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Top Tips to Take Time Back

top tips for how to get 11 hours back in your week. That's right. I'm not exaggerating. I really am not. The whole idea here is that we're gonna have systems, practices, time saving tips, lots of them upgrades to what you're currently doing. Get rid of certain things that you might be doing. We're gonna step through them all one at a time. Let's start with this one. Monitors. Kind of a little loopy. It will be. But what? Those are our cups on a tray and I'm gonna use This is a perfect example because I brought this up once before and someone kind of joked about the fact that I talked about my cup tray and my cup in spork. Trey, you guys know what sports? Alright, spoons, forks and knives on one device. The optimal efficiency. That's what your kids should be using. Um, I want to talk about how one little thing adds up tremendously. So hassle saving mine clearing revenue generating power of smart systems and practices this cup. Trey, how much do you think this gives me a year in revenue?

It's an odd question, right? It brings me $44, a year. What? How is that possible? What a shocking thing to say it does. This is how little things add up all day long. That's the premise of this entire talk. Little things that you do everyday make for big outcomes. If I am wasting four minutes a day taking the cups that my kids use, I have. There's five people in my home. Five people in my home to see my doctor doesn't drink out of a cup and they're drinking from a cup. Call it three times a day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner most the time. That's water. What do they do when nobody's paying attention? They take the cup. They throw in the sink, grab another cup, right? Nobody's paying attention. That's what they'll do when left to their own devices. That's what adults often dio with. Instead, you said, this is a cup trey on this flat plastic tray. You have a name with everybody's name on it that I wrote on this flat plastic tray, and when you're done with your cup, rinse it out, clean off the lip with little bit of soap. Put it on the tray when you come back for lunch, grab your cup, put some water on it, sit down for lunch. That's it. What that did was took me from 25 cups to clean a day to the At the end of the day, the five go into the dishwasher. That saves me 25 cups of loading, unloading, etcetera. It's about four minutes. You're all with me. So if I took four minutes a day, that adds up to 120 minutes a month, four times 30. I take that. That's two hours. That is what it takes me to shoot about. A portrait session, but a two hour time period. So I'm gonna say I take one portrait session, and by the way, zero hit to anything else in my life. This is just simply re allotting. That time I take that portrait session, I have a $500 session fee and my average sales about 30 to 50. Right now, let's say again, cause I want to keep that time consistent. I'm going to take $60 out of the equation and outsource the editing. So just to keep again on the time frame, that trey now it gives me the opportunity to generate $ a month, which adds up to $44,280 a year. This is what I mean by little tips giving huge results. We're gonna go through Otan of those. By the end of this, you're gonna make 9 million $467,000 this year. All right? Does that anybody that makes sense? Yes. You see that? Okay, Where does the time? No, The current statistic by Nielsen is that the average U. S. Person can. Aliens are good. Spend five hours and 11 minutes a day watching television. That is a statistic as a February of 2012. That is a current statistic that is 79 days a year is the average amount of time people are spending watching television, that that's like, Oh, bejeebers, right, That's crazy. But again, it's the idea of unconscious living. I'm not aware of how long it took when I sat down, put my feet up at the end of day just to relax and then get off the couch. I don't I don't know that that just spent 3.5 hours at night doing that, That's actually not abnormal. Kagisho kind of drifted into a movie colluded of the news went to bed. That's where the time goes. Another studies results says that watching TV actually doesn't make people happy as activities engaged them. We get that right. We know the difference between short term pleasure and long term rich experience. The short term little pleasure that's that's grabbing chocolate in a day or shoving a bunch of ice cream in your face. The long term pleasures. My body feels good. I sit down, I have this guilty pleasure of television, but it only lasts so long, and I actually feel worse afterwards instead of doing things like having great conversations and physical exercise. And I said horseback riding cause I had a great horseback riding picture of my daughter. The other big statistic out there is we spend 8 to 11 hours a day in front of a screen. Nobody finds that surprising anymore. Do we? Television, Internet computer, phone IPad. I'm currently in front of a screen. I'm in front of two screens and I'm on a bunch of screens. It's not, you know, that's what we dio, but wear spending a lot of it intentionally escaping the stressors of our life. It's not just we have to work. We check out because it's getting too difficult and we want to zone out something that gives us an easy outlet, like television or now the Internet, etcetera. So the perk of having rules again, systems and rules in place is that it's not a decision point. My Children know that no screen ever gets turned off unless all the kid clutter has gone in. The rooms are clean. That doesn't make me a militant, mom. It's just like that is how it is that you don't even think about asking. And you said that in place so significantly that if the TV is on, I know the house is clear. You know, this is totally separate than me saying your kids shouldn't watch TV. That's why I am part of this equation. You parent, how you