How to make more time in your life to do all the things that you ever wanted to do!

Have you ever wanted to write a book? Take up a hobby? Learn a new language?

Do you know someone who wants to study for a new career? Spend more quality time with their children? Get fit and exercise more regularly?

Have you yearned to spend more time on the golf course? More time with your friends? More time pampering yourself?

Would you do more with your life if only you had more time?

It’s a common problem.

All of my life I have been interested in what motivates people, what makes people tick and why some people seem to get all of the breaks and all of the success whilst others seemingly achieve nothing.

Probably like me you’ve occasionally met someone who seems to have fitted into their life so much more than the average human being… we usually dismiss them as freaks, non-sleepers or super achievers.

I was listening to a conversation in an office the other day and it went a little like this…

“John ran a marathon last week. He trains for 2 hours every night you know.”
“Yes, I did and he just finished his Open University degree too. I’d like to do something like that but I just don’t have the time!”
“Me neither.”

How common is this kind of conversation?

“I would if only I had more time!”

Most of us hear it every day. Probably many of us say it too. We say things like, “I’m rushed off my feet” or “I can’t cope with everything I have to do” or “If only I had more time”.

So here’s my simple answer…

Stop watching television!

That’s it. Stop watching television!

Seriously, how much TV do you watch? When I walk into most houses the TV is on in the background… all of the time. When I get into offices in the morning all that people are talking about is what was on TV last night.

It’s laughable really. People who want more from their lives but spend their time living it vicariously through fictitious or reality TV stars.

How much more time would you have if you stopped watching TV? How much this evening? This week? This month? Over the next year? Over the next 10 years?

What could you do with that kind of time?

Could you learn a new language? Help out at the local hospice? Get out and take up that new sport? Learn to ride a horse? Learn how to invest well for your retirement? Set up a part-time business to get you out of debt or start you on your way to your fortune?

I’ve done a bit of research on TV watching for you just so that you know how much time really does get wasted on TV…

1 United Kingdom: 28 hours per person per week
2 United States: 28 hours per person per week
3 Italy: 27 hours per person per week
4 Ireland: 23 hours per person per week
5 Germany: 23 hours per person per week
6 France: 23 hours per person per week
7 Australia: 22 hours per person per week
8 Denmark: 20 hours per person per week
9 Netherlands: 20 hours per person per week
10 Belgium: 19 hours per person per week
11 Sweden: 18 hours per person per week
12 Norway: 18 hours per person per week
13 Finland: 18 hours per person per week

And what’s more TV is addictive!

The more you watch the more you want to watch. How many people do you know who rush home to watch certain TV shows abandoning other activities? How many people do you know who tape TV shows whilst they are out to watch them later on? How many people do you know who would get annoyed if they missed an episode of a favourite soap or series?

These are all signs of addiction. TV is an addiction and it’s one that takes over many people’s lives, disempowering them, seducing them and making them think that they don’t have enough time to do the things that they really want to do.

Several pieces of psychological research have suggested that TV can certainly become addictive and that heavy TV watchers display all the symptoms of a non-substance behavioral addiction. I know so many people who “want” to get fit but spend their time instead watching TV and opining that they “don’t have time” to go to the gym because they’re too busy.

I remember being introduced by a well-meaning friend to 24 – the fantastic series with Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer. My friend lent me the box set and I watched the first couple and before I knew it I was hooked. I needed to know what happened to Jack. It really mattered to me.

I worked my way rapidly through the series and upon reaching the series cliffhanger got in my car and drove to the local video store to get series 2! I watched all 6 series’.

I don’t know about 24 – more like Nightmare!

I was addicted… and for what? What did I get out of it? I wasted perhaps 120 hours or 15 full working days and how did I benefit exactly? Once I’d watched it what could I tell you about it? And even if I could, who cares?

Here’s some more stats…

According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube.

