Tag Archives: time

Time and TV

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“I don’t have any time”, “I’m too busy”, very common phrases these days I either hear or overhear on a daily basis.  I’ve known traditionally the TV is the biggest consumer of people’s time and did a little research on just how much time TV consumes.  I think you’ll be quite surprised what I found by heading to the ultimate guide on TV watching, the Nielsen Cross Platform Report. 

I’m not going to go over the whole report, you can do that here.  What you’ll be shocked to learn is overall TV viewership has increased 22 minutes per month per person over the last year.  The highest quintile is clocking in nearly TEN hours per day!  The newest trend that is starting to take note is streaming video online and this too is measured since more and more people are doing that.

Nielsen Cross Platform Report Q1 2011

You’ll see on the above report the highest quintile in 2011 Q1 is 598 average daily minutes for 2+ people.  Divide that by 30 days and divide that by 2 and you get the nearly 10 hours per day they are talking about.  The report is quite interesting however the overall summary on time spent watching TV is that people spend a lot of time doing it!

Those who say they are to busy for the gym, to busy to hang out, to busy to change things about their life, to busy to read, to busy to cook/eat healthy, to busy to involve their kids in other activities or join them in activities, to busy to clean, to busy to walk the dog/take are of animals, to busy for your spouse/date night, and the list goes on and on.  People use this wimpy excuse of “I’m to busy” and for the most of us that’s a crock of you know what.

If you’ve ever said your to busy for whatever, check your TV watching habit and I’ll bet you you can cut out just a few hours a night or even a week and you’ll have more time on your hands for those things that are more important than the boob tube. 

Lets do a little math for fun…(I’ll round down to 9 hours and keep that constant)

  • 9 Hours a day x 7 days a week = 63 Hours a week of TV
  • 63 Hours a week x 52 weeks in a year = 3,276 hours of TV a year
  • 3,276 hours divide by 24 hours = 136.5 days of TV watching
  • 136.5 days x 10 years (10 years is within that demographic range) = 1,365 days of TV watching
  • 1,365 days of TV watching divide by 365 days = 3.74 years of TV watching in 10 years.

Now that is pretty damn scary when you get down to how many years of TV watching are in 10 years.  Something to think about, however no matter how slice and dice the numbers, people are watching WAY to much TV.

watching_tv

Rough Day

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bad_dayI had somewhat of a rough day today and while that sucks it’s more important to put the day behind you and start fresh tomorrow.  However there were two things that helped make the last part of my day really good.  One, building our business and investing time into others.  We did a follow up for someone in our business who is building depth and getting out there and getting in front of people who uplift you really turns things around.  I also love working with other leaders who take control of their lives and want to help others as well.  Such a great feeling.

The second thing that really made things better was when I got home from the follow up my wife made Pad Thai and that has to be my favourite dish she makes.  She knows how to make me happy and food is just the way.  I love the fact that my wife knows just what to do when I’ve had a crappy day.  I also know to check my crappy day at the door and not let it bring her down because she had a great day with our son.  I guess that’s also something else that makes me happy, seeing my son.  He just melts my heart and can do no wrong. :)

If you’re having a rough day make sure you leave it at the door, that’s the best advice I can give!

Follow other bloggers for this year’s Summer Blogging Challenge here:

Zita of Ignite Strategic Solutions, Cliff of Peer Pressure Works, Tammy of Tam I Am, Peter of Crazy Wookie Cookies, Chad of The Daily Grind, Vlad of Analog Coast, Robb of Blogging Life, Kim of Nature Baby Bloggings, Liam of ln The Now, Natasha of Natural Urban Mamas, Earl of My Name is Earl (J. Woods), Brad of Kick Me Out Soon

Also follow this on twitter with the “Official” hash tags #SBC #SummerBlogChallenge

Wealthy in All Areas of Life

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MoneybagWe often equate people who have a lot of money as being wealthy.  They are typically people who own a business or are successful entrepreneurs in various fields and industries.  Wealth, depending on what your value system is, can take on many forms.  I think the average mentality of wealth is someone who is rich, has millions, has a lot of investments and owns multiple businesses.  I could be wrong but I’m going to put a stake in the ground based on what I hear from people over the years.  Wealth doesn’t necessarily have to just be money, I think the biggest thing that’s missing from the wealth equation is time.

