Use your time : 8 tips on how to make the most of your time

Currently, we are going through a very exciting time. Maybe you’re now thinking “Hello Ronny, why exciting? We are in a tremendous time of crisis”. Yeah, that’s right, and we are all experiencing a situation of unimaginable proportions. A crisis we can only influence positively to a limited extent, in which we spend a large portion of our time at home and enjoy only a limited public life. Therefore, this is the perfect time to use your time wisely instead of having your time use you.

The topic of this blog post is to figure out how to use your time in a positive way so that it gives you momentum and you come out of this stronger than before. I would like to motivate everyone to see the extra time that they currently have at their disposal, whether they are working in their home office or have been sent on holiday for some time.

I am firmly convinced that the wheat is now being separated from the chaff and at the end of this incredible time, we will all recognize who the true winners and who the losers are.

There is a unique opportunity in this like never before which means that you can use the extra time for many different things to come out of this crisis stronger… or you can just waste it and do nothing to improve your life.

Use time positively – make the right choice

Every day you can make a conscious choice wether you find the additional time that is available to you annoying and you will start the day by trying to distract yourself somehow like…

• Killing time for hours and getting bored in front of the Playstation, or
• You can start zapping through all the TV channels early in the morning to get the latest stats or consume some TV soap operas, or
• Maybe you’d prefer to sleep away until midday.

Or maybe there is a different path where you make the decision to be happy about the time you’ve gained and finally start projects you’ve been planning for a long time, to invest time in yourself, in your development, in your mindset, and sharpen your strengths.

The great thing about the current situation is that there is finally time to deal with yourself because many people are so preoccupied with various activities in everyday life that they forget about themselves. Now is the ideal time to finally put yourself first.

I have put together a few suggestions for you below, with which you can start right now. See what suits you and your personality and what you enjoy.

8 suggestions on how to make the best use of time at home

1. Learning

Learn something new that you always wanted to learn like a language for example or a musical instrument, speed reading or possibly even coding. There are many online programs that allow you to learn a foreign language in just 4 weeks and the positive thing about digital learning is that you can learn all kinds of things at your own pace. You could also learn virtually how to play a musical instrument and there are tutorials for almost every topic on YouTube. Learning by yourself is not for you? Then find a learning buddy and you can learn together in a virtual classroom.

2. Get fit

Many people suffer from a lack of physical exercise whilst home, as the usual training at the gym is missing. Whether or not you completed your personal fitness program every day before the crisis, keeping fit within your own four walls is not easy, and for many people a change, but it is not impossible. Here too, the Internet offers you a variety of exercises and even full exercise programs lasting several weeks that you can integrate into your daily routine. Pay particular attention to your diet at the present time, because lack of exercise is often accompanied by a surplus of calories. Exercising is also good for your immune system, and that is especially important at the moment. Occupy yourself with ketogenic nutrition or interval fasting. You will see that you can stay physically fit at home. We all know that physical fitness is also a basic requirement for mental fitness.

3. Meditation

Meditation is a wonderful way to balance your own energy. If you are a meditation beginner, you can download various guided meditations from the internet or try out various apps. Practice meditation every day… preferably in the morning. This will help you to avoid developing cabin fever and stabilize your emotional state. As a little secret tip, you can also try hypnotherapy or binaural beats, where you work directly with your subconscious mind.

4. Muck out, clean up, repair, renovate and decorate

Now is the optimal time to muck out, tidy up, repair, renovate and decorate. After the apartment has already been cleaned to a high gloss, you can now get to mucking out. There are T-shirts laying around in the wardrobes that you will never wear again and you can also say goodbye to old DVDs… or maybe even older VHS tapes because you might not even have a VCR anymore just like redundant magazines and gifts that you will never use again. Experience the wonderful feeling of getting rid of unnecessary ballast and use the time to do long-overdue minor repairs that you have been putting off. In everyday life, you often lack the time to finally tackle the small construction sites and if you are lucky enough to have a balcony, use the current situation to make it fit for spring and summer.

