Time Is More Than Money - Happy Hour
Today is the last Friday of the month and in case you are new to this blog or my podcast, on the last Friday of the month, I host a happy hour on my podcast where the happy hour ladies and I talk about various money topics while drinking cheap drinks! Today, we're talking about the most precious commodity we all have: time. The ladies joined me for some drinks to share their thoughts on time and how they manage it best. Listen and enjoy! Cheers!As a side note: the first week in March, I will be recording a special listeners’ only Happy Hour with three lucky listeners! If you’d like to be selected, you must:
Enjoy a good Happy Hour
Be a member of the Martinis and Your Money Facebook group
Today – February 24th – you need to post in the Facebook group something you’ve learned or thought about differently since listening to this show.
I will pick the top three responses and schedule a Happy Hour call to record the podcast! The winners will be notified next week!
What are we drinking?
Melanie from Dear Debt — Vodka martini
Tonya from Budget and the Beach — Chardonnay
Mrs. Frugalwoods from Frugalwoods.com — Boxed white wine
Shannon — Beringer Cabernet
Podcast Notes
The most important asset we all have is time.
The better we manage time, the better we manage everything else.
Melanie is a freelancer and she uses:
Asana to keep track of her projects
RescueTime to track her time online – she says it’s like Mint.com but for your time.
SelfControl (a Mac-specific app) to manage her social media distractions
Melanie says managing time and managing energy go hand-in-hand.
She knows she is night owl and she tries to avoid early meetings and scheduling things early in the morning.
One change she has made in the mornings is giving herself one hour in the morning and at night to not look at her phone.
A quote that really resonated with Melanie was “do you want to be a consumer or a creator?”
As a working mom, Mrs. Frugalwoods manages her time by following her daughter’s schedule.
When Babywoods goes down for a nap, Mrs. Frugalwoods is writing.
She is very slow to reply to emails and text messages because she is laser-focused when she sits down to write.
Following her daughter’s schedule has made her a very fast writer.
She says a routine schedule helps her the most with managing time.
Tonya says she is a combination of a free spirit and Mrs. Frugalwoods.
The key for her is saying no to doing a lot of things.
She has a routine for some parts of the day like when she wakes up (5:30am!) and the rituals she does in the morning.
She enjoys a slow morning and easing into her day.
On the weekends she sleeps in until 6:00am – 6:30am and then tries to workout around 9:00am.
She says she needs to be more efficient about finishing her tasks.
She read Essentialism by Greg McKeown and highly recommends it.
Her biggest takeaway from it was if you’re not prioritizing your own life, someone will prioritize it for you!
Shannon says the ultimate thing about managing time is knowing yourself.
Allowing downtime is very important to keep her from getting burned out.
Understanding how you function during certain periods of time is extremely important!
Shannon doesn’t use a lot of apps but she is obsessed with using her Google Calendar.
It is really important for her to put her son Will on the bus to school every morning because her evening schedules are always so hectic.
Tonya went from freelancing back to a 9 to 5 and she hasn’t found many challenges besides not being able to workout in the mornings at her optimal time like she used to.
Frugalwoods doesn’t think she could ever go back to a 9 to 5 job.
Tonya says napping for 20 minutes really helps her during the day.
Shannon says napping destroys the rest of her days.
The ladies all agree that multi-tasking decreases productivity.
Find what works best for you – whether it is an app or a schedule – and manage your time so it aligns with your priorities!
TAKEAWAY: Think about time as you think about your money. It’s precious and we need to manage it accordingly because it’s not infinite.