3 Powerful Strategies to Win Back Your Time

Welcome back to the Fireside Chat! I’m Michelle, and with Riccardo, we’re continuing our conversation, building on last week’s introduction to mind shift theory. We’ve even set the scene with our fireplace to create that cozy chat atmosphere.

Today, we’re diving into a topic we’ve personally wrestled with and know many of you do too: how to buy back your time. It often feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done. We remember those days in the corporate world, especially in fast-paced San Francisco, where we were constantly busy with obligations and felt like our time wasn’t truly our own. It felt dictated by work, routines, and external pressures.

Have you ever felt like your time belongs to everyone else? That feeling of “having to” do things can be overwhelming, but what we’ve learned through the mind shift process is that we always have a choice. We are always in control of how we spend our time.

So, the message today is that even when it feels like we’re not in control, we absolutely are. A few years ago, we decided to “buy back” some time. And while you can’t literally purchase more time, you can shift your relationship with it and how you choose to use it. It’s about reframing what’s truly important to you and how you allocate your 24 hours each day.

The first step is awareness. Take an inventory of how you’re currently spending your time. Track your activities over a few days to get a clear picture. This is something I do a couple of times a year in a spreadsheet, breaking down each hour to see where my time actually goes.

Once you have that awareness, the second and most crucial step is deciding if you actually want to be doing those tasks. Just because it’s on your list doesn’t mean it has to stay there. This leads to the third concept: consequential time. Is the time you’re spending moving you towards the life you want? Or is it just filling the hours? For example, watching a movie might not seem productive, but if it’s quality family time, it becomes consequential.

So, map your time, determine if it’s consequential, and then consciously decide how you want to spend it. This is where the idea of buying back your time becomes real – you’re choosing to invest it in activities that truly matter and move you forward. We experienced this firsthand when we decided to write our books. Finding the time felt impossible amidst busy days, so we chose to wake up at 5 am to dedicate that quiet time to writing. It was consequential, and by making that shift, we achieved our goal.

Sometimes, “buying back” time means identifying pockets of underutilized time, like those early morning hours, and making them intentional. It might take a couple of weeks for your body to adjust to a new routine, but the results can be significant. We learned this even back in our Silicon Valley days, where early mornings were often the only way to carve out time for what truly mattered.

Two books that significantly influenced our thinking about time are “The 4-Hour Workweek” and “The 5 AM Club.” The first challenged our notions of work and productivity, while the second provided a powerful framework for reclaiming the early hours of the day. We highly recommend checking them out.

Moving forward, our Fireside Chats will delve deeper into different aspects of freedom: time, location, and money. Today was all about time freedom, and we’ll always let you know which area we’re focusing on. We have many more insights to share about morning and evening routines and how anyone can make this mind shift to live a life they adore. There’s nothing particularly special about us; we simply changed how we think and applied those changes.

We hope you enjoyed this discussion on time shifting. Next week, we’ll be exploring location freedom – the possibility of living and working wherever you desire. We’re excited to share our experiences and insights on that topic. Thank you for joining us. Please subscribe, follow, and share this with anyone who might benefit from a new perspective on time. Sometimes, a different viewpoint is all it takes to plant a seed of possibility. Remember, everything you create starts in your mind. Are you creating a life to adore? We’ll see you next week!