5. Using time for the family

Finally, your family can come first. You and your family can rediscover what has been lost in its turbulent everyday life so far. Instead of playing solo games on the Playstation, you can play a board game together in the evening or you can put your children to bed in peace and read them a bedtime story and also cooking together strengthens family relationships. Maybe you will get to know a completely new side of your partner. Important – only the family in your own four walls… you can meet the others via Zoom or apps like Houseparty, for example, for a virtual game night.

6. Get ready for the home office

The idea of working in the home office has been neglected by many employees and employers. At the same time, it can be assumed that we will work more and more from home in the future. Make yourself fit for everything around the home office right now. I recently held a webinar on this topic – you can watch the replay on the topic “Focus and fun in the home office” here. As a special treat, you can also create an additional source of income from home out of necessity… For more details, see point 8.

7. Using the right time for investments

Are you a number cruncher with a basic understanding of mathematics and the market economy? Take advantage of this opportunity and find out more about stock investments or cryptocurrencies. Many shares have experienced a downward slide and are cheap to buy. On the other hand, the next “halving” of Bitcoin is imminent. But only consider and invest money that you have spare in stocks or Bitcoins. And here’s a legal note: this paragraph does not serve as an investment order or purchase recommendation.

8. Create new business opportunities.

If you have been working in an industry that was mainly offline, it is almost a “must” to reorient yourself. For example If you previously had a boutique, switch to an online shop or If you were previously a craftsman, consider offering your customers an additional digital service. Time and work will have to be reassessed in the future. Apart from that, there are countless digital business models for which there is still a growing market. Maybe you can make a start in network marketing or register as an affiliate partner and build your digital business from home. If you can teach a particular activity, create a webinar or course and generate additional revenue. Here it is important: you don’t have to be the best in the world at what you want to teach to start off with… it is enough if you are better than your students 😉 In the future you will exchange knowledge for money as opposed to selling your time for money.

Use your time – your Hour of Power

For me, regular daily and weekly routines are important so that I can use my time optimally.

Because of that I have integrated a weekly “Hour of Power” into my time management for years.  I will now tell you exactly what this is and how I use this tool.

Once a week I deliberately take an hour of power. The weekend is for me the best time to do this and during this hour, I make sure that I am undisturbed and able to focus on my goals. This “hour of power” has become a dear ritual for me. Here I take my vision board, which I create at the beginning of each year.

Here is how the Hour of Power works…

• I start to absorb my whole vision-board again to connect with my mission statement, my goals and values.
• Next, I look back on the past week and write down the top ten of my experiences from the past week – my personal magic moments.
• The next step after this is to check which tasks have been left over from the past week. Here I also record goals that I set up the week before but did not achieve.
• Then I set myself goals for the upcoming week. The question I ask myself is: What steps do I need to take this week to get closer to my goals?
• Now I structure the coming week and enter already agreed dates in my calendar. I summarize certain activities in time blocks, for example there is a recurring block for administrative work. In this block, I work through e-mails and calls on a regular basis. These blocks are now also added to the calendar.
• Within the structure, I also assign priorities for some activities. This should help me to have my MUST-DOs under control.
• For each day of the coming week, I define my number 1 result, what I absolutely must achieve on that respective day.
• In my weekly planning, I also integrate breaks and of course physical workouts, which are very important to me.

I have learned to use my time optimally

What is time really? Time is emotion. Think about it: there are moments when time flies and other moments when minutes turn into hours. The difference is the emotions you experience in those moments.

To take this thought a bit further, you might know some people who constantly have no time or are perpetually under stress, but why? Have you ever realized that time is the only resource in the world of which we all have exactly the same amount every day, no matter if you have no belongings or you are the most powerful person in the world, we all have the same amount of time and therefore the only logical explanation is that it is all about how we use our time.

How do you deal with your time? How do you enjoy spending time so that it gives you energy and positive emotions? What tips can you give on how to manage your time?

Please let me know in the comments. In the upcoming weeks I will be holding some more webinars dealing with this topic. If you want to attend, make sure you’re subscribed to my blogs. I am looking forward to our motivating exchange.