Perhaps you might be wondering if I’m skiving at my job and use the working hours to do all these. I can tell you, the answer is “I don’t do that.”.
Whenever I told people that I have a blog, online courses, YouTube channel and I exercise regularly, they will be surprised how I managed all these despite having a full-time job.
Let me ask, do you often find yourself wanting to exercise regularly, read more books or earn more money at the side and the biggest hurdle is “I have no time!”?
In this blog, I’ll share some of the tactics that I used to find time to do the things I love despite having a full-time job. If you can apply one tactic that I shared here, I am sure you can make some positive changes to your life.
Tactic #1: What do you want to achieve and why
Before diving into the tactics, it’s important to know what do you want to achieve. What are your goals? Is it that you want to earn an extra $1000 per month? Are you trying to lose that extra 10kg or you want to write a best seller book by next year?
Knowing what you want to achieve will give you a sense of direction of where to go. It’s like every morning you get up from the bed and when you are ready to go to work, you know where to go. You have the destination in mind. Therefore, start thinking about your goals so that you have a clear destination in mind.
Next, the WHY behind your goals is the critical part to get you to stick to your goals. For example, why do you want to lose weight? If you are just following a friend to lose weight and does not have a strong why, you will get off track easily.
However, if you dig deep to understand why you want to lose weight, for example, I want to lose weight so that I can remain healthy and will not be a burden to my spouse and kids in future. Once I anchored my goal to a purpose, it will be easier to stay consistent to achieve my goals.
Tip: Once you have written a goal, add ‘so that…’ to your goal. For example, “I want to make an extra $1000 a month so that…”
Tactic #2: Identify what you need to do
Great! Now that you have your goals and the WHY behind those goals, it’s time to identify what you need to do. You can create a list or a mind map to help you break down the goal into smaller chunks.
Let’s run through an example. Suppose you want to lose 10kg in the next 12 months and you have a strong reason for doing so. What do you need to do?
You can create a list like this:
Schedule a body check to take measurements
Come up with a diet plan
Come up with a workout plan
Find an accountability partner
Purchase some workout clothes and shoes if you don’t have any
Find a personal trainer
After you have come up with a list of things to do, move to tactic #3
Tactic #3: Take the smallest action
From the list you have created, it may seem daunting that each task requires time and you are put off by the tedious processes.
That’s very true.
So what can you do? According to James Clear, author of the best selling book, Atomic Habits, you need to take the smallest action to kickstart the momentum.
For example, using the weight loss example, you can simply start by walking 20min in the morning. To make the action even smaller, prepare the workout clothes the night before so that you can put them on the next day when you get up.
These small actions build upon one another and they create the snowball effects. Gradually when you have gotten used to the routine, exercising becomes easy for you.
Tactic #4: Create themes
Let’s face reality. We may not have all the time to tackle the different goals at the same time and sometimes I’m frustrated and guilty that I can’t find the time to do work on my projects.
So what did I do?
First, I acknowledged that this will happen and you will not always have time to pursue your pet project. For example, there are certain periods of the year where it is difficult for me to find time to record videos and publish them on YouTube. I have to acknowledge the fact and not to get frustrated with it.
So to work around it, I created seasonal themes for my year. For example, in June and Nov, these are my video recording season. I’ll spend more time planning and do batch recordings. I’ll then plan the editing process and schedule them to publish on YouTube once they are done.
Creating themes helps because you are more focus on a certain task or project and you have blocked out the time for it. Be strategic in your goals and time set aside for it so that you will not be frustrated for not achieving them.
Tactic #6: Learn to be more efficient
Are you someone who likes to do everything on your own? If yes, do you find that you seldom have time to do the important things because your time is spent on tackling the trivial stuff?
Sometimes we got to shift our mindset a little and tell yourself that I don’t have to do everything.
You can start thinking of the questions below that can help you to identify your priority.
What are the things that I’m doing that is critical? (Do immediately)
What are the things that I’m doing that can be removed? (Delete)
What are the things that I’m doing that can be pushed to a later date? (Delay)
What are the things that I’m doing that can be outsourced to someone? (Delegate)
Let me elaborate the part in outsourcing and how it has helped me to accelerate the completion of things that I want to achieve.
I’ll use the example of video editing. Remember I said about doing batch video recording? The recording was the easy part. Handling the raw video clips and editing them was the challenging part for me. I’m not an expert in video editing. I have tried editing the raw video clips and put them together to become a video lesson. Along the way, I got to figure out how to add text, transitions, special effects and it took me two hours to do that.
Imagine if I do that for 10 video lessons? That will take me 20 hours!
So I found an expert video editor from Upwork.com and got him to do the video editing for me. I paid him USD$7 per completed video lesson. After two days, he will send the edited video to me and I’ll upload to YouTube. It’s so convenient and hassle-free now.
Think of any part of your life where you can outsource the tasks. The key is for you to tackle the most important things and not the trivial things that someone else can do for you.
Tactic #7: Monitor and evaluate
Great job for reading to this end!
The last tactic I have for you is to monitor and evaluate your processes. Let’s use the example of weight loss. How do you know if your plan is working? You will need some form of tracking. It could be recording your weight every day or every week. From the records, you can see if the situation has improved or not.
After monitoring the processes, you need to evaluate. I suggest using the KISS framework for the evaluation. No, I’m not referring to keep it short and sweet. The framework refers to the following four questions that you can ask when doing the evaluation.
What are the strategies that are working and you should KEEP them?
What are the strategies that you can IMPROVE on?
What are the strategies that are not working and you should STOP them?
What are the new strategies that you would like to START?
Using the KISS framework, you can do the evaluation every quarter or semi-annually so that you get to where you want to be more effectively and efficiently.
I hope the 7 tactics are useful to help you find more time to do the things you love. These are the tactics that I used and I found them very effectively.
What tactics are you using that help you to find time to do the things you love? Share your thoughts in the comments below and let’s learn from one another.
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