What if I told you that time will make you rich? Would you try to get more Time? Would you make better use of the time you had? Well, I’d like to tell you a secret, time can make you rich! You may be thinking that I’m crazy by making such a bold claim, but have you ever heard the phrase “Time is money.”? That phrase has been around forever because it’s true.
When you waste time, you lose money and lots of it!
We all have million dollar ideas in us, we just have to harness our time and pull them out. The following tips will help you find ways to get more time into your day so that you can create the life of your dreams.
I’d like to offer you a free printable to ensure time will make you rich! *Hint, its number 11.
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Wake up early
As if you haven’t heard this a hundred times before… But getting up early is the best way to get quality time in your day. Waking up two hours early, we can spend those two hours as our most productive time of the day.
Early in the morning is a great time to be alone. It’s quiet, most people are sleeping, your family is probably sleeping and you can spend some uninterrupted time reading the bible and working on your side hustle. No one needs anything from you when it is super early in the morning because they are all sleeping.
Getting up early preps you for the entire day. Two extra hours in the morning are also the most productive hours because there are no interruptions. When you try to accomplish anything during the day, especially if you have children, there will be multiple constant interruptions. Time will make you rich when you are able to get work done!
Early rising tip: It can be difficult to make the switch to getting up so early, so if you need to, start just waking up 30 minutes earlier, then one hour, until you reach the two-hour mark. Trust me, waking up early will be one of your best investments in time.
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Eat well and cook with an Instant Pot
When you eat right, you have more energy to bring your A game. Your mind is your greatest tool to leverage time and become wealthy. Your mind works best when it is well rested and fed.
The Instant Pot is the best invention ever. I totally love my instant pot. Set it and forget it, that’s my kind of cooking. An instant pot is a pressure cooker that can cook food really fast and make it taste delicious.
I’m not one to enjoy standing over a hot stove sweating and cooking for hours. I don’t have all day to spend preparing gourmet meals that my family insists on eating (yes, we are spoiled). But, you know what I do have time for? Eating. I love to eat some really good food and the Instant Pot gives me that. Just prep your food, throw in some of your favorite seasonings and toss it all in the pot. Set the pot to cook, and bada bing bada boom, breakfast, lunch, or dinner is ready.
Having an Instant Pot is like having someone cook delicious meals for you. The bowl inside the pot is stainless steel, which I love because it is healthier than using Teflon. Even the toughest cuts of meat come out fall off the bone tender. I use my instant pot daily; clean-up is a breeze because it’s all in one pot. I cannot sing its praises high enough.
Instant Pot Tip: On the rare occasion that there are leftovers from dinner, I fry an egg in the morning and toss it in my bowl with the leftovers and last night’s stew becomes this morning’s breakfast, boom!
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Delegate
If you can afford it, hire out people to do things that you don’t have time for or that you are not good at. Don’t be fooled, you don’t have to be good at everything. Our gifts and talents are not all the same for a reason. You can pay other people to use their talents for you, it helps them by supporting their business, and you can spend your time developing and marketing yours.
If you are like me and have kids instead of employees, have your kids help. Depending on the child, it can take a while to teach them how to do things well, but they all eventually learn. It is an investment of time upfront to teach your kids how to do chores, but once they learn how to do the chores, it was well worth the time spent.
Pay your kids for doing chores that you don’t want to do. Having kids is like having employees. Train them to work, pay them, and treat them well, this sets them up to be good at life. Kids can learn a little something about money, and you get some extra free time to work on your money-making ideas. Kids love to help, and they love the attention that parents give them when they are teaching them to work around the house.
Training tip: If I tell my kids to “Get the table ready for dinner.” they actually have to learn what that means. First I tell them, “Put your papers away.”, then once that is finished, I will say “Put your books, and pencils away.”, then I will say, “Get out the chargers.”, etc. until the table is set and ready for dinner.
If I just generically said, “Get the table ready for dinner, there would school stuff left all over the place, and things missing from the dinner table. While I would be happy that they did their best at setting the table, I would have missed an opportunity to spend time teaching them.
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Clear the Clutter
Why waste time cleaning when things are cluttered? Keep some things that are necessary, some things that are beautiful, and some things that are seasonal. No need to keep a bunch of stuff. Stuff sucks the life out of you and stuff is overwhelming.
Marie Kondo, a Japanese organizing consultant wrote four books on how to eliminate clutter and only keep the things that Spark Joy. When your home is free of clutter, your creativity can thrive and you can use that valuable creativity to make money!
The fewer things that you have cluttering up your home, the faster and easier it is to clean. Don’t get sucked into thinking that you need all kinds of stuff to make you happy. A few high-quality pieces, stored in an organized manner will do wonders for the atmosphere of your home.
If you don’t have things that you absolutely love, should they take up valuable real estate in your house?
I had a beautiful bedroom set, it was gorgeous, and I really liked it, but it became a point of contention in my life, so you know what I did? I got rid of it! It’s just stuff. It’s bad enough when people cause strife in your life, but when things in your home don’t bring you joy, sell them or give them to someone else that can actually enjoy them.
