Now, Not Later - Issue 03

7 minute read

TIME IS YOUR MOST IMPORTANT ASSET.

Although people will gain a variety of assets in their lives,

what is the one asset all humans possess?

The one asset all humans share?

The one asset all humans can control?

The one asset all humans can use in their favor?

TIME.

Not everyone is guaranteed the same amount of time, but everyone has the ability to share the same goal of maximizing the time they have.

BIG BANK ACCOUNTS,

properties, stocks, customers, employees, brand awareness, information, technology, efficient systems ect…

all of these examples would all be considered great assets to the majority.

Ironically, mostly all of the assets I listed above will assist in the creation of the asset of time.

But unless you are born into a family with successful roots & room to fit you in, you have to spend your asset of time to get these other assets on your own.

If you are like me and are not born into all of these assets, what is the most important asset?

See where I am going?

So why is time your most important asset?

First, you have to peel back another layer.

What is time?

Time is everything.

• Sleeping

• Eating

• Working

• Laughing

• Crying

• Money

Everything is time.

&

Everything costs time.

Time is currency.

This is why you say “spend time”.

You think money is what you spent for everything in life, NOPE.

You spend time, the most valuable currency.

Whether you like it or not, you are born with a set amount of time.

Every decision you make is spending your time, and every decision makes your time dwindle.

Makes you think, you should “spend your time wisely” huh?

How do you take control of spending your time?

There is only 1 way to control how you spend your time.

You do what is in your control.

This is the same concept as budgeting your money.

You must budget your time on the things that are in your control.

Therefore, you will control your time.

What is required of time?

NOTHING.

Nothing is required of time. It will be spent whether you use it or not.

Ask yourself, what do you want out of life?

How much time is required and how much time do you need to spend to live the life you want?

For me,

I want freedom. I want to work where I want, when I want.

I want to afford to take my family places at the drop of a hat. I don’t want to bat an eye at my bank account when I pay for a trip with my family for the holidays.

This tells me, my time requires money and obtaining the money through remote income.

My time requires a financial position where I can work anywhere, on my own schedule.

Now it’s time to zoom out and look at my life, and where my time is spent.

How do I allocate and spend time, so I can work towards building remote income that pays me enough money to travel with my family.

I need to spend more of my time on self-education, more time for entrepreneurship, more time building, this might mean cutting back spending my time in other areas in my life.

For you,

Your time might require a certain job position, a specific income, or adjusting your schedule so you can get your morning workout in everyday.

Regardless of our desires

Time is how you are going to obtain that desire.

Time will be spent, whether you use it or not.

How you spend your time, how you allocate your time, how you create your time.

This is how you reach your ultimate desires.

Without time, everything is irrelevant.

Family, money, business, education, hobbies, exploration, progression, even simple moments of life.

It’s all irrelevant without having the time to experience these things.

Leverage Time

As you progress through your journey of life, you will gain massive insight on managing your time.

Reaching this new level in life, you might want to supercharge your progression and creation of time by introducing leverage.

Leverage is anything that helps you create your desired outcomes more efficiently and effectively.

In this instance, you want to use leverage to help you create more time.

Things like; outsourcing your workload, investing money into other assets that will grow your wealth, and mastering your work efforts so you can be more productive in less amount of time.

Personally, I have not reached a point in my life of leveraging my time at an extreme level. But I have introduced smaller things into my life that are small forms of leverage.

Small steps lead to big strides.

So how do I implement this into my life?

What do I do to maximize my time?

• Health is #1

  • In my eyes, this is simply a requirement from everyone.

  • If your physical and mental health is off, you will never master maximizing your time.

  • People post-pone exercise until they are “successful” because they don’t want to sacrifice time when they could be working.

  • The longer you post-pone your physical health, the longer it takes to become healthy.

  • It is more efficient, effective, and overall just a better life to live if you spend 30 minutes a day getting exercise.

  • This should be your #1 priority of time spent. EVEN BEFORE FAMILY.

  • If you don’t prioritize your health, you won’t even be able to show up for your family properly.

  • Mental health holds the same importance.

  • I won’t dive deep into mental health, everyone has different ways of nurturing your mental health.

  • Just make sure you nurture it on a regular consistent basis.

• Build Self-Awareness

  • 2nd priority in line behind health to maximize your time

  • This is something I struggled with for YEARS.

  • Build awareness of your;

    • habits, distractions, strengths, weaknesses, fluff, productivity levels, focus, requirements being met, actions needed.

    • Build bulletproof self-awareness.

    • Know yourself in and out. The good and the bad.

    • This is pure honesty & trust in yourself.

    • Know where you shine, and where you fall short.

• Set goals

  • This provides direction and helps you allocate your time towards activities that contribute to achieving these goals.

  • You should wake up every morning and know exactly what you should be working towards.

  • Even if your goal is to take a vacation for 2 weeks, you should know that this is your time to detach and let loose.

  • Without goals, you have no direction. Without direction, you won’t be working towards anything at all. Time is getting wasted.

• Figure out what’s required

  • Identify and focus on tasks that align with your goals and have the most significant impact.

  • Understand what is required, and what is not.

  • Not all tasks are created equal, so prioritize effectively.