parent Ah, bearing high there. But for the sake of talking about how do we manage our lives? My Children know that they have a job ahead of them before they get the reward. That's just how it's going to go and I set the same expectations myself, so I feel OK giving it to them. So if you're thinking about the idea of and that that that's like Messi screen, that's TV, it's we game. It's Internet, its IPad. It's all the ways that we play now. These kind of rules go throughout the whole house. This helps to simplify our environment. I think from the simple act of decluttering is enormous. You guys feel that thing, the it's unreal what you get back when you clear out. This involves your work environment and your home environment. But I think very especially it means any stack of anything that's anywhere is a significant factor because every piece of clutter means that you don't know what to do right Anything. Anytime you see a physical manifestation of clutter, it means I don't know what to do with that. So for me, when I look at this things, I can tell that if there's a stack of six things on my kitchen counter, it means that my life is moving too fast. It means that I can't do anything about this right now. I'm gonna walk past it in tomorrow. They'll be two more things on top and it also can't do anything about that. That's what that means to me, and that's what I see when I look at it. That's the idea of changing your awareness and changing the difference from what you see and what you're looking at. I'm looking at clutter, but what I'm seeing is a physical manifestation of the fact that I have too much time and I don't have any decisions here. So it goes on to say that if I have an outstanding decision to make and I don't have a system or a rule in place, that means I got to take the time to stop and decide. I don't have time to stop and decide. When I went, uh, finished this course last September, I think, was a month and 1/2 later I left for Australia, my family, we all went and I had the great pleasure of doing workshops through Australia and we spent two months there and at the end of that there is this whole kind of drama which you can actually, if you type in New Zealand, my blog's you can read about. But the short version is. At the end of the time in Australia, we had a decision to make whether or not we were gonna go home or go on to New Zealand. Andi, make a vacation out of it, and we were waffling as to what to do because of this whole drama. And I ended up leaving my phone at. We went horseback riding Australia, and I left my phone like Friends of Friends House, and I didn't realize it was gone until, like the next day, because I didn't have cell coverage when I realized it was gone at this immediate sense of Oh, I'm so glad I'm so glad is going like this huge, a shocking rush of relief and pleasure about the fact that I was no longer tied in. I did not have a leash on me. I didn't I didn't I wasn't aware that I had that sensation on me before. It's kind of like when a noise family stops and you didn't realize how long it had been for so long. And then suddenly it's quiet. It was like that. The noise stopped and what I found was we went on to New Zealand minus the phone minus any connectivity, with the rare exception of checking in here and there and stuff that we had to manage. And we had a two week. We rented a camper van and we are vegan around New Zealand and we were there. You don't? I mean, we were there and were present, and we were mindful, and everything was beautiful on the water was so clear, the sky was so gorgeous and my kids were so cute. And it was just like it helped, of course, that I just finished a long year of getting a bunch of stuff done, and I finished up these workshops and everything. But the other major thing was I hadn't realized how much I was tied to the constant data, like how much I was in it. And when we came back from New Zealand and walk into her home, the first thing I saw was clutter, and our house is in pretty good shape. But I just been living in an RV. Were you unpack? Put everything away and you don't have anything in there unless it's purposefully part of what you need for that experience. You think really well about anything that you bring with you because you've got a pack it up. That's that's the beauty of long term travel. You really get a good idea of what you need and what you don't need day today. So I came back and I craved decluttering. I longed to go through drawers and throw out junk and throw things away, and it was It was amazing. There's an amazing amount of accomplishment on. It changed the course of how we live now. We live differently since that experience. The problem, of course, with friendship, Social media, Internet is that prior to phones, when it was just Internet, which wasn't that long of a period of time, we checked Internet about five times a day. Now it's a minimum of 27 times a day. That number is climbing, but numbers climbing. We checked 27 times a day. Does anybody think that's weird? Does that sound right to you? Does anybody think they do it more? We crave constant information. We're Robert did. There's a wonderful quote by Sherry Turkle, who is a professor on what exactly is her title. Uh, she said, were lonely but fearful. Intimacy digital connections offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship, we expect more from technology and less from each other. This is another thing I found when I was off the phone was that I was actually having a lot more awesome conversations, and they diminished a little bit when you slipped back in and you come back when I came back to the U. S. I kept myself off the phone for another month and 1/2 until I realized that I really do need to be contacted if something happens with my Children. But other than that, I was relishing the absence of it. The problem with talk about friendship a little bit more, but it's that constancy of the phone that actually