In one of my absent‐minded moments I stumbled upon a BuzzFeed quiz titled, “Which Disney Princess Are You?”
Was I tempted?
Yes.
Did I stop doing my most important work and fall victim to this silly online distraction?
You bet!
Turns out I am Cinderella: “Hardworking and industrious, you are the ideal co‐worker. You burn the midnight oil to get projects done and often pick up the slack for others. Most likely you were valedictorian of your class” (BuzzFeed, 2017).
Honestly, that just about sums it up, except the part about being an ideal coworker (I work for myself for a reason).
Online quizzes like these are akin to the most addictive drug you can imagine. We are hardwired for validation. We are egomaniacs, and we are at the mercy of anyone who understands basic human psychology.
Marketers use these tactics to capture our attention by appealing to our most shallow desires. This works well for advertising, but it also paints a clear picture of us.
Beyond wanting to simply avoid our work for a few minutes and engage in a trivial digital diversion, we actually want to know more about ourselves. We want to be sure we are on the right path, that we understand our role in the world, and that we can use this knowledge to improve our lives in countless ways.
Knowing that I am a quantifiable Cinderella does not tell me anything I did not already know about myself, but it does validate my vision of who I want to be.
With that kind of knowledge and affirmation from a third party (including personality tests like the DiSC Profile or Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator), I can convert the description of my personality and preferences into a workable plan of action.
For example, if I know that Cinderella is “hardworking and industrious,” I can choose to embody those characteristics and start proving that sentiment to be true.
So, what kind of achiever are you?
Are you hardworking and industrious like Cinderella, outgoing and vivacious like Mulan, or daring and adventurous like Jasmine?
I am not asking you to stop reading the book and take this specific quiz … but if you must, I will wait.
The first step of The Free‐Time Formula is to channel your inner Disney Princess—or, phrased another way, to analyze your present reality and discover exactly who you are today in this season of your life.
In the first chapter, we examined the myth of free time and looked at the current reality of many hardworking and overly busy professionals. Now we will clarify where you are today and explore how your circumstances are affecting you.
Knowing more about your present reality and how you operate best is vital to understanding how you can optimize your life and move forward with real confidence and results.
Despite our similarities, you and I are different people with different goals in life.
My wife, Tessa, and I are incredibly similar Type A personalities with a nearly identical childhood (same hometown, same group of friends, same poster of Britney Spears hanging on the wall in our room), and yet we approach each situation with our own unique flair and creativity.
No two people are the same, and no one solution serves all of us equally.
The Free‐time Formula begins with a Self‐Evaluation and Time Audit, two tools that are designed to clarify your life right now—communicating how effectively you use the precious time you have available each day.
As is common in coaching, consulting, therapy, or other prescriptive professions, the “expert” typically provides a perspective on what you should do.
I approach this process from another vantage point.
The self‐evaluation is open‐ended with considerable flexibility for you to fill in the gaps on your own. In other words, no one is here to judge you or provide a verifiable solution to your next best move.
You get to make those calls. You get to decide what your life looks like and where it should end up.
The beauty of knowing more about yourself is the power it provides you to make better decisions every day.
I argued in the first chapter that knowledge without action is useless, and nothing proves that point more than highly educated people making foolish choices because they never stopped to learn a thing about themselves.
Welcome to “Me 101,” the art and science of knowing yourself inside and out.
Before I introduce the self‐evaluation and the rest of The Free‐Time Formula, here is a quick win to get you started with some additional free time: make the most of the time you already have.
Chances are that you have free time on your calendar this week—free time that you are secretly saving to binge on your current favorite TV series. That free time is up for grabs and you can do something with it now.
You may not have clarified your most important goals yet (we will get to that in chapter 3), but you likely know of half a dozen tasks, projects, or mini‐goals that outshine couch‐potato time.
The key to this quick win is to take advantage of that time now with anything that builds momentum and gets you moving toward a worthy ideal. A series of quick wins is a sure‐fire method to a series of big successes down the road.
When you optimize small bits of free time today, you are jump‐starting your drive to continue that process. In other words, you are redefining how you use your “down time” and beginning to make each hour more valuable.
The mindset that accompanies this type of action is the exact mindset that leads to optimizing your entire day, week, month, and year. It is the mindset that leads to high achievement, and it starts with tiny victories right now.
By the way, I wrote this Quick Win section of the book in one of my own random blocks of free time. No joke.
I saw the phrase “quick win” in my notes and thought, “I can do that right now!” It is that exact line of thinking that leads to tangible progress, and it works every time.