And some more stats…

• Percentage of households that possess at least one television: 99
• Number of TV sets in the average U.S. household: 2.24
• Percentage of U.S. homes with three or more TV sets: 66
• Number of hours per day that TV is on in an average U.S. home: 6 hours, 47 minutes
• Percentage of Americans that regularly watch television while eating dinner: 66
• Number of hours of TV watched annually by Americans: 250 billion
• Value of that time assuming an average wage of S5/hour: S1.25 trillion
• Percentage of Americans who pay for cable TV: 56
• Number of videos rented daily in the U.S.: 6 million
• Number of public library items checked out daily: 3 million
• Percentage of Americans who say they watch too much TV: 49

Pretty depressing reading huh?! What could you do with an extra 9 years of life? People spend fortunes on medical health care to get an extra few months at the end of their lives but piss up against the wall 9 years of quality life!

Wow!

But breaking habits is not easy… not easy at all. If you’re wasting your life away watching TV you need to do several things…

1. Think about how much of your life you’re throwing away.

Seriously! Work it out! And work it out now! Work out how much time you spend watching TV last week. Now multiply that by 52 weeks and then by 10 years to see how much time you waste watching TV every decade.

And be honest with yourself. Don’t underestimate like most people do, be realistic. TV sucks you in and we don’t realize just how much time it eats up.

Be realistic. Most people underestimate how much TV they actually watch. I used to say, “Oh I don’t really watch TV” but actually I still watched quite a bit whilst I was waiting for things to happen such as the food to cook.

2. Think about what this has cost you already.

Work out how much time you have spend watching TV to date in your life. How many years (?), months, weeks and hours have you spent watching TV?

Think what you could have done with that time. Think about how you’ve missed out. Think about all of the opportunities that you’ve already missed because of your love affair with the TV!

3. Decide what you’d like to achieve with that time.

Think about what you’re going to spend your newly found time on. What are you going to do? Why are you going to do it? How will you benefit by doing it? What will it mean for your finances, your social life, your hobbies, your prospects, your career and your personal wellbeing and fitness?

As a teenager and into my early twenties I was quite into fitness. I used to run 4-6 miles every day and exercise in the gym for another 45 minutes to an hour every day. Once a week I would run further, covering 8-10 miles. In the summer I used to go to a local track and do sprint work.

As I got older I decided consciously not to do so much exercise and gradually I let it slip still further. I got into the habit of saying “I don’t have time” but often I would find myself watching the TV rather than utilizing that time well.

I’ve gone back to exercising and this extra time has allowed me to take on new projects that I am passionate about such as the Big Fat Guru!

4. Visualize your new self.

Now take some time to visualize yourself in 5 years time. Just imagine – 5 years without the TV. What will you have achieved and done in that time? Where will you be? What will you have that you don’t have now? What will you do that you don’t do now? Who will you become?

Picture yourself in your new life and let yourself “experience” it in panoramic detail. The more you do and have fun with this exercise the more powerful it will become for you.

I’ll share with you my top tips for visualization for success another day… but for now, close your eyes, relax and picture your new you!

5. Create an action plan for getting started.

I’m bored of the hug a tree, rent a personal development coach, crowd banging on about how if you just focus on something it will happen.

Maybe it will just happen to happen for the lucky few but for 99% of people success requires action!

Here’s an important lesson for you… 99% of people who tell you success just happens when you imagine it happening are either not successful or are lying about how they actually achieved that success.

For sure, you want to eradicate negative and disempowering beliefs and you want to focus on what you want not what you don’t want but when you’ve done that you need to TAKE ACTION!

Once you know firmly what it is that you want to achieve with your time then you need to plan an action plan and take the first step…

6. Turn off the TV and go do something else less boring instead!

And for most people, turning off the TV and going to do something less boring instead would be a good first step!

Pick something interesting and exciting that you can do one evening this week rather than watching the TV. Decide to go swimming rather than go home and watch the soaps, take action and got out for a meal with friends rather than staying home and watching the box, read a good book rather than vegging in front of the depressing news.

You get the idea…

7. Share your experiences with us at The Big Fat Guru!

Life is a team game. It’s not something that you want to try and play all of the time by yourself. Most people around you are not going to be much use in supporting you in your goal to watch less TV because they watch too much themselves. They probably won’t understand where you’re coming from or what you’re trying to achieve. They’ll probably think that it’s some kind of fad that won’t last and that you’ll have forgotten about by next week!

9 years!

9 years! That’s what we’re talking about here. How hard would you fight now if someone set you a task to save 9 years of your life? Very hard I’d hazard a guess and that is exactly the task that you have just been set.

