#230 Time Thieves

People will steal your time if you let them. 

It’s important – in my opinion, mandatory – to have rules on how to guard your time.

#1 Email

We all know it. Email can be a huge distraction and time-suck. 

This is why I don’t open up my email until around lunchtime most days. The bare minimum is until I get to work, which is around 9 or 10am.

It would cause all kinds of problems if I were to open up my email before my workout. Once I see it, I can’t unsee or unknow it. It’s taking up valuable headspace when I should be focused on my workout.

#2 Social Media

How easy is it to get sucked into the black hole of social media? Before you know it, you’ve been scrolling for half an hour. Usually, it’s a big waste of time.

My suggestion? Similar to email, I would suggest not opening it up the minute you wake up. If you really want to take it seriously, then set aside specific windows of time that you allow yourself to scroll social media.

#3 People Who DON’T Value Your Time

There’s never going to be a shortage of people who don’t value your time.

People that don’t value your time will steal it – knowingly and unknowlingly. This is something that we all struggle with, myself included. It’s something that you must work at becoming more aware of because it’s extremely easy to fall into this trap.

Hard to manage, but very important.

It’s not that I think I’m better than everyone. I just highly value my time. You must utilize your time properly because the day-to-day demands will pull at you every which way.

Be Conscious of Your Time

Who are you spending your time with?

Are you giving your time away?

How accessible are you?

My strategy revolves around spending time with my family, working on my businesses, and learning and developing myself to be a better human. This strategy doesn’t leave much time for what my grandfather used to call “dillydallying.”

The High Value of Time

Some people take this kind of strategy as being too aggressive, or even insincere. But guess what? We only get so much time on this planet. We don’t have endless time to accomplish what we want to accomplish. We don’t get as much time as we would like with our family.

Time is only going to get more valuable as you get older.

One time I had a landscape guy who showed up late to one of our meetings. He then said to me, "You're one of the people that I know values your time more than anybody."

So, I ask you… Are you wasting your time? Are people stealing your time? 

Look at it, evaluate it, understand it. Then, put regulations in place to guard it.