Picture an empty house, now picture cleaning an empty house, see how fast that is? Now picture a cluttered home, picture cleaning that, how much more work will you have to do in a cluttered home compared to an uncluttered one?
I’m big on branding, branding is really important to me. My home is an extension of my brand, and I want my brand to be about me. What does my home say? Cluttered junk house, or streamlined oasis?
De-cluttering Tip: If you need to DE-clutter your space, you could sell your things, you could donate them to the Salvation Army and claim that donation at tax time. If you don’t feel like donating, selling, or going through the work of a yard sale, (I frankly don’t have the time for that, as much as I hear they are money makers!) just put it out by the curb with a free sign.
As a last resort, you could just toss stuff in the trash. Whatever it takes, get your house DE-cluttered! Start small, one category at a time, or even one drawer at a time if you have to, just start!
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Exercise
Exercise may not seem like something that can put more time in your day or make you rich, but when you exercise you get more energy and then you can move through your day much more quickly.
Exercise keeps you young and healthy.
You don’t need to kill yourself or be a weekend warrior, but at the very least, stretch to keep your body healthy. I had a turbulence accident a few years ago that has caused me a lot of ongoing injuries. It was a vicious cycle, I didn’t feel good so I stayed in bed, ate, gained weight, and felt worse.
Exercising was aggravating my condition, so I turned to the Wharton Stretch Book. This book gave me my life back, I highly recommend it to anyone who has any type of aches or pains, or would like to be proactive with their health.
Your health is your wealth.
With a healthy body, you will be much more be able to make a six or seven-figure income. You can put those million dollar ideas into action when you feel well. If you don’t feel well, you will waste time lying around and not get anything important accomplished.
Workout Tip: Find what works for you regarding exercise. Working out shouldn’t be something that you dread, it should be something that you love. Some people love going to the gym, other people like to get outside and exercise, find what works for you.
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Turn off the television
Television is the biggest time suck, it’s mostly a bunch of garbage anyway. For me, if I start watching TV I get sucked into some program, and I lose my day. There is so little time in the day anyway, and if you expect to run an empire there is no way to do it with some distraction like television.
Start small, believe it or not, television is an addiction. If you watch a lot of TV, and suddenly stop, you will see what I mean by addiction. I gave up cable TV in 2012, I really missed it for a little while, but then, I got Hulu and Netflix, and I started getting sucked into that. I didn’t watch them every day, but I did watch, and I started wasting time and I had to let that go too.
It’s better to stop watching rich people on TV, and work at becoming rich yourself!
Entertainment Tip: If you are going to watch a movie or something, make it an event, not a way of life.
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Get rid of toxic people in your life
Don’t give any time to people who don’t support you or don’t have the same high expectations as you do. Toxic people suck the time right out of your life. Investing too much time into people emotionally that don’t deserve it is something you don’t have time for when you are working toward becoming rich!
There is this saying, it’s hard to fly like an eagle when you are surrounded by a bunch of turkeys. Get rid of the turkeys so that you can FLY!
A toxic person can be anyone, it can be a friend, coworker, even a parent. If you spend time with someone and afterward feel anxious or sad all the time, they are toxic and your time with them should be limited or better yet, cut off completely. If a person does not add to you and only subtracts from you, get out of that relationship.
Relationship Tip: How to tell if someone is toxic:
- Do they send your emotions on a roller coaster?
- Do you feel bad after being with them? If someone doesn’t add to you, they subtract from you.
- Do they pull you into bad behaviors?
- Is this relationship give and take, or is it all take?
Make a list and if more is negative than is positive, tell that person to “take a hike”.
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Make a Plan
Schedule your day. Plan it out in blocks of time so that you can get everything that you need to do done. If you just leave your day up to chance, time will most certainly slip away from you. You can even plan your free time. If you don’t plan your free time, you may not take any! It’s important to get things done, but it’s also important to have some fun too.
Planning and scheduling meals are essential. When you know what you are going to eat ahead of time, it keeps you from starving and overeating.
Planning Tip: Any area of your life that seems to be out-of-order all you have to do to fix it is set a plan and follow it. Easier said than done I know, but once you start writing down your plans and set a schedule, you can fix the areas in your life that need to be improved!
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Create routines
Routines are the best way to do things efficiently. I always follow a morning and evening routine. I keep my kids on a routine and they love it. I printed their routine and placed it in a folder and they go down the checklist in the morning and before bed. I started this when my daughter was 3 and couldn’t read, so on her routine, I also drew a picture so that she knew what to do.
Kids crave routines. They absolutely love going through the list and it makes things so much smoother!
Whatever you do or need to do daily is part of your routine. Your day will run much smoother when everyone has a written routine to follow.
Routine Tip: Pick out your clothes the night before so in the morning you are able to quickly get ready. It’s much easier when you are half asleep to have the perfect outfit ready to wear.