Time is the most expensive commodity and something we can never get back once it’s gone.  Time is the most expensive resource known to man and should be included within your wealth and treated with more importance than money.  You can be rich and have all the money in the world yet if you are a salve to whatever is creating that money then to me your not wealthy at all.  What good is a ton of money if you don’t have the time to spend any of it?  Personally I’d rather have more time than money as I believe it’s more important.  I’d rather be debt free, have all the time in the world and have a small amount of money than a large amount of money and no time to do anything with it.

You hear of many parents who run a family business that are pretty much a slave to the business, they cannot step away from it and while they may have turned a profit after the initial 2-5 years, they need to continue working at it.  Not saying every business is like this but talk to your Pita Pit, Subway, or any other traditional franchise and ask if the owner is working. I’d say about 80% of the time its the owner making your food.  I love talking to these guys and have talked to many, that’s where I come up with the 80% that owners are the ones slaving away.  Its almost sad in a way because with the recession that’s still going on a lot of these businesses have had to let their staff go and the wife and husband are the ones working behind the counter. 

So money and time are pretty big in wealth, but how about your relationship with your spouse.  Is it a healthy one?  Are you constantly at battle and stressed at each other? (Top reason most couples fight is because of money).  Do you have that time thing I talked about before and spend enough of it with your spouse?  Are you doing things to ensure you work at your marriage instead of letting it slip away.  Do you respect your spouse?  I think that’s a huge one and to be honest most of us don’t respect our spouses and I’ll give you some examples right now.

  1. Calling your wife the old lady, ball in chain, etc. I used to hear “old lady” from my x-boss all the time, to me that’s just disrespectful. 
  2. When your with “the guys” and people end up talking about their wives in a negative way.  This also goes for when girls are with “the girls”.  What right do you have to put your spouse down when amongst your friends?  I see this ALL the time at lunch time or when I’m out with the guys golfing or having a drink.  You will never catch me say anything negative about my wife.
  3. I could go on with many more examples but I think you get the picture, have some respect for your significant other 24/7, regardless of who your with.

I think those three combined is what determines someone as being “Wealthy”.  It’s not just as simple as having a lot of money, as said before if you have no time to spend it, what does it matter?  When you have that time and money how is your relationship so that when you are together do you take advantage of it in a great way.  Everyone has their own opinion and really it’s based on your value system of what makes you wealthy.  More to think about I guess.

Follow other bloggers for this year’s Summer Blogging Challenge here:

Zita of Ignite Strategic Solutions, Cliff of Peer Pressure Works, Tammy of Tam I Am, Peter of Crazy Wookie Cookies, Chad of The Daily Grind, Vlad of Analog Coast, Robb of Blogging Life, Kim of Nature Baby Bloggings, Liam of ln The Now, Natasha of Natural Urban Mamas, Earl of My Name is Earl (J. Woods), Brad of Kick Me Out Soon

Also follow this on twitter with the “Official” hash tags #SBC #SummerBloggingChallenge

Time Broke

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The-Time-ExcuseI’ve spoken and posted articles like this http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110420/canadians-financial-status-survey-110420/ many times however what’s missing is that while people may be financially broke, to the point they cannot even save money, they are also time broke.

What do I mean by time broke? I mean just that, people are constantly saying I don’t have enough time in the day, I don’t have time to work out, I don’t have time for another activity, I don’t have time for this or that.  The funny thing about being time broke is that unlike being broke financially, you can fix time broke very quickly.  I think people use time as an excuse all the time instead of actually understanding where they spend their time.  I did a post in October about time and how much time people actually have and it was quite shocking.  We have more than we think we do.

