Thread by @itsTarH

Its the weekend!

Grab a cup of coffee, in this thread I will answer the most frequent question I get asked here on Twitter

How do you make time?

My principles, productivity hacks and cheats 🧵👇

Lets dive right in!

Time to me is the most valuable commodity of all, more important than money itself.

Most people in the world pay a lot of importance to money 💵, and not half as much as to their time ⏰

If you switch that concept on its head, and start paying time as much importance (if not more) than money,

not only you will have more money in your life (as you would be utilizing your time well)

but also more time to enjoy your wealth.

Here are a few productivity hacks I use to manage my limited time on this spaceship called Earth 🌏

Principle # 1

Figure Out What Your Time Is Worth

Each of us does something to earn a living

You may have a job that pays you to show up at work for 5 days a week or you maybe running a business or freelancing on the internet

Bottom line, everyone gets paid to do something.

As such, you can estimate how much your time is really worth today

The way to calculate this is

Main Income / No of Hours put in Each Month to Earn That Income

This will give you a per hour estimate worth of your time

Lets assume it is Rs 1000/hour

I proactively make a choice everyday to outsource all my work that can be outsourced below that Rs 1000/hour threshold

This includes

- All Household Chores
- Getting Groceries
- Doing Laundry

All chores like the above, that do not add value to my life but still need to be done

With the time you save by outsourcing the grunt work in your life, use it to increase the worth of your time.

How do you increase the worth of your time?

1. By upskilling yourself
2. Starting that side hustle idea you had in college

Or

3. Simply by doing things that make you happy

Principle # 2

Build a Routine

Habits are over rated and routines are under rated.

Without a routine you cannot turn something into a habit.

Routines also help you glide through the grunt work required to transform an activity into a daily habit.

Want to upskill yourself with data visualization skills so that you can impress your boss and get that promotion?

Plan a routine around it

It can be as simple as doing 30 mins of an online class on the skill of your choice before you head to work each day.

The more times you do it, the better you will become at it and soon it will turn into a habit - where your mind automatically actions upon it without you putting in the added willpower.

To transform Routines into Habit, use the Habit Loop

An example of this is my habit of writing threads 🧵

I started writing threads on Twitter (in late May'21) every Saturday morning with my cup of coffee ☕

Soon that turned into a routine and now a weekly habit

Reward has been almost 50K followers in about 6 months

Principle # 3

Find your Time Sink

Time Sinking activities are those that do not add much value to your life but suck away majority of time from your day

Endlessly scrolling through Social Media - yeah, that's a Time Sink we are all guilty of.

Your attention and time is what you're literally paying with when it comes to apps like Instagram and TikTok

All apps today, run on an algorithm designed to deliver you the most attention seeking content so you spend more time on the app and in turn help make more AD money

Don't let yourself be controlled by an algorithm

Find your Time Sink and work towards limiting (if not completely removing) it from your life.

If your Time Sink is Social Media -> Block all Notifications on your Phone

If your Time Sink is household chores -> Outsource everything below what your time is worth

and so on.

Principle # 4

Be Productively Un-Productive

So you like binge watching shows but also want to be productive?

Well you can!

Combine your un productive habits with your productive ones

Like researching companies but also like watching YouTube?

Combine the two!

Instead of binge watching the next famous reality TV series

you can binge watch educational YouTube channels on any topic of your choice - Space, Energy, Semiconductors, Geopolitics etc.

You're still unproductive and binging on Internet Content, but Hey! at least you're learning something while doing it!

Want to learn a new language?
Binge Watch a TV show/movie in that language

Want to learn a new skill?
Binge Watch content on that skill

I wrote about how to trick YouTube algorithm into learning something new in this thread 🧵

Principle # 5

Combine your Unproductive Tasks

Multitask when it comes to unproductive chores of your life and not with the productive ones

Multitasking is often a word associated with jobs/office work & not with unproductive chores in your daily life.

I exclusively multi task when it comes to unproductive elements in my life and rarely multi task when it comes to productive parts and things that actually matter.

For example, I like keeping myself up to date with what's happening around the world

To do this, I can either

a) Read the newspaper
b) Go through a news app
c) Listen to the News on TV
d) Listen to audio only news while showering

As you may have guessed by now, I choose option D - Listen to audio only news while showering

Its quick, its easy to do, keeps me away from spending hours figuring out what to consume and what to filter

and it combines itself with an unproductive chore in my life - Showering!

Figure out unproductive parts in your day and try combining them with productive ones

You will not only get more done in a day but also have fun while doing it.

Principle # 6

Highlight of the Day

Instead of making a to do list filled with 20 different things, have a single main task for a day and focus on it

I call this Highlight of the Day

Focusing on doing one main task in a day is much easier and achievable

Trying to do 20 different things will just create stress and may keep you from completing that main task of the day

Focusing one imp task a day instead brings consistency and helps make incremental progress towards achieving your goals

Most people overestimate what they can do in a single day and underestimate what they can achieve by being consistent in a single year.

So those were my six principles and productivity hacks that help me make time and achieve my goals.

Two Books I highly recommend reading on this subject

Make Time by Jake Knapp
Atomic Habits by James Clear

If you find this thread useful then follow me @itsTarH

I write a new thread every weekend.

All my previous work, can be found here.

Also, write and publish long from articles on my substack investkaroindia.substack.com

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Thank you for reading, please retweet the first tweet in this thread for a broader reach.

See you all next weekend!