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Set a timer
It is much easier to get things done when you are on a time crunch. This goes for housework as well as regular work. A timer helps you stick to your schedule. You can use the timer on your phone. For household tasks, set the timer for 15 minutes and get to work! You can actually save yourself time and distraction by having a timer set instead of looking at the clock.
Batch or chunk your tasks using the timer, this is really just a fancy way to say do like things at a time.
Doing like things at a time will make you rich. You can save yourself time and effort if you do like things at once. Let’s face it, you have one million things to do, that’s the life of the productive woman. Multi-tasking sounds great, but it’s actually counterproductive to be constantly switching gears when you go from task to task.
Time Tip: Set a timer from anywhere from 10 – 45 minutes (depending on the task) and get it done. During that time, don’t let anyone or anything distract you. Head down, push forward and get IT done. When that timer goes off, you stop what you are doing and take a five to ten-minute break. Then, move onto the next task.
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Time will make you rich when you make a Top 5 List
Write down your top five things to get done for the day before bed. By writing down your top 5 the night before, you are still fresh with what needs to be done, you get it out of your head and onto your paper and you can rest without worrying about it. Five is a great number because almost anyone can get five things done in a day. After you complete each thing, simply cross it off your list and feel great that you accomplished something.
Top 5 Tip: When writing your top 5 list, make sure at least one thing on that list (if not all of them) is helping you toward your goal of becoming rich.
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Tie up loose ends
Finish up your projects and don’t just leave them sitting unfinished. It is much quicker to finish a task that has already been started than it is to start a new task from scratch. If you have a brand new idea that you are super excited about, instead of abandoning an old project, just write it down in an idea journal.
An idea journal is a great place to keep your thoughts and ideas.
It’s a great place to write down your ideas so that they don’t just fly out of your head and into obscurity.
Project Tip: Always keep some sort of journal with you to write down those million dollar ideas. It can be a note taking app on your phone, or if you like to write things down, a paper journal. The point is, never leave home without it because you never know when inspiration will strike!
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Perform regular brain dumps and time will make you rich.
Brain dumps are when you take all of those ideas that you have floating around in your head and dump them onto paper. Don’t over think your dumps, just quickly get all that stuff out of your brain. Schedule brain dumps on the same day each month and then set up your month from there. Depending on how many ideas you have, you may have to do brain dumps more often, possibly weekly or even daily.
Not every single thing that you write down will need to come to fruition. Maybe once you put an idea on paper, you will see that it won’t work, and that’s fine too. The point is, brain dumps are where your ideas can take direction.
By writing your thoughts down in a specific notebook is like having an assistant. Sometimes I’m so busy and I’ve got so many ideas floating through my head I forget them. I tend to write everything down, and then I go back and find great ideas I had actually forgotten about.
Brain Dump Tip: If you regularly perform brain dumps, you will generate thousands of money-making ideas.
What are some time-saving or productivity tips you are using to get rich? Let me know in the comments below.
I want to help you harness time to get rich, so I created this free Daily Top 5 printable. Enjoy!
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My Daily Top 5
With Plan Blog Repeat's Productivity Tools - My Daily Top 5 will not only be your top 5 to do's but your Top 5 success Habits you can follow every day.
Deanna,
What a fantastic first post 🙂 You have me hooked. I just bought an InstantPot and am loving it for the same reasons you mentioned. Although I haven’t made an entire dinner, the food I have made was fast and delicious. I think the biggest struggle for me is waking up earlier. My children are light sleepers and I’m just worried I would wake them up. Maybe in the winter when I move my desk from my bedroom to the basement then I can try and wake up earlier. Thanks for these tip!
Thank you, Elna!
That means so much that you like my post, I’m such a huge fan of your blog!!! I seriously don’t even know how I managed before the instant pot. I use that and the rice cooker and I don’t dirty a single pot or pan, lol.
I totally get your twins being light sleepers, all that advice about making noise and getting them used to it, never worked for me. Any little sound we made, our kids were wide awake, even to this day they wake up at the drop of a pin and they are now six and eight. When you are able, I’m telling you, you will love the early morning productivity. Waking up early not only gave me an extra 14 hours, but somehow it made my entire day run smoother.
This is great. Right now I’m working full-time and a full-time mom hopefully on my way to bEing a work at home mom.
This week I’ve been on vacation and received a glimpse of what it’s like being at home again as I was a sahm almost 2 years ago.
Although it’s tough, I’m anxiously awaiting being at home full time so these are some great tips and ones I can start implementing ahead of time. Especially Proverbs 31.
Thank you for sharing!
Hello Lorin,
You’re welcome, I’m very happy that you enjoyed the tips 🙂 How exciting for you to be on your way to be a SAHM again, yay! I have no doubt you will be a work at home mom, you have the very best incentive. It’s amazing that is this day and age we can make a living from home. What a fantastic time to be a Mom. All we Mommies need is a little extra time and we can accomplish anything!
getting rid of toxic people makes such a big difference! Great tips!
Thanks Sandy! Being toxic free is one of my favorite things. 😉