helps you to have a more cluttered existence offline. Because here this is we're really interesting about that study here is when you're looking at your phone, everything's got an app in its neat and orderly, and that this is what we're looking at nearly all day long. We don't even see this anymore. We become more custom toe all this here because this is already taken care of in a very organized way. And then a bizarre thing that we kind of feel like we're organized are on life life Online Life is organized because they designed these beautiful, clean APS for us. So with physical platter, here's an easy, easy, simple rules. This thing this is email inbox, desktop inbox, physical mail, home sorting, just one rule for everything. One rule for everything you know. More decisions, right? There's one rule that you do everything with. So the basic rule this the combination of a couple really great experts in productivity management. If it takes less than two minutes, do it now. That's for anything. Yes, it needs to be delegated email it or give it off directly here. By the way, I'm gonna introduce one of my best friends in the whole world. Evernote who's on every night who is in Evernote on it, 24 7 lives breathes Dream it awesome. I'm gonna tell you, like when I first I've been an Internet Evernote for a year and 1/ maybe, like really quickly after it came out, I was using it to store things to send message to here and there. And the last six months it's become the hub of my existence. It is my offline brain. It is my own line brain. It's one of my brains. If it needs to be for Teoh, saved anything. It just goes directly and Evernote everything. That's everything I walk in and I've got something out of the mailbox. And it's something that reminds me of a doctor's appointment. It's a photograph it sent over. Note. It's done or a photograph it from Evernote, and it's done like that. Is it? It's not physically retained if I've got anything that could be deleted, trash recycled. I know nowadays anything I think I want to get again. I can get like, nearly with the exception of some vital documents, which we'll talk about in a little bit, but anything that you're hesitating on, if you don't know it within two minutes, you don't know to give it Teoh. You're still looking at it. It should be trashed. I'd love for the Internet to give me an exception, but honestly, it really does boil down to that simple. And that's where I talk about being ruthless with your email. Do yourself a huge favor at anything in the last week that sitting in your inbox drag to attempt file. Just drag into a seven file and give yourself an opportunity to start fresh. Who here doesn't? Zero inbox. You do know that's awesome. I do not. I just keep dragging things in temp files. What? Oh, yeah. I keep a max of, like, 10 items in the box every day and file everything because we have a limited quota at work and we get the documents. Just filed them right. Five rule. We touch things once and fried to perfection in the process, but it doesn't work in life. It works a work gap. Well, okay, so this is what I'm saying is this works for everything in life. Give me one example of something that you don't think this would work for. Just like to say Oh, yes, it does. What is it? This works for everything. Everything in life. So it sounds really big, right? I'm saying it. Symptom clutter. Problem over consumption. Trying to fill an emotional need with the physical need and lack of understanding of how much consumption consumes consumption consumes. I couldn't believe how much I got back by stepping away from it. Consumption consumes terribly insidiously. Let's talk about what it means to bring something into your home or work or anything. Every new purchase means you've got one more thing to watch her clean. Well, you know, I feel that laundry. It is one more thing to put away somewhere at some point. It's another item to maintain something else to fix something else to store. The less we have, the less we have to do. When you look at how you're filling your days, what are you doing? How much of it is your objects? Think about it. Dishes, laundry, cleaning the house, trading up your task. May I mean it's objects? It's stuff. It's physical things that again stack up and become visual reminders of the fact that we have too much to dio and we don't have our decisions made. I understand the frenzy of want I very, very much understand the frenzy of watch. Here's the thing when it comes to me. I understand that most the times when I want something, it's because there are things that it's okay. I'm not saying you can't buy. I'm saying most of the things we buy are trying to feel something that we don't need, like are very basic needs to be accepted in society and thought of as well and all. That's where stuff with my Children when somebody comes up and says guy by this sort of thing, normally I feel very comfortable saying No, because you're gonna have to now wash it and clean it and maintain it and put it somewhere and you have take something out of this net normally. But if I am working hard and overwhelmed and under the gun and feeling guilty about my Children, I will say, Since I can't give you what you really read, which is me, let me buy you something. I will do that the amount of times I have stopped at the airport gift shop on my way home from from Great about five or anywhere ago and said it looked at a rack of stuff and thought they don't need any of this. But I'm not going home empty handed because I've left them empty for a week. What am I using? I'm using a physical thing to replace the place what they really want, which is this emotional need, and you two seem to really getting this right here. Tell me what you're feeling, both of you. Ours is right now. Our business is growing. It's such a great rate. It's so exciting because we finally have financial stability. But because of that, I had to go from being a constant state home mom