  • It’s important to remove what is not required to reach your goal, as it is actually a distraction.

• Do what is in your control.

  • Gain clarification on what is in your control, and what is out of your control.

  • Spend as much time on this as necessary.

  • Create lists of what is in your control and out of your control, make it as clear is possible.

  • Now block out the noise of what is out of your control.

  • Majority of the time, what is in your control is the input, and what is out of your control is the output.

  • This is how you control time.

• Subtract to create time. Replace, don’t add.

  • Odds are, your time is already stretched thin.

  • If you need to add something new into your life to reach your desired outcome, it will require time.

  • This means you must replace something you are already doing, with this new task.

  • If you just keep adding new things into your life, without subtraction, you will be overloaded and never reach your desired income.

  • Wherever you can, subtract the fluff from your life.

  • The little things add up.

  • When time feels abundant, it will become apparent that you had a lot of fluff.

• Remove distractions

  • Simply put, remove the distractions. Look at what’s required, and remove anything that gets in your way.

  • This could be people, hobbies, entertainment, non-sense.

  • This doesn’t mean remove 100% of your enjoyments. It means prioritize your favorites, and simplify. Minimize these distractions, while still keeping your happiness and hobbies alive.

  • It’s all about balance, discipline and self-awareness.

• Time management techniques

  • Time management is crucial.

  • If you don’t manage your time, you are a wild animal running through the jungle.

  • You need a schedule, systems, structure, time blocks and discipline.

  • Without a schedule, you have no idea what you are working on.

  • Without systems, you don’t have a known & built pathway to follow. You are building a new road every time you get to work.

  • Without discipline, you simply won’t show up. And nobody else is filling in for your time off. You have to show up.

  • I personally love pomodoro timers. If you don’t know what they are, I suggest looking them up. It’s essentially a timer that schedules time blocks for daily tasks.

• Soft Planning & Soft Systems

  • I call this soft planning & systems, because plans change.

  • Systems need refinement.

  • These will always be soft, always improve your systems and plans along the way.

  • Have a plan & system to reach your yearly goals.

  • Have a plan & system to reach your half year goals.

  • Have a plan & system to reach your monthly goals.

  • Have a plan & system to reach your daily goals.

PRO TIP

Use your night time to reflect on your day, gain insight and your successes and short-comings and plan your next day ahead.

This is the epitome of small wins adding up.

Every night reflection shows your small wins, and where your small losses were at.

Planning your next day is preparation with a fresh brain of daily feedback on where you can perform better.

• Find balance in your high effort time spent

  • Overwork and you experience burnout.

  • Work too little and you lose sight of what you’re working for.

  • Find the right balance and you will be the most effective.

• Self-Education

  • No one is going to hold your hand.

  • You have to continuously educate yourself to get the life you desire.

  • There is no other way to put it, always have self-education as a priority in your time spent.

• Networking and relationship building

  • "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

  • Networks and relationships are leverage.

  • Networks and relationships are human connection.

  • Networks and relationships are experiences.

  • Networks and relationships facilitate growth and happiness.

  • It is simply healthy, beneficial, and a great aspect of life that many people miss.

• Outsourcing and delegating

  • This is a huge leverage in time.

  • Offload your weaknesses onto someone else, and focus on your strengths.

  • There are sacrifices and risks made with outsourcing and delegation.

  • You run risk of your outsource making mistakes, ghosting, or underperforming. All outcomes cause more of your time spent.

  • You have to spend more time upfront creating systems for outsourced assets to learn and follow.

  • More systems must be built.

  • Long-term, if done correctly will create more time, money and assets for you.

• Lastly and most importantly, reflection and iteration.

  • YOU ARE ONLY HUMAN.

  • No one is perfect.

  • What is trial and error without reflection?

  • Hard times, experimentation, failures, and fatigue; to maximize these experiences in life you HAVE TO REFLECT and LEARN FROM YOUR EXPERIENCES.

  • Otherwise all this time spent is essentially wasted. If you don’t learn from your past experiences, you will stay the same.

  • Reflect, iterate, and try again.

  • Reflect, iterate, and try again.

  • Reflect, iterate, and try again.

  • Do so as many times as required until you have finally learned what was required to reach your desired outcome.

  • A way to shortcut reflection is to reach out to your network and ask about their failures. You can expedite your learning lessons and dodge some failures along the way.

Look, I could keep going on about maximizing time.

I think this is enough information for 1 newsletter.

If you read this and it resonated with you, I’m selfishly glad because this means I’m not alone. This was written purely from my thoughts & experiences.

Thank you so much if you made it this far, and until next week!

It’s NOW, NOT LATER.

Jacob

If you are new to my content, thanks for reading!

Quick about me

I’m a content creator in Los Angeles.

I’ve been creating content for 8+ years for other creators.

I am starting 2024 on a pretty clean slate focusing content creation on my own personal brand & interests.

My content focus is; content creation, mindset, fitness, entrepreneurship, digital products, travel & creative work!

Basically my entire life and everything I learn along the way.

If this sounds relatable to your interests, follow along for the journey and shoot a dm saying hello!

Cheers everyone and see you on the interweb - Jacob