Time as an excuse is the weakest excuse in the book not to do something.  For example it’s an excuse I hear a lot when I talk about my recent gym training.  People mention all the time I wish I could work out, I just don’t have time for anything else in my life. That’s such horse crap!  I thought the same thing as well.  Lindsay and I are obviously busy with our business in the evenings (by removing our t.v. watching time) and I thought we would not have the time for me to go to the gym.  We sat down one weekend and actually went through our schedule and was able to find at minimum 3 evenings of 1 1/2 hours to spend at the gym as well as any time on the weekend.  Now how hard was it to find that time?  It wasn’t, it was removing the excuse, looking at our calendar, making it a priority, and putting it into action.  Something so many of us are to lazy to do I find.

So what if people really are legitimately busy with say a job that demands more than the 40 hours, typically around 50-60 at a minimum if you include driving time (not including OT which most of us all work freely), and then a second job and maybe a few other hobbies or other life events and they really don’t have time to add say something like the gym in, but they really want to.  Well wouldn’t you want to explore another option to help you recover that time back into your life?  Or would you rather just continue complaining about how you have little time in your life and keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again?  See the definition of insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results, so maybe most of us are insane? :) Something to think about.

Anyway we were tired of wasting our time and not getting something back for it which is why we are building this business so that we can gain our time back.  We’ve already created time in Lindsay’s life to become a stay at home mom WITH options.  Our kids will NEVER know what a daycare looks like and I’m proud of that.  Now we are working on freeing up my time so we can spend it together as a family and not have that time excuse ever again.

What are you doing in your life to remove the time excuse you’ve been saying to your friends and family?

Investment of Time

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InvestingTimeI’ve said before that you reap what you sow and the same can be said for time.  If you invest time you’ll get time back; the reap what you sow concept is so simple yet so many people cannot understand it.  What I love about our business and what we do (at least in this market anyway, I can’t speak for other markets) is that we invest time into people.  We invest time into people and help them become leaders, I sometimes like to think this business we are in is a leadership business.  Officially it’s not (I need to be careful of how I represent this opportunity since I’m sure some people may report me to the Amway police lol).  Unofficially I think it’s a leadership business because we really do build leaders who take control of their lives in all aspects and then help others do the same thing.  I may do a blog post on that later but for now I’ll leave it at that.

Back to what I was getting at, investment of time.  We’ve recently been fortunate to receive coaching and mentorship from our sponsor’s sponsor who coached and mentored them in this business.  They are now investing time into us and helping us to continue building our business and that’s awesome.  Awesome because there is no “the guy”.  We are able to tap into other leaders within this business and earn coaching and mentorship from anyone of them. 

I was thinking last night as they were doing an open for our entire organization, that this business is so different from any other business I’ve seen and stands on some pretty phenomenal traditional values and principals.  The amount of respect, transparency, integrity and trust shown in this organization is pretty amazing.  I certainly do not see that in my current job, it’s far far from it.  My job doesn’t invest any time into me, they demand time from me for as little amount of money possible to keep me there.  That’s pathetic because we invest time into our team and honestly expect nothing in return.  If they are not growing or moving on, oh well.  We meet them where they are at and help them in whatever fashion they need.  Some other “opportunities” out there would probably drop those people like its hot and move on, sorry not our opportunity, and that’s what makes our Amway opportunity stand the test of time.  If people are moving on in a big way then we applaud that and help them continually grow and help them where they need it.

We develop honest relationships with these people and ENJOY investing our own time into them because they deserve it and want that helping hand.  Like I said we help them in all areas, not just this business and that’s why I think we develop leaders and what sets us apart.  They are able to learn from that and help others do the same, that’s just one aspect of a leader and something I’m pretty proud of.

Take a look where your investing your time these days and ask yourself are you reaping what your sowing?