In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how one minute of preparation saves you ten minutes in execution time. It’s kind of like the carpenter saying, measure twice, cut once.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
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. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how one minute of preparation saves you ten minutes in execution time. It’s kind of like the carpenter saying, measure twice, cut once. I’m a huge planner, which makes a lot of sense since I’m a financial planner and I believe that procrastination is expensive. The longer you wait to do something, the higher the price tag you have to make.
This makes sense with financial planning because saving one dollar in your 20s for retirement can be like saving 21 dollars for retirement in your 60s. Planning with enough time just saves you a bunch of time. And it doesn’t take that long to plan.
The way I plan is I ask myself, what do I want to out of my life. I told myself that I want to retire at this age and with this amount of money per month. Then I start working backward. I take this assumed rate of return that I will get on my investments. For planning purposes, I tend to use 7% as a conservative long term investment average. Then I see how much I would need to save per month that includes inflation of 2 percent. Then I get a number and then I just make sure that I can save that amount of money per month. If I can’t save that amount of money, then I either need to find something that pays me more money, accepts a lower standard of living in retirement or extend my retirement age.
By knowing my options in life, then I execute on the right plan that fits my personality. You really need to keep the end in mind. When it’s all said and done, what is it that you really want in life? Then from there create a plan that will save you a lot of wasted time. This is why it’s important to do your journal exercises so you know who you want to be in life and then you can make a plan to make it happen. I know when I want to retire and how much I want to retire with, now I’m going to create a plan to make it happen. If I wait until I’m 50, then it’s going to be too much work. I would basically need to save more than I make in order to maintain the same standard of living that I get at age 50 in my retirement at age 70. That’s impossible for me to do.
I’m glad that I just got this information in my 20s so that I ensure that I have more security in my retirement years so I don’t have to worry about running out of money and relying on family and the government to bail me out, which might not happen. I rather just take control of my situation and having a plan will help me accomplish this task.
Plus when you plan something out for six minutes, that means you’re saving yourself an hour, which is like getting a 1000 percent return on your time. Why waste an hour when you don’t have to. We don’t have an infinite amount of time, so why would we just waste an hour doing something that is ineffective. This also means that you can’t plan everything out as well. If you can do 80% of the plan, then that is good enough. Sometimes 60 percent is good enough. Right now I’m just traveling through Latin America and I don’t know where I’m going to live but with Airbnb, I can get a place in about day. Or a hotel if I really need a room. But what I do need to plan out is how long I can stay in a country without having to apply for a visa or pay income taxes in that country. This type of planning to save me money and time. You get slowed down too much when you get that letter in the mail that says you need to do something. My day is already packed with things I want to do. I don’t have time to add extra stuff for the next month.
These things will happen though but I can minimize their effect and make them five minutes problems if I plan properly. This will then give me more time to work on my goals instead of someone else’s. So I take time to plan out of my day and to make sure I’m doing the things I need to make sure I’m living my life. No one is going to do this for you, so make sure you take control back over your life.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, one minute of preparation saves you ten minutes of execution time, this is like getting a 1000 percent return on your time. Since you can’t take another hour, I would recommend that you plan out your day and your life. This will ensure that you’re living your life on your terms and not someone else’s. This will also ensure that you’re reaching your goals. If you want a life where you do a lot of cool stuff, then you need to plan out your life. I wouldn’t have done all the cool stuff I wanted to do if I didn’t have a plan. Things don’t happen by accident.
So in your journal, ask yourself, are you adding the right amount of preparation in your day? If you’ve been following this exercise, you’re probably on the right track. If you have, has your preparation been beneficial to you? If you haven’t, how can you start adding preparation to your day? What is all this preparation for? How will you benefit from it? If you understand your way, then you’ll be more likely to make preparation a priority. Remember we don’t find the time, we make time. So make the time for this so you can start living the life you want to have.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