when I was 24 with the kids and he was working to being gone. And I do say to them all the time when they're just like I want mama time, cause I mean, we're name pretty much everything I need. I need a mom, a hug. I need some mama snuggles and I have to say, I can't give you that right now because I'm working so I can give you more. And so I know what the end. It's to have more time and same thing, like on the way home. I try so hard when we leave Creativelive not to stop it, target or somewhere on the way home and get the kids something that then ultimately, I have to try to find a place to put it something. I don't want the house, but it's like I want to let them know that when I was gone, I thought about them, and it is It's that replacing. And I mean, it's everything you're saying is having all home moments for him because now he's understanding where I'm coming from cause it's being said by someone else of having clutter and stuff and all of this stuff. So yet it is replacing something that's missing and the stuff for us in a long time was having stuff made us feel like a grown up because we got married so young and so many people told us that we didn't know what we're doing and by having stuff and being able to buy, and it made us feel like a grown up. For now, we feel like grownups. Oh my God, everything is going great. But the kid thing, it's true, like when as a mum, there's just so much guilt and expectation in our society of being supermom and trying to do it all, and and all you want to do is sit at home and snuggle with your kids like that's what you My core ache, is to just sit on the couch and snuggle with my kids. Thank you. Did you want it? Mine's not quite so in death. But just basically, you know, I can relate to that. My my oldest. That's eight. About two years ago, when I started trying to do this, he kept telling me that he missed me and that he never had any time with me. And I knew I was making time, but at the same time felt guilt that I wasn't spending as much time having been a stay at home mom. And you know that my six year old yesterday just said We never go to the park anymore And although that's not true, it been like a week since we've gone down there, and it felt like an eternity to him. And it's It's just the reality of letting things get in the way of what's important. And, you know, I've done that before, too. If bought a game to give them something to occupy their time. Because I have all these edits to work on and and really, it doesn't work because they want me to play the game with them, right? And you want Yeah, yeah, time with him. Yeah, but part of when you go back to that dinner conversation, you say your core ache is to sit and spend time with them. I for me, that is a vital part of what I need to fulfill for them and for me. But I also have a corny too, you know, do this to teach and to produce. And this and that, and in no way lessens how much I feel about them and how strongly I want to be with them. And it's the That's why I feel like if early on as early as possible, you can set their expectations. I just did this two days ago. We're guess what's this? Wednesday were flying here to Seattle. I'm sitting between my eight year old and my 10 year old, and I'm working on the presentation. He's reading a Calvin and Hobbes book, and she's watching a Disney movie on the IPad. This is our flying him, and he keeps reading the cartoons to me. That keeps single County. Okay, Uh huh. And finally, after an hour, I turned him and I like, put his little face in my hands, and I say, If you can give me 30 more minutes, that's about this many cartoons I am 100% with you Are you in? Are you in? You know, and then you said yes. And then four minutes later, he said, Can you know? But I think it's idea setting. This is what I'm gonna do and exactly this time in explaining in their sort of way, I don't feel this is like in the feeling is the root of it. Because the feeling is what lifts us or destroys us and to be aware of what the feeling is and then say, How do I act on away that betters all of us, You know, how do I say to him, I will give you that time, but then you have to commit to it. You have to give it gets its tough. And so when you come back to the frenzy of want when you're buying things for them or buying things yourself or buying things for anybody in your life that you feel badly about realize that that is just because you're feeling basically I'm trying to think the easiest way to put it you are feeling, um a strong need of you that you don't know how to give You don't know how. Give it out. You're like I'm doing my best. I understand that you have this need. I don't know how to give you here, have this. So I mean, I think I think it's interesting, but what I do say that my Children, when we're in target and all the other places, is I say very comfortably. Now look at this. How long will you love? Forever and ever. I know that it's about a 12 minute shelf life. I'm like, What will you do with it after you don't love it? I can't imagine not ever love it. What would you know? Where it is? A weird. And Suzy go after you stopped loving Suzy doll, you know, and we'll talk through this and it and it helps him manage it a little bit because I talk about how you have to find a place for it. What comes out when this goes in. All that stuff, I think, helped them to consume less is really helpful to Okay, here's the other huge one. The energy of consumption cuts into your energy for creating, for writing, for dancing, for traveling, for photography, for fun. It cuts in like, big time because basically, all you tally up all that effort. You put it when I talked about those things that go that go into consuming. Think about all that effort that goes into it. You could be putting all that into bettering your relationships, bettering your time that you spend with people. You care about your work efforts. When we were in our old studio, we just move studios. We've