You do have time. Stop wasting it.

A couple of weeks ago, during a workshop we did on Honeycomb (our strategical management tool which helps companies keep focus on results and create more transparency for people in the organization) I was asked about how we prioritize our work and life as entrepreneurs. So I decided to share this piece of advice with you that helped me a few years ago and that still keeps me focused and on track.

First of all, to even start prioritizing something you need to know where you are heading and perhaps most importantly why you want to go there. Why will you decide to give your energy to certain things or tasks rather than spending that time on something else?

To know what you want and why you want it is not as easy as it sounds. In fact, most people are struggling a lot with this question, many do not even dare to reflect and in the meantime keep themselves busy by being “productive” on someone else’s expense — which can have devastating impact on your health and well-being later on in life.

What is even more concerning is that among those that do know what they want, very few are acting on it and many times it is due to lack of structure and planning. I hope the following example will help to give you some light on the topic.

What do you want? Do you have time for it?

I had a breakthrough moment a couple of years ago, when my coach asked me to grab a blank piece of paper, put it on the horizontal side and divide it in two parts by drawing a line in the middle. On the right side she asked me to write or draw my goal, my dream, my desire — whatever it is that I wanted to accomplish and on the left side she asked me to list all the things I normally do during a week, how many hours I spend on each thing and then she told me to connect those actions that are linked directly with my dream. My paper, at the time (2015), looked more or less like this:

I quickly realized how little effort I was actually making to get closer towards my goal and it was also shocking and "alarming" to see how much time I was "wasting" on things like Netflix and entertainment in general…

Next step in the exercise she asked me: What can you consider "giving up" on your list in order to create more time for your dream?

One month later I had quit soccer practice four times per week (since I was not planning on becoming a pro player at the age of 29 — I still play once a week with friends because I love the game), I stopped watching Netflix everyday (If you are a series junky this can be quite difficult in the beginning) I stopped going out that much and basically I became very aware and selective of where and how to spend my time and energy. After all, I had (have) a goal to achieve and a dream to catch ;)

The old saying: Actions speak louder than words may be very well applied here and I really want to encourage everyone to stop saying you do not have time and start looking at your situation from an objective point of view. After all, we all have 24 hours per day to do great things so start prioritizing what matters the most to you and make it happen.