To achieve reasonable success, many would
gain by reconsidering their usage of one of the scarcest resources of our
modern era: their precious time.
A lot of people struggle with our
hectic way of life and find it hard to keep up with all that is expected of
them. That’s why we would like, in the 12-Minute Tradition,
to provide suggestions to help balance your schedule and regain some control
back over it.
You’ll see that sometimes, reallocating
only small parcels of your time can greatly improve your results.
We also believe that, with
experience, very successful people have become masters at maximizing their time.
They seem to have the ability to detect most important matters and effectively
mingle with ever changing elements of their busy agenda. We hope our humble propositions
can get you a step closer to that ultimate state.
Invest
Stress-Free Time in Planning
Most people consider planning as a
waste of time. We prefer to view it as a great way to reduce stress and to
accomplish more when time is limited.
Planning is a good way to prepare
for a rush or to use time when you are less occupied to prepare for periods
that you will be. The objective is to even out or balance your schedule as much
as possible. Adjustments will always be possible and easier along the way.
For instance, before doing any
grocery shopping, we now have to habit to take a little time to plan our weekly
menu. It reduces our stress level before dinner after a long day at work in
addition to making us save some money. Planning ahead enables us to focus on
execution (preparing the meal) when time is limited.
We like to do it on Sunday mornings
but planning can be done at any moment when time is not limited and stress is
minimal. Planning allows you to move stressful jam-packed periods in your
schedule to quieter more relaxed ones.
Sometimes
Investing a Little Time Can Amount to Big Savings
One of the most interesting perks of
efficient time management is saving resources and money. As the famous
expression says: Time is Money! Another related truth is that, in some
circumstances, wisely using a little time can make you save a lot of money. The
trick is to look for and identify those special opportunities and to take advantage
of them as often as possible.
The less time you take the better.
Saving a quick buck is good and can be gratifying. But also the bigger the
savings the better. So don’t hesitate to invest a little more time to find and
benefit from huge saving possibilities.
One perfect illustration comes from
the personal finance realm: the classic auto or home insurance automatic
renewal. At their expiration after one or two years, many insurance companies have
the nagging habit to renew your contracts and unilaterally try to boost their prizes.
Over time, quiet loyal customers simply get charged always increasing premiums.
Let’s demonstrate this with an example
from our own financial life. Late last summer, we received our auto insurance
renewal papers where annual premiums were hiked by about 80$. Not that much
would you say but we still took some time to check it out and shop around. After
only a few phone calls, we managed to get similar coverage for 235$ a year less
than our existing 2-year contract. All in all, this little operation will save
us 630$ for the next 2 years (80$+235$ times 2).
To make a conservative estimate, the
whole process took about 2 hours of our time. So, we were able to save 215$ / hour! I don’t know about you,
but my job certainly doesn’t pay me that much!
We always like to calculate and
convert of savings into hourly rates to motivate ourselves and also to measure
if the effort was pertinent.
We try to remain very conservative
in our estimates but still often obtain pretty astonishing numbers. That simple
method made us realize that if you make sensible choices, taking an hour here
and there can many times translate into huge savings.
And that’s without taking into
account another incredible phenomenon: the compounding effect. In a sense, we
already covered all this a couple months back when we wrote about Reducing Recurring Expenses to Build Wealth.
Last month, another powerful example
of using time to reduce expenses came up as we mentioned how it’s ridiculously
simple to Reduce Your Telecom Bill Just by Asking. In this one, we managed to save 12$ a
month in just half an hour. Even though that saving should theoretically stand
forever, let’s assume it’s only good for 2 years as we will upgrade our service
at some point and will be forced to renegotiate. Still, that short phone call turned
out to an amazing saving of 288$ (12$ x 24 months) or an hourly equivalent of
576$.
Doing things yourself is also a
great way to potentially save money. Let’s see how our DIY investing fares in
that matter.
Last couple years, compared to how
we used to invest before (mutual and index funds), DIY investing got us a
little over 6000$ extra per year. Let’s conservatively assume we take about 2
hours a week to take care of our DIY Portfolio.
We probably take much less time than that as it’s one of the major points of
our simple patient investing method. We are also well aware that not everyone
will be able to obtain the same kind of results. That being said, for us, DIY
investing represents about 60$ per hour (6K$ / 2 hours / 50 weeks) Not as
impressive as earlier examples but still quite respectable.
We’ll finish this section with a
potential saving situation where your time would be wasted and that should
simply not be pursued.
High gas prizes is a buzzing subject
these days and people often go to extreme lengths to save just a little cash
when they fuel up. The other day, two adjacent gas stations posted a difference
of 5¢ per litre on their regular gas prizes. There was a long lineup at the
cheapest station of at least 30 minutes and even maybe up to an hour. We needed
about 30 litres
so we decided to go to the deserted station. The 1.50$ saving or 3$ an hour was
just not worth the wait.
Quality and Regularity Go a Long Way
For many people, being afraid to
invest a lot of time in projects can be a real show stopper. But we strongly
believe that, over quantity, the quality of your efforts is even more important.
As in most situations, regular well concentrated efforts will achieve much more
than a lot of dispersed ones.
So, try to invest quality
time in your projects and you’ll see that you can accomplish
wonders.
In the same fashion, you’ll notice
that successful people usually learn from their mistakes and are always willing
and open to improve the quality of their work. Can this be one of their secrets?
For them, quality takes over quantity more and more. They also know their precious
time is quite limited and have developed early on, the uncanny ability to make
the most out of it.
Many leaders of thriving productive
societies seem to truly grasp and understand the importance of all this. For
instance, they have wisely learned that, most people can accomplish as much in a
6 hour workday or in a 30 hour week. In that model, workers develop
a sense of accomplishment and also remain healthier and happy. Maintaining good
quality of work over shorter periods of time is not only interesting and
possible but much more sustainable. The end result is much more cost effective
for everyone. Sadly, not all US
That's all from us today. We hope our unique point of
view can encourage and push you to try to challenge yourself to maximize your
time. Just remember that in due time, consistent small gestures will amount to
great success.
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