One of the most common tips for saving money is to stop drinking your morning or lunchtime coffee, and put the money saved to one side. It's a simple action, but at the end of the year you could save several hundred dollars. It is often the case that taking a regular, small action, will yield good results simply because it you do it so many times.
Donating an hour a day
This principle can also be applied to personal development. There are plenty of activities that consume hours of our time, and they're not always particularly beneficial. What if we spent one of those hours on something more productive?
There are plenty of places you can "borrow" this hour from:
- Internet surfing
- TV watching
- Excessive drinking
- Videogames
- Sleeping in
You don't have to give up one particular activity, and you can take the hour from anything you don't feel is important.
The difference an hour makes
Using just one hour a day will give you over 360 hours a year, which is the equivalent of nine 40-hour weeks. That's a lot of time, which is now yours to spend on something valuable. That seemingly small change of one hour a day adds up to something much bigger over the course of the year.
The only question is, how will you spend those nine extra weeks?
3 Comments
Q: The only question is, how will you spend those nine extra weeks?
A: In the pub :p
Joking aside, interesting post Phil which has certainly given me food for thought :)
Such a timely post, thanks Phil.
I'm conditioning myself to get up each morning at 7am, automatically without the alarm going off. Being able to go to bed ONLY when I'm tired, and consistently wake up at 7am. I'll get lots of MORE hours and I have an abundance of time already each day.
What can I do with more hours? Take more holidays, go horse riding, swimming, blogging, spend time with family, the list is endless.
Again, it's a timely post for me, so thank you.
Katy: If you walk to/from the pub, you can probably class it as exercise ;)
Kavit: I've found I'm always more productive when I wake up earlier. I'm not sure if it's because I get more productive hours, or because I think "I got out of my comfy bed, so I'd best make this worthwhile!"