- Time is our most precious asset,
so it's time to start acting like it.
(electronic dance music)
Good morning good life, welcome back to Amy TV,
where we come together to help you
go after the life that you want.
Last year, I made a video that I thought was interesting,
I'm so excited to see that others
found it interesting as well, because it became
really popular, and that video is called
how to make time for everything that you want to do.
And that really catapulted us into
an important conversation about time,
how we spend it, and how we can make the most of it.
Since then, I have explored even more time management
ideas, and learned a lot about myself,
and you about how you spend your time
and how you make the most of it,
so I thought, we should totally do an update
to this conversation, today we're gonna focus
on not only making time for the things
that we wanna do, but the balance
of not getting overwhelmed by those things as well.
Ambition is a beautiful thing, but it can also be
a lot to deal with in your head at the same time.
This episode of Amy TV is also sponsored
by our friends at ButcherBox, stay tuned to the end
to find out how they can help you
do more that you want to do for your family,
and in your life without adding more things for you to do.
Alright, let's get into this, how do we make time
work for us without weighing us down?
My first tip is for you to get clear
on what you actually want to do.
It's quite an environment we live in these days,
we can get really confused about
what those things actually are,
because we have new ideas all the time,
and we wanna try to do everything.
It's really important for you to sit down
with your ideas, with all of them,
as many as you can think of, and really start
to prioritize the ones that mean the most to you,
the ones that you actually wanna focus on first.
There's a process I think would bring you
a lot of value to try to figure out
what your priorities of all the things
that you want are, and it was actually
something I went to shine squad about first,
because I read about Warren Buffet's
two list prioritization strategy.
Here is what you need to know.
Regardless of what your goals are,
you can separate them in career or in personal, whatever,
just write down everything, write down all of your goals,
all the things that you wanna do, write down 25.
25 is actually a lot, I sometimes have a hard time
getting to 25, because I've got a little bit
of focus already in what I'm doing,
but write down 25, and just narrow yourself down
to that list, 'cause that's a long list,
and the likelihood that you're gonna achieve 25 goals
in the near future is probably not that good.
Now we're gonna look at that list of 25
and really, maybe this takes you a little bit longer
than the time it takes to write and circle,
it might take you a couple of days,
circle the top five that are the most
important to you, or the most urgent.
So now you have your two lists,
you have a list of five things
that are the top five goals that you wanna focus on,
and you have 20 things that are not.
You're now going to get rid of the 20 things.
Take that list, tear it up, throw it in the trash can,
they do not matter anymore, your list
of top five things should be the way your focus goes,
no matter what, if they're the most important
things to you, nothing else makes the cut right now.
When you get really clear on what the actual goals
you wanna work on are, then you know
that if something comes at you, or an idea,
another idea comes at you, or you see
somebody's doing something that you think looks cool,
and you go, does that go toward my top five right now,
and you say no, it's an immediate relief
that you get to feel, that okay,
that can come later, I might write that down
in my list of somedays, or that other list
of 20, you might start compiling
some other things, it's not for right now.
And now you know exactly what to spend your time on.
I actually do this, but I do this
for both career and for personal,
because I wanna have a balance of both,
'cause I tend to get really career oriented,
and there are things personally
that I need to work on as well,
so I actually have a list of 10 things,
and these 10 things I rewrite every morning
so that I can get refreshed on what they are.
My next tip is for you to track your time.
I actually talked about this in the original video
from 2018, but it's because it's so important.
And I actually think that we've even got more passionate
about time tracking and calendar blocking
and batching and all those things
ever since we started this conversation early last year.
Just like they tell you to track your spending
if you wanna spend less, or track your food
if you wanna eat less, or eat better,
you should track your time to see how
you're actually spending it to see
how much of it is truly valuable.
Here's the reason that I say this.
Let's say looking at your phone every morning
is actually a critical part of your life.
Let's say it's massively important to your career
or whatever it is you're working on.
Then maybe that's not time wasted,
but go ahead and track it.
I can't tell you that it's not productive
if it actually is, so the bottom line is
we need to track the time, if you are a podcaster
who does research on all of the Netflix shows
and reports on them, then binge watching Netflix
is probably a great way to spend your time
'cause it's contributing to that.
