In this episode, learn how to get more out of your life by removing things from your life.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, where my goal is to give you 10-minute lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones.
In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the importance of removing things from your life to give you a more robust life. As people have a tendency to add more and more to our plate because we don’t like to say no to people. Or we could have FOMO and want to go to every event. I remember when I was in DC, I was trying to build up my financial planning business, and I was trying to build up my client base and I thought if I joined different groups, the more the better, I would be better off. I joined groups in the past but I wasn’t aware of how much time you don’t have when you run a business. It was a lot, and I started dropping the ball on not doing things or if I didn’t hear anything, I wouldn’t follow up because I wanted to keep the workload for myself down while I focused on other things.
I felt bad that I was being a bad member so I knew I had to quit because I didn’t have time. When I quit, it felt good because know I could focus on my main goals without feeling guilty that I should be doing other things. I said yes to too many things it was taking a toll on me. I was complaining that I didn’t have enough time with my old partner and I was feeling restless about going to my meetings but I did give a commitment to say I was going to do these things. I did say no and it was the best thing for me.
If we look at our lives, we could probably see a lot of growth if we start removing things from our lives. I remember one of the best things for me was to remove the television from my life. I read more, I went to bed earlier, and after a while, I just didn’t miss it except for watching my Blazer Games. After a while, you just fill it in with different activities. We live in a society where we have many different choices. Too many choices than our ancestors are used to. So we can easily take on too much. Netflix and Game of Thrones are so good at making you say yes. You think you just watch one episode and that can quickly become four episodes, quickly running to the bathroom or kitchen while the credits are rolling. For me, I have a bad habit of not want to stop something until I finish it. So if I have a hard time stopping something and it’s just good for me to remove that from my life.
You have to remember, you can add to your life through subtraction. Kind of like pruning a grapevine so more resources go to fewer grapes and what you get are grapes that are juicier. more savory, and most important to make better wine. When we are spread too thin, we are just giving our full focus on things that will move the needle in our life. Straddling is not a good option overall, it’s best to go all in. I remember when I was going to school for Economics, I was also a personal trainer. I was a personal trainer for about two years and I had some clients that I loved but when I finished my Economics degree, I was trying to find a job as a financial planner. I eventually found one and was going through their training process and spent time studying to get my securities so I could practice as a financial advisor. While I was going through the training program, I still had time to work as a personal trainer. I was making some money and the schedule was pretty flexible but once I became a financial advisor and seeing clients and trying to obtain clients, my time shrank tremendously. I knew I had to quit being a personal trainer so my resources could be more directed towards financial advising which had a higher upside. I pruned my vine and it was a great decision for me.
When I was younger, I thought I could always do more. Yeah, I can handle that, but as I am moving through life, I realized that there are trade-offs in every decision I make to keep things in my life. Right now I am starting this Grow With Joe Business. and it takes a lot of time with writing my book, blog posts, social media, doing administrative tasks, and other family obligations, I realize that I can’t do it all. So when things get off the ground, I definitely know that I am going to start delegating tasks to an assistant to free up my time. There are some tasks that I should do and some that I shouldn’t do. When it comes to the tasks that you do, you should put them in four different categories, Do, Defer, Delete, and Delegate. This will take about two hours, but you should write down all the tasks that you do. Then once you have them all written down. and I mean all written down, from chores, to how you get your coffee, you put them in the four categories. I would start with tasks that you should delete out of your life, then delegate, then defer, and then focus on what tasks you should do. This exercise will help you identify what to subtract from your life. This is an exercise that I do with my coaching clients and it’s very helpful for them. It could save them anywhere from a couple of hours to tens of hours a month.
That’s it for today’s episode and to summarize it, you want to figure out what you need to subtract from your life in order to add to your life. This is going to take self-reflection and self-awareness and you can do it by doing the Do, Defer, Delete, and delegate method. We only have one chance at life, so let’s make sure it spent the majority of time on things that we want to do and accomplish some great things in life.
Thanks for listening to today’s episode.
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