Q&A Video – How to Free Up Your Time to Work on Personal Projects
This is a question I received from a reader recently named Adam, from PA.
- “Hey Cody. I’ve got some really cool projects that I’d like to work on, but at the end of the day I just can’t find the time to work on them. What is your number one tip to allow me to get these things done without putting the rest of my life aside?”
Or in short, what’s the best way to free up your time so you can work on personal projects?
It’s a great question and one that basically everyone struggles with. The answer is in this video.
Everyone has other things they would rather be doing throughout the day whether it’s a personal project, or building a business, but they just can’t find the time between everything else they have to get done.
There are a lot of ways to free up time, but this one is by far the easiest to get started with, and is the lowest hanging fruit for you to have more time on your hands starting tomorrow.
Inventory Your Low Value Tasks
Everyone in the world who has experienced a significant level of success has learned to harness the power of others to enhance their own output. They are able to easily discern their low output tasks from their high value tasks.
If you can learn this skill and how to manage it, you can literally do whatever you want with your free time, and end up coming out ahead in terms of profitability.
I’ll explain the math in a minute. First, I want you to take an inventory of your low value tasks. These are things like:
- Doing your laundry
- Cleaning your house
- Mowing your grass
- Running errands
- Doing your banking
- Washing your car
- Keeping up with day to day email
- Setting up appointments
- Booking travel plans
And anything else that doesn’t provide a lot of value to your life or business at the end of the day.
If you can minimize, streamline, or eliminate these tasks from your life, you’ll find that you have A LOT more time throughout each day. This is time you can use to perform high level tasks like working on your business and side projects, spending valuable time with family, or get in some much needed R&R.
Start with hiring professional services to take care of your day to day upkeep type items in your home, then work on finding people to help you with administrative tasks. You may even be able to pick up pro bono help through mentoring type arrangements, or exchange of service arrangements that don’t take up much of your time.
Don’t hold back with what you can outsource. If you’re truly interested in getting more important projects done, you’ll outsource as much as you possibly can.
Don’t be afraid to outsource your life. Click to Tweet This to Your Followers
The Money Factor
If you’re worried about the money that you’ll need to spend to outsource items, that’s understandable.
But consider this.
What is more important to you? Getting that personal project done, or having a little less spending money? If you don’t know the value of your time, go through this money mindset exercise to help you determine how much your time is worth.
And remember as well that this does not have to be a permanent situation. As soon as you finish your personal project or the need for your time has been relinquished, you can roll back your outsourcing.
A few hundred bucks spent to free up your time for a couple of months to allow you to complete a project can make a significant difference in your life, and can even change the course of it entirely.
So right now, I encourage you to take a minute to inventory your low value tasks. What of these can you outsource, streamline, or eliminate? Go through this exercise, free up your highly valuable time, and start working on that personal project you’ve been wanting to get done for a long time.
In the comments below, let me know what project you plan on getting done. This will help me understand you better and will also commit you to getting that project done. Comment below now and let me know.
Exactly right.
To add to this. The huge key to outsourcing is ensuring you take the time you save by outsourcing and put it towards the goals you wish to accomplish in a 1:1 manner. If that goal is more relaxation, then great, but be sure you know what you’ll be doing with your newly found time before taking the outsourcing route.
This is a great example of leverage.
By figuring out how much my time is worth, it allows me to take a task, “weigh it”, and see if it’s worth the cost of my time to do, or if it’s better to outsource it. We all have 24 hours in a day, but how we spend it is completely up to us. I enjoyed reading this, thanks!