Hello folks, been a long Thursday; Hope you’ve had a good Thursday so far…
I know most of you would be reading this on Friday but that doesn’t matter so much; I had a great day and I want to share it with you.
Few moments ago, I was reading through a facebook group created by one of my
Mentors and I came across a post written by one of our contributors, Josh Reif.
He was so forthcoming and original with his content that I felt I couldn’t be
selfish and keep it to myself. I had to share it with you guys. (PS: he gave me permission to)Here it goes..
HUSTLE IS OVERRATED
Yea, you heard me.
If I offered you $1,000,000 to out-hustle everyone in this group for one week you could do it right? You’d pull 7 straight all-nighters and be hopped up on so much caffiene the Starbucks barista would know your order by heart. You’d give up sleep, food, sex, family, everything. After all, it’s just one week and you’d win a million freaking dollars!
But you would lose…..because it’s virtually impossible. Assuming for health reasons I require everyone to sleep at least 3 hours a night, someone (likely many) in this highly motivated group is going to match you even if you complete the 147 hours of insane hustle in the week’s time.
At the end of the week, I’m sure you will have gotten a ton of shit done, BUT SO WILL EVERYONE ELSE. And that everyone else in the world is your competition.
If like me, you’ve joined several entrepreneurial groups, I’m sure you’ve seen tons of photos with motivational quotes about hustle. How the “true” players in this world just “out-hustle” everyone else.
Well, I have some bad news for you. Hustle just isn’t enough. Hustling your ass off is the BARE MINIMUM. Thanks for playing. Working as hard as you can just buys you a ticket to the game. To truly win you have to hustle smarter, faster, more efficiently than everyone else.
You only get 168 hours a week. That’s it.
When Henry Ford developed the moving assembly line for the Ford Model T, he didn’t attempt to find out how many hours of “hustle” he could spend building a car. He wanted to build a car faster and more efficiently and REDUCE the number of hours of hustle needed. While previous assembly methods required 12.5 man-hours to build one car, Ford reduced it to 1.5 man-hours.
Hustling SMARTER, not harder is what made Ford into a billionaire.
Barack Obama is one of the most efficient people in the world. He didn’t come up with some magical system. He’s not a “life hacker”. His job simply depends on it. As leader of the most powerful nation on earth, his responsibilities are numerous and his decision-making must be on point at all times. But Barack Obama has the same problem you do. He only gets 168 hours a week.
He might as well be called the “chief delegator” because he MUST delegate any and all tasks that someone else can complete for him. He must be extremely efficient. You don’t see him scrambling his own eggs because he’d never have enough time in his day to meet hundreds of foreign diplomats, prepare speeches, deal with pressing domestic and national security issues, and still find time for his wife and kids. He can ONLY do the things he is best at and those necessary for his success because the people of the United States and much of the world depend on it.
You must do the same. You should delegate any and all tasks that can be done for you. Your success DEPENDS on it.
168 hours = 10,080 minutes a week
That’s all you get. Every week of your life. HOW MANY MINUTES ARE YOUR WASTING?!
Are you productive? Well, you probably wouldn’t be in this group if you weren’t putting in effort and getting shit done. But are you the MOST productive you can be? Are you MORE productive than everyone else? Probably not.
We think of all the time we waste on mindless activities, but what about all the time we waste on routine activities? Things that we label “essentials” or “errands”, basically giving them the title of necessary evils.
I wanted to know how much time I was wasting and how much I was productive, so I broke it down. I picked minutes because a lot of things are done shorter than hours and the minutes add up differently.
Let’s break it down
Sleep - 2940 minutes
Sleep is uber important. Seriously. Hustle is great, but sleep is the most important thing our body needs physically (despite some popular sleep deprivation hack attempts). 6-8 hours recommended - 7 seems to work well for me.
That leaves 7140 waking minutes per week and it is vital that I choose wisely because these minutes matter.
Job - 2400 minutes
Ugh gross. This is a HUGE chunk of time - 34% of my waking minutes! - wasted not growing my business just to pay the bills (I’ve since quit and regained some of this time).