However, if you're doing either one of these things,
staring at Twitter in the morning,
or watching way too much Netflix,
and you're not achieving your top five,
they don't fit into your top five,
then I think we can see from the tracking of the time
that that is something that we need to limit.
You know I like to use the examples that we're all doing,
right, we scroll the phone, we watch a lot of TV,
we're actually looking at the phone
while we're looking at the TV,
we're not even looking at the TV
we're looking at the phone, what could you be doing instead?
When we look at that time that's on the calendar
and we're like, oh wow, I spent four hours
watching television last night and scrolling Instagram,
let's be honest, how much do those five goals really matter
to us if we're not actually doing anything about it.
Sometimes you have to just see the proof
that you're not doing the most that you could.
If you're interested in more ideas around time batching,
calendar blocking and things like that,
I highly recommend that you check out my video
with a tutorial on it called get more done
with calendar blocking, this'll kinda give you
some insight as to what I mean when I'm saying
looking at your time tracked on Google Calendar,
'cause I'm kind of obsessive about it if you couldn't tell.
Tip number three, ask for help, the reality is
we actually have good people in our lives
who are willing to help us, and especially
if we ask for it, it's amazing what could happen.
Whether somebody complains, or whether somebody
is willing to jump at the chance,
it doesn't matter, people are good and they want to help.
We can't do everything ourselves,
so when we really come to Jesus about that,
and we're like okay fine, I need other humans,
look at what you're doing, look at what you can't do
all by yourself, look at what would be easier
if you had a team effort going at it,
and ask for the help that you need,
this is something that I'm very clearly
obviously at the moment coaching myself on,
because it's something that I'm always trying to improve
in myself, I've always been fairly independent,
and a lot of that is both wonderful and a defense mechanism,
because sometimes it's like, oh, nobody wants to help me,
it's okay, I'll just do it myself.
That's not true, and it actually comes off
kinda crummy sometimes to the people who do care.
See, I'm self aware about my problems, okay?
I know, I know what's wrong with me.
My fourth tip is for you to assign your environments.
Something that was extremely important to me
was having a home office, where I could go
into that room, and it would only be to work
in this home office, I've been working from home
for a long time, so having that space
is really important to me, because in the living room,
that's where we watch TV, in the dining room,
that's where we eat, in the kitchen,
that's where we eat and have conversation.
Every space has it's thing, and if you blend those up
a little bit too much, it can get confusing.
If you try to tell yourself, oh I'm gonna work
on the couch in front of the TV,
but that's the place that you've really assigned
in your subconscious where you watch Netflix,
it's probably not gonna be your most productive work.
But when you say okay, when I wake up in the morning,
and I have my morning routine, I'm going to do it
in the den, or I'm gonna do it at the kitchen table,
or whatever the case, just assign those places,
because usually having the environments
decided in your head is a great way to get
in the mode when you enter that space.
The only other thing I do in this room,
I film in this room, I write in this room,
I do work in this room, and I change my clothes
in my closet, but that's all that really happens in here.
I don't read in this room, because it doesn't
facilitate a reading environment,
I don't like to eat in here if I'm being good,
so thinking about different spaces
as different purposes is really helpful
for when you wanna get more done,
you're putting yourself in a focused environment.
My fifth tip is for you to make time for self care.
I talked about this in the last video that I posted
because I think self care can mean a lot of things
to different people, and it's important for you to know
what it means for you, but you gotta have those breaks.
Okay, we can get a lot done, we can be super productive,
we can calendar block our entire day
and not have any room to breathe,
but let's be honest, that's probably not going
to put us in our best self, we're gonna be stressed out,
our cortisol level's ridiculous,
and we're gonna end up on a hamster wheel not getting
our best work done, just getting work, busy work done.
Just make sure you choose the thing that's right for you,
whether it's just taking a break
every once in a while to read a book,
or just to go watch TV, or to go get a massage,
or whatever it is to self care,
so that you can rehabilitate to get back to
what you were doing, the thing that you're trying
to focus on going after, just do you.