been our old studio for seven years, 2200 square feet. And what happened is slowly every year things kept coming in and they weren't going out. We'd find more props, more this more. That it's the place, actually is in good shape. But I started noticing that more and more things were coming in. I was craving a clean, open space where there was less there and we could just focus and create. This is a shot, my student better shot. That's my IPhone right before we moved out. This was my old workspace where I worked for seven years. So if you see every one of those drawers is full stuffed tons of files in there, there's like stuff over there. There's a bunch of stuff in here. These little doors and here are meant to be my inbox, but they just got covered with more things. Those are boxes in the quarters were notes that I get that I love that it kept talking. And this is this is actually a good shot. Normally also have a laptop, a bunch of extra things, their mail that just came in. This is my new studio, and this is 100% of my workspace right now. This this is basically when I'm gonna start talking about what we did with Evernote. Basically, this became I've got all my external work on their as I need it. Everything else is on Dropbox or Evernote on our external server that we have in the studio. Although that physical paper and stuff I never referenced it. I didn't say I wonder where that one file came from. 2003 like you off loaded somewhere that if you really need to get to it, you could get to it until you're able to kind of move through it. Hire somebody to scan a bunch of stuff in. This is a great job for an intern. Scan a bunch of stuff in, and then just toss it. Delete it, dump it, open up your space so you can think and great and come up with new ideas and not be like shackled by the old stuff that you've been doing. That makes sense that is truly impressive. Just that image alone says it all. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And then, you know what? At the end of the day before, I would look around and try to stack up some papers and this and that. Now I'm just like I mean, that that is like, it's all right there. It's very nice. I just want you guys ask this of yourself. Next time you're in target or anywhere, or you're on Amazon or your, um, at any of the websites that you go to to buy things first and foremost visualized the effort you put into making the money that you will spend on this. And what I mean by that is, if I'm looking at something that's $200 a lovely blouse that's going to go in my closet, I think about what effort do I put into getting business going for $200? I think about the 1st $200 not not like that. The client deal was great and it was a $5000 client transaction. Every time you start a client effort, that 1st $200 is the hardest part, right? Think about the work that you put into it. Visualize the effort and then see if it's still what you want. What are you saving for what things do you really, really, really long to do with your time and every dollar you spend on? One more thing goes against the saving for that. When you talk about travel, maybe you know you want to spend $15,000 on a gorgeous trip in Europe. You spend $500 on like this, the newest IPad, the nearest newest IPad, and that takes away from that trip. You're stepping backwards from that goal. Is this useful in my life, or is this something I just want other people to see that I own? This is huge in my neighborhood. I'm amazed at the fact that people still unconsciously make these choices they make. The choice is to consume things that they think make them look good to other people, and they don't really have a use for They don't really value. I'm gonna go on record on the whole Internet to say that I don't have a lot of shoes. I don't I don't have a lot of shoes. I've got I've got maybe 15 pairs of shoes total. And because I find that often I can interchange them, they're fine shoe. Have It is a really expensive shoe. Have it. And the truth is, I don't have a super amount of passion for shoes. Okay, Every look at my shoes. These air pushes. I do love issues. Part of it's not handbags either. No, no, I'm not handbags. I'm not shoes. But here's the thing. There was definitely appeared in my life where I felt like the way I fit in with my girlfriends is I get very excited about handbags and shoes. And what I was doing was acting excited about handbags and shoes, whereas really, as I was sitting there while they're like, Oh, my God, look at this bag had been like I just didn't care that much. I wanted to be functional, wanted to look nice. And after that I didn't have a lot of passion for it. I'm not saying it's not. It's going to have a lot of passion for it, but it wasn't me. And for me to invest in things like that is just because I want other people to think of me as girly. Whereas I didn't really care that much, that's the idea of getting very real about, like, am I consuming for me, or am I consuming for you guys? Um, I just fine with 100 pilot. Do I need Mercedes? Like what? What I really care about here. I do want a really top of line camera because it makes my life easier, but that's absolutely a purchase for me. Um, where would it go? Do you know exactly where something goes when you buy it? My worst thing is kitchen accessory stores. I could buy 5000 types of Peeler's I could, but where would it go? If I think about physically placing a drawer that as much of the stuff that turns me off, what would it replace one in one out all the time? And will this simple fire complicate my life? The 50th vegetable peeler that I buy will complicate my life because now I have to decide which of my 15 vegetable peelers to use, even if it's really cute. All right, we're gonna close on this, going to lunch by reminding you that the price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. Keep that frame of mine and we're gonna go back in and drill through a ton. More tips.