Commute - 500 minutes
The biggest time waster in existence. I cannot think of any bigger “necessary” time waster than a commute.
Laundry - 120 minutes
Groceries - 70 minutes
Morning shower/coffee/eat - 280 minutes
Cooking/Eating dinner - 200 minutes
Dishes - 60 minutes
Cleaning apartment - 60 minutes
Gym - 300 minutes
Grand total time spent on “necessary” tasks: 3990 minutes
Remaining: 3150 minutes
Over 50% of my waking minutes now gone - poof! - and just 31% of my total weekly minutes for things of my choosing :(
Options for those minutes:
Hang with friends
Work on business
Call mom
Smoke weed
Glue myself to facebook
Watch that funny youtube video
Play guitar
Read a book
Go out partying
Go for a hike
Go play a sport
There’s a million more things I could be wasting my time on. Some are totally worth it. Others not so much. I want to only do the things I really enjoy.
Lastly, I haven’t factored in the time it takes between changing tasks. This is hard to decipher, but it will likely indicate that sticking to fewer tasks and following them through frees up the most time.
NOW THE FUN PART - YAY!
Here’s where you get to play around and figure out just how much time and energy you can save and free up for the things you WANT to do instead of things you HAVE to do. I will break this down in terms of money because that’s something we can all understand. Interesting though, why is that?
Because your time is INVALUABLE, priceless, precious. This means its value cannot be calculated so we can’t use it for adequate comparison. You KNOW that your time is finite. You know that your time is MORE valuable than your money. But since you cannot calculate its true value, you cannot understand it. Thus it is far easier for you to waste time than money.
We can start by assigning a monetary value to our time. Since solo businesses run in random sorts, I will use the standard 9-5 job/40-hour work week. In this group, we all have huge aspirations, but let’s put a desirable income at $100,000 per year. Many of us want to be millionaires and some billionaires, but I don’t think any of us would or should complain at that salary. That 100K based on a 40 hour work week and 50 weeks work breaks down to $50 per hour.
HERE’S THE KICKER
To be truly efficient, you must delegate ANY tasks that cost less than $50 per hour to outsource. You will feel like paying someone to do your laundry is a waste of your money. This is the WRONG mindset. You must re-frame your thinking to understand that this is a waste of your TIME which is MUCH more valuable than your money.
Spend those 2 hours working for more money and you will quickly see how those “errands” or necessary everyday boring tasks consume your time and prevent you from making money.
Another painful side effect you will realize is that when you spend time out partying or with friends you are losing both time AND money. But this is life. This is what you enjoy. You should be spending your time on these things, but CHOOSE WISELY. Don’t hangout with negative people out of some perceived obligation. Don’t watch TV because you have nothing else to do. Either spend your time building your empire or spend it experiencing the world around you: your relationships, nature, your passions.
The catch is you must first start making good money in order to spend it delegating your tasks, but the minute the money starts rolling in is the minute you should start delegating and not a second later.
THE EASY PART - THINGS YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW
The last part of the efficiency equation is easy. You can simply eliminate unnecessary and inefficient tasks. I can’t tell you how many smart and moderately successful people I know who waste their time on meaningless or insignificant tasks often trying to save minute sums of money.
I’m really good at saving money. I used to penny pinch. I used to find all sorts of creative ways to make small sums of money. But I gave that all up. Unless I can make at least $50 doing something I simply DON’T DO IT. It’s not worth my time. And anything that does net me $50 better take me an hour or less.
So what things are total wastes of your time? *cough* facebook *cough* What things are fun and you should keep doing? What life essentials can you automate, delegate, or simply do faster and more efficiently?
I’m on a mission to live the most efficient life possible. I want to reclaim the only thing I can’t get more of: my TIME. I want to stop wasting time on the things I hate doing like laundry omg omg omg and grocery shopping barf.
This won’t be easy. Sacrifices will need to be made. But this can be done. And you can do it too. You can reclaim your time because it is YOUR time and no one else’s. Your time is MORE valuable than your money. Most people will never understand that.
What are you going to do about it?
Leave a comment below and tell me the one thing you hate doing the most that takes up way too much of your time.
