The Single Productivity Hack That Changed My Life

Today I want to take you through a productivity technique that I implemented a few years ago, which changed my life:

The Time Budget.

Time Wasting

The two assets with the best potential returns are money & time.

The more you have, the greater the chance of you being able to make improvements in life.

• If you’re young, you’ll have more time to invest in yourself.

• If you’re older, you’ll have more money to invest in yourself.

But in the age of social media, and sudden dopamine spikes, a lot of people struggle to optimise their time.

Many people might even have phone addictions.

It becomes subconscious to scroll every now & then, and it eats up the time you could spend in a productive manner.

We’re living in a time where time wasting is huge. If I told you the amount of time you spent a week wasting time, it’ll shock you.

Chances are, it’s not going to be minutes per day. It’s going to be hours.

But, why do we do it?

We generate these habits because they give us sudden bursts of enjoyment.

Like an addiction, and once you get to a certain point, it becomes subconscious.

We’re doing these things without even thinking about doing them.

It becomes a part of our nature.

But, there’s a solution for anyone trying to increase productivity.

A budget is common, and you create a budget to identify & categorise spending.

Other objectives for budgets include:

• Getting out of debt

• Reducing costs

• Increasing your disposable income for investments etc.

They’re simple to create, free & effective when accurate & implemented well.

You could create a budget in as little as a few minutes.

All you need is access to/knowledge of your personal figures (income/expenses etc.) & a place to write it all down.

Whilst we advocate for everyone to budget for their money, you might not need it.

Well let me tell you something that everyone can benefit from.

You can create a budget… for your time.

What is a Time Budget?

A time budget is a pretty self explanatory budget.

Whilst a typical budget focuses on helping you save money, your time budget helps you save time.

Like a financial budget, you need the knowledge of what you’re spending your time on, and somewhere to write it down.

The aim?

To allocate more time to productive tasks & cut down on the things that stop you becoming the person you want to be.

If you spend 3 hours a day playing video games, split this time up to make time for more productive activities.

• Hour 1 — A workout, or research about that business you’ve always wanted to start.

• Hour 2 — Video games.

• Hour 3 — Reading an educational book, or blogs like this one :)

You get the idea.

Don’t give up your video games completely. But, one thing I found out myself is that the less time I spend on my PS5, the more enjoyment I get from it when I do go online.

You have 24 hours in every day, like everyone else.

Make the most of them by knowing what you’re spending your time on.

My time budget has given me an extra 20 hours per week of pure productivity, without any compromise.

You might want to spend a few hours a week learning something new, or trying to build a business etc.

But, the point of a time budget is to reduce the amount of time you’re wasting on meaningless activities.

The first thing to admit is that you’ll never be perfect. The idea of achieving “total” productivity is delusional.

We all have flaws, & by making small changes often, your chances of success will be greater.

The amount of time you’re wasting will shock you, and so will the amount of extra time you might be able to find each week.

Give it a try. The process is simple…

Creating a Time Budget

Take an excel sheet, or even use pen & paper if you wish.

Split your days into hours.

Start by doing an entire week to get a good idea of the amount of time you could be giving yourself back.

Fill in the hours that you know you’re definitely going to be busy…

• Work.

• Sleep.

• Eating.

• Commuting.

• Other activities. Don’t forget some rest & general down time. We’re not robots.

How much time do you have left over? More than you thought, right?

Fill these spaces up with things you’ve wanted to do, but never started because you didn’t think you had the time:

• Working out.

• Starting a business.

• Learning something new.

It could be anything, but make it productive. There is nothing better for the soul than productivity & self improvement.

Before you know it, you’ll be a completely different person, and you’ll owe so much to a simple time budget.

Your budget doesn’t have to be complex at all.

You could make an effective time budget in 5–10 minutes.

It was only when I made my time budget that I realised how much time I had left over in the day.

I’ve had one for about 6 months now, and it’s not detailed, but it’s helped me increase my productivity a lot.

I made mine on excel, but I made sure I printed it out so I could see it often.

Keeping it locked away in an excel document made me less likely to take continuous action.

Take 10 minutes to create one for yourself. You’ll see huge strides in your productivity.

My first ever time budget. Simple, yet so effective.

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