Similarly, on that note, my sixth tip is the three musts
that I think everybody should have every day
for that self care, okay, so these are the things
that I think everyone needs, everyone's also got
their own version, but if you don't have these three things,
you're not gonna get your best work done,
you're not gonna have the most stuff done,
you're not gonna be able to do the thing
that you want, achieve the goals that you have,
because you're really not treating yourself
with the respect you need in order to be at that level.
Those three things are to eat, sleep,
and good morning good life, wake up on your own terms,
do something that is a routine that is all about you
taking care of yourself first,
so that you can be able to show up
for a lot of other people, a lot
of other things the rest of the day.
To me, these are the non-negotiables,
and since my book is coming out soon
about good morning good life, well,
we're gonna be talking a lot more about that,
but you should search some other videos
if you need help in the morning routine department,
because we've got a lot of that here.
My final tip for making time for everything
that you wanna do without getting overwhelmed about it,
is to treat your own time like it is just as important
as everyone else's time in the world.
Both the people that are super close to you,
and the people that maybe you aspire to be
or the people that you think are successful,
your time is just as valuable,
just as precious as everyone else's.
This is to give you that permission that you need,
the permission to take your desires, your wants,
your goals, your things that you wanna do
with your time seriously, if you're in a job right now
that you don't love, and you're hoping
that you're gonna get a different one that you do,
or you wanna start a business, or you wanna do
anything else, then what can you do
to make the most of that other time
that is just as valuable as the time
that you're giving to somebody else?
They're giving you a paycheck probably,
but giving to somebody else to do their thing,
all of it is valued time, so how can you spend
a little bit of it on yourself,
spend a little bit of it on others,
so that you can eventually get to the point
where it's the majority is for you.
Because you deserve that, you are worthy of that,
you are capable of that, you are deserving of that.
And there's probably not a lot of people telling you that,
so I want to tell you that, because we definitely
don't say it to ourselves often enough,
and we definitely don't have people
who are like, aw man, I gotta make sure I tell Amy
she's worthy of her own time today.
It doesn't happen, and so we really
have to remember it for ourselves,
which is difficult, but important.
It is okay to prioritize yourself.
I'm prioritizing myself, and making this video,
even though there's a jam band outside of my window.
I mean, it's just, it's happening, okay, it's happening.
I am proof that it can work. (laughs)
Question of the day, what would you do if you were unafraid?
We usually find some pretty interesting information
in those answers, especially when you think
about what those goals are gonna be on that list,
what you would do if you could.
Answer that in the comments below.
And now I have a bonus tip for you
to do everything that you wanna do without feeling
overwhelmed, and that's thanks to our friends
who are sponsoring this episode of Amy TV, at ButcherBox.
Something that sometimes overwhelms me,
but it means a lot to me, is that I take care
of my family, right, so okay, I need to learn
how to do a little bit of cooking,
and I need to make dinner for me and my husband,
because I like the ritual of that.
But I'm also running a couple of businesses,
and making videos and stuff, and it takes a lot of time,
so it's easy to get very overwhelmed
by the cooking process, there's the shopping,
and the planning, and it's a lot of stuff.
This is why I try to make the grocery situation
and all of my dinners throughout the week
as simple as possible, so there's no extra time put
on my plate, so I can put some food on my plate.
ButcherBox helps me a lot with this.
We do like to eat meat, and we like to eat fish
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From a time saving standpoint, I know this is coming
so I can plan my meals, but all I gotta do
is run to the grocery on a weekly basis,
or even have it shipped to me,
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we don't tend to get bored in this house
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we're happy to have it a couple of times.
Probably our go to meal that we eat very frequently
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Hopefully you found some great tips for making time
for anything you wanna do without letting it
bog you down too much, I'd love to hear
what your favorite part of this video was
over on my Instagram, just head to
my latest post, and leave me a comment.
That's all for today, thank you so much
for tuning in, I appreciate it as always,
make sure you subscribe for good vibes,
kiss the ones you love.
And go after the life that you want, cheers.
(electronic dance music)
(sighs)
Coulda kept it simple the whole time,
but not Amy, (laughs) no, no.
Okay, I'm gonna turn the air back on now. (pained laughing)