How To Gain 20 Hours Per Week To Build Your Business

Ken's Blog

Not so long ago, someone in the SBI! Forums read somewhere that the average American spends an average of 4.5 hours per day watching TV. "4.5 hours per day" is one of those incredible-but-true stats. TV is an incredibly insidious productivity-killer.

TV, to paraphrase Karl Marx, is today's "opiate of the masses." And "opiate" is the perfect word to describe most of those 4.5 hours per day of television.

We all need an "escape" every now and then, some passive activity where you can just turn the brain off. And the "TV escapes" are just so easy/accessible. Nothing wrong with that. But if you're at 4.5 hours per day, you have a "TV-opiate addiction" that is hurting other areas of your life.

Janice and I watched quite a bit of TV/movies when we thought we had retired, pre-Web. Harmless enough. But then the Web came along...

There's no way SiteSell could have been built if those TV habits had remained over the next 10 years.

A comment in the forums summed it up perfectly...

If you want to build a business and long-term independence... "(it's) hard to find anything worth trading 2 hours of my life for."

Bingo!

Recognize that time is more precious than money. You can always earn more money. But once time is spent, there's no way to get it back.

And business-building costs time.

When folks refund on SBI!, it's always a matter of "it takes too much time" or some variant on that theme. The real answer, of course, when you parse what that truly means, is...

"I'd rather spend 4.5 hours per day of my life in front of the TV."

And you know what? That's OK if you've really considered your goals and your time management in those terms.

If we can't inspire those people to "BAM It!" and squeeze more out of life in the long run, they are probably happiest parked in front of the TV. And that speaks to another SBIer's bottom-line comment...

"It's a choice. Neither is right or wrong."

Yes indeed... as long as that choice consciously weighs the benefit of TV vs. the cost to your longer term goals.

Time really is money, and the last time I looked, the TV networks weren't paying us to watch, nor are they planning for our futures.

So... do a hard, realistic time audit. How much TV do you watch? Devote 3/4 of that to building your own business instead. Enjoy the other 1/4, guilt-free.

On average, that frees up an amazing 3 hours per day, 20 hours per week, to build a future.

All the best,