Share your experiences and tell us what you’ve done instead of watching the TV and most of all….

Have fun!

Review of The 4-Hour Workweek; Escape 9-5, live anywhere and join the new rich. Thus Timothy Ferris titled his new book. And what a book…

There has been a lot of hype about this book. Some of it good, some of it bad. Take two conflicting and contrasting review comments on Amazon…

* 5-Star highly recommended, “A must read”

* 1-Star Shameless Self-promotion, “Please – please – don’t waste your time with this book. Catchy title – but that’s about it.”

One thing is for sure, this book has generated a lot of chatter and a lot of reviews and they’re pretty diverse. Some of it is vary negative saying that Timothy is exploiting people in the 3rd world, being underhand and devious, lacking integrity… and far more besides. It made me want to know what all of the noise is about. I could go on but if you want to read the rest go and read them yourself here.

In my opinion the reason for this avalanche of conflicting feedback is the whole concept behind the book. Think about it… To even consider a 4-hour working week or anything near it you are going to have to throw away many assumptions and practises that you currently have. You are going to have to break the mould and act radically differently to those around you. You are going to have to forge a different path. Let’s tweak a well-known NLP tenet for our own purposes here…

If you do what everyone else is doing, you’ll get what everyone else is getting.

99.99% of people do what everyone else is doing. They go to work for around about 9. They leave around about 5. They take lunch breaks. They work for someone else. They start work after school or university and then they retire as early as they can. Sometimes they get adventurous and take a gap year or a career break. Some even retrain and do something else…

Timothy proposes something else. Something radically different. And it is different. This, as Tim says himself in his opening chapters, is going to push a lot of people outside of their comfort zones. People don’t like it when someone challenges their “comfy” existence. They lash out. Surely, their world must be real. So they go on the attack to prove and pretend that “their” world is the only possible reality.

A couple of the reviews even claim that Timothy’s material is stolen from Jack Canfield, Michael Gerber and others but this is not true. For sure, many of his principles have been tried and tested elsewhere but Tim takes them on to another level, he puts a personal and more radical twist on them. Certainly Jack and Michael obviously did not think he had plagiarised their material when they said,

“It’s about time this book was written. It is a long-overdue manifesto for the mobile lifestyle, and Tim Ferriss is the ideal ambassador. This will be huge.”
Jack Canfield

“The 4-Hour Workweek is a new way of solving a very old problem: just how can we work to live and prevent our lives from being all about work?  A world of infinite options awaits those who would read this book and be inspired by it!”
Michael E. Gerber

The BFG’s thoughts…

This is a good book and well worth the cover price. One reviewer said that it was “overpriced”… they must have approached it with the wrong head on.

This book does exactly what it sets out to do. It outlines a radically different and mind-stretchingly challenging approach to time management, work ethics, career and life. There are tactics and tips in here for everyone. I have worked incredibly long hours, been involved with SME set up businesses, played the corporate game, worked for myself and consulted with businesses from one man bands to major corporates. If you choose to look for it there is something in here for everyone. IF.

What’s more, it is an enjoyable read. I read this book in one sitting without putting it down and I knew from the first few pages that this would be the case.

I do not want to work a 4-hour week. I do not want to spend huge amounts of time in Berlin, Thailand or Argentina. I do not want to do many of the things that Tim has done. But I can apply many of these things to get me more of what I want. The art and skill of personal development is in taking someone else’s material and making it work for you. That is what you need to do with this book.

What will you get out of this book?

• An enjoyable read and an interesting story
• Your ideas and perceptions about what you “have to do” and how you “have to act” – seriously challenged
• Some sound concepts for you to adapt and play with particularly around time management and personal effectiveness
• Several resources to help you apply the techniques

My favourite concepts and ones I will be picking up, expanding upon, testing out and trying and discussing with you are on outsourcing, email and prioritising. So look out for those in the weeks and months to come.

I recommend that you read The 4-Hour Workweek. I think it is unlikely that you will follow all of the ideas inside of it nor do I think you should. Its unlikely you will choose to copy Timothy Ferriss’ life but this is not the aim of this book. Read it. Challenge yourself. Find better ways to work and be more effective.

See look, it’s 900am, I’ve finished this and I have not checked my email yet. That does feel better already!