This self‐evaluation is a thorough analysis of where you stand today, right now, in terms of your productivity, stress, and ability to carve out time for what matters most.
Think of this as a snapshot in time, covering seven core areas of your life and work with five clarifying questions per area. My goal with this evaluation is that you will be able to do three things:
You need a stalker.
Well, maybe not an actual stalker, but someone to follow you around and monitor your every move. Think of this person more like a fly on the wall, or a personal assistant whose job it is to objectively record what you are up to.
Years ago, I read a book by John Maxwell, an author and leadership coach, who asked how I would respond if he followed me around for twenty‐four hours to determine where my time was being spent.
John hypothesized that he would easily be able to tell what my highest priorities were based upon my daily activities and how much time I spent with each one.
Though I do not have actual data to support John's hypothesis, you will with your very own time audit.
For this audit, our goal is to determine where your time goes in this current season, specifically, over the course of a single day. At this point, we will not focus on the past or the future, just the here and now.
Objectively, how is your time being spent? The first phase of the Time Audit consists of three steps. Complete each of these steps before moving on to the next chapter.
During my four years in college, I used a detailed calendaring system to record not only everything I was about to do, but also everything I had just done. I would update my calendar every day, filling in every hour of the day I was awake with a quick description of my activities. My calendar became a thorough record‐keeping system with unbelievably helpful information. For example, I could easily see how much time I spent at social events versus the library. If my grades were slipping, the next move was obvious and verifiable.
You can choose a method like this one, or one that makes it easy for you to record any relevant data. The key is to choose a recording device you will have access to all day. Your phone or a small notebook will do the trick.
The day you audit your activities will ideally be a day you want to dramatically improve. If Mondays are the busiest day of your week, as mine tend to be, that could be a great choice.
When you analyze your busiest (or worst) day of the week, you are giving yourself the most valuable information about how you can make tangible progress in the future.
When the big day arrives, begin recording your activities on an hourly basis. Take no more than five minutes per hour to record what you did in the previous sixty minutes.
The goal is to record information you believe to be objective, accurate, and relevant to your goal of discovering exactly how you spend your time, without fudging the data to make yourself feel better.
Most importantly, be sure to record any and all time‐wasting activities, on top of the more clearly defined goal‐achieving tasks.
As an example, you could record activities such as:
In the next chapter, we will analyze the data you collected from your Self‐Evaluation and Time Audit.
You will also complete Phase II of the Time Audit, which is designed to specifically quantify how much time is being spent on the goals you claim are the most important.
This question is undoubtedly the most common one I hear when I ask my coaching clients to reflect on their current situation before embarking on a new adventure.
There is a lot of resistance here, and I get it.
I am an impatient and ambitious guy myself, so I know what it is like to want to jump in the deep end without considering whether I can swim.
Simply put: thorough evaluations provide incredibly useful information that I would not want you to miss.
Take a minute, pause, and figure out exactly where you are, before getting lost in the weeds again.
I hear you. I do. The answer is yes. It is possible for you to free up significant time, no matter how busy you are (there is a reason that phrase is in the title of the book).
Simply put: the busier you are, the harder the decisions will be on what to cut. Fortunately, there is a lot we can do here, and I will be covering many different strategies on how to manage these tough choices as the book progresses. Hang with me. This is going to be fun!
In the next chapter, we will break down the priorities that matter most in your life, no matter where they fall on someone else's spectrum of ambition.
The first step of The Free‐Time Formula is to analyze your life in this season to discover more about who and where you are right now.
Knowing more about your present reality and how you operate best is vital to understanding how you can optimize your life and move forward with real confidence and results.
Detailed self‐evaluations and time audits provide valuable and useful data. Instead of moving on too quickly to your next step, take a minute, pause, and figure out exactly what is going on today before getting lost in the weeds again.
Making the most of the time you already have is a great strategy to get a jump start on your progress right away. Take advantage of the open blocks that are on your calendar this week. Do something you normally would not do, to get results you normally would not get.
The evaluation is the foundation for your self‐awareness and provides a starting block to build from. As the rest of the formula is presented, you will use the results from the evaluation to determine your best plan of action.
The audit provides a clear snapshot of exactly what you spend your time doing. When you know how your time is being spent you have the best opportunity to cut significant time wasters and swiftly improve the progress on your most important goals.
Visit JeffSanders.com/FreeTimeBonus to download the Self‐Evaluation and Time Audit documents, as well as other bonuses for the book.