that you can’t get a return from your money if you don’t invest any money, time works the same way.   The areas in your life where you should be investing your time each week: 

• Getting clarity as to what you want to achieve, to set those SMART goals.  
• Working out how you’re going to achieve it, by formulating the plan.  
• Making sure that you block out the time in your diary to action your plan. 
• Evaluating how well you’re doing, and to make adjustments to your plan to ensure that you are successful.  

  When it comes to time, the magic wand is consistency. You have to invest this time every week, bursts of frenetic investment in these activities is like putting all your money on the Roulette wheel, it usually amounts to nothing – other than seeing your investment disappear.

Stop being unrealistic about what you can achieve tomorrow or next week. Until 1940, there was no such word as priorities, the only word in use was a priority. Each week make sure that your priority is something that will move you closer to your goals, your dreams, and ultimately do it. Only then attend to your “to-do list”, which is usually full of other people’s priorities anyway.

Remember every time you say yes to something you are saying no to something else. What you invest your time in matters. As you live your days, your days become your weeks, your weeks become your months, your months become your years, your years become your life. Invest wisely, it’s worth it!

Shirley Pearson, ActionCOACH Business Coach
shirleypearson.actioncoach.com | shirleypearson@actioncoach.com

Photo by Dylan Ferreira on Unsplash