This is the saddest story I’ve ever heard.
Yet, I hear it every day:
“I don’t have time to exercise”.
These six little words are enough to have Karl Pilkington fly to whoever said it, point his finger at them, and say “Bullocks”.
I’m here to tell you that you can “buy” time, and that you can get it for pretty cheap too. Whatever you do with that time is your call, but I suggest exercise being one of them. At the very least, don’t give the excuse that you don’t have time to exercise, because I’m teaching you how to buy it at a discount.
Here’s how to buy time and get jacked because of it.
Work, Rest, Pray, & Play
This past weekend I had the pleasure of listening to Dan John speak in Guelph. I managed to inhale about 7 hours of wisdom, but the one thing that will benefit me the most in my life is the concept of work, rest, pray, and play.
Dan John and I in Guelph.
Dan taught me that your life needs to be spread equally between these four things. He mentioned that if you work too much, you’ll become burned out. If you rest too much, you’ll become lazy. If you play too much, you’ll be like the fable about the grasshopper that played all summer instead of storing food, and then starved to death in the winter. If you pray too much, then you’ll be lonely.
Now I don’t need to tell you that most of us work too much. When you “buy” your time, it must come from work without sacrificing your work quality. This may seem tricky now, but it will make sense soon.
As for play, most of us could use a little bit more of this. It can be as easy as spending more time with friends and family, joining a pickup hockey league, or even video games. I’d also argue that you could put “go to the gym” in this category, but you would need to be going and enjoying your workouts, trying out new exercises, or even push a sled with friends.
When it comes to rest, this would be sleeping (obviously) as well as eating good quality foods. Think: recovery.
As for pray, you don’t necessarily have to be religious. It can be any alone time or self-reflection. For me, this is where 90% of where my workouts reside.
How Much Your Time Is Worth
Your time is worth a lot more than you think.
Dan Kennedy has a great formula for figuring out what one hour is worth to you. The rocket scientist in me has simplified it for you.
1 Hour ($) = (Yearly Salary) divided by (Number of Productive Hours Worked Per Year)
Your yearly salary is how much money you make in one year. If you own a business, it’s how much you earned last year. For calculation purposes, let’s use a base salary of $50,000.
As for finding the Number of Productive Hours Worked Per Year, it’s simple. Let’s say you work 40 hours per week (on average). If you get 2 weeks vacation per year, then you’d multiply 40 by 50 (52 weeks minus 2 vacation weeks). This gives 2000 hours.
Now you need to figure out how much of your work day is actually productive. These are the hours that are spent actually working. It doesn’t include Facebook, pinterest, or screwing around with emails. Research shows that if you work in an office, about 30% of your day is actually spent towards productive work. Estimate the percentage of your day that you are actually productive, and then multiply that by the numbers of hours you work per year. Using the example above, this would be 0.3 x 2000 hours. The number of Product Hours Worked Per Year would then be 600.
Now let’s go back to our formula. Using the above numbers, 1 hour of your time is worth the following:
$50,000 divided by 600 hours = $83.33 per hour.
One hour of your time would be worth $83.33. You need to cherish this time and don’t waste it. It’s very valuable.
How to Buy Time and Get Jacked: Hire Someone to Eliminate Repetition
Here’s where you can buy time at a discount.
We all have repetitive tasks that we hate doing. My argument would be to just hire someone to do these things. If it’s easy to teach, and can be done on a computer, pay someone else to do it. You can find thousands of people online on sites such as Odesk who will work for as little as $1 per hour.
My assistant Danyelle has freed up over 27 hours of my time in the past few months. In these 27 hours, I’ve been able to allocate more time for rest, play, and pray. This includes exercising 4 times per week. If something is repetitive or mundane, you bet I’ll pay Danyelle to do it for less than $8 per hour.
After figuring out how much your time is worth, you can easily outsource your work to a Virtual Assistant for a fraction of the cost. When I was interviewing for a Virtual Assistant, a girl in Malaysia wanted to work for me for $1 per hour. If she were in Toronto, she’d make more money being homeless.
If one hour of your time is worth $83.33, then paying $1 for it back is an 8333% return on investment.
It’s a win-win situation for you and your assistant. You get to buy time at a discount, and your assistant gets paid. Depending on your assistant’s situation, you could be helping them support a family or be able to stay at home with their kids.
It’s not capitalism. It’s facilitation.
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