Find Out How Much Free Time You Really Have With the 5-Minute Test
Everyone wants them to have more time per day. However, we also often have little understanding of how much time we are wasting. To find out if you’re really overwhelmed or if you’re just letting your days slip away, take the Five More Minutes experiment.
As the personal finance blog Get Rich Slowly explains, when you get up with one task to start another, you make the decision to fill your time with what comes next. If your day is just one big series of never-ending tasks, you can easily overwhelm yourself, even if all of these tasks are optional or subject to change. Instead, when you are about to get up from one place, take five minutes to sit down where you are. Doesn’t work, I just sit:
Small changes matter. I realized that while I was making big strides towards financial well-being, I was running out of time. Gone are my debts, as have my Sunday morning walks and long hours of espresso. One of my mini-experiments was to stay five minutes longer whenever possible. If I didn’t have a place to be, whenever I got up to go somewhere, I would sit down again for another five minutes. The only rule I had was that I couldn’t pick up the phone during those five minutes. I just had to be.
Chances are, in those five minutes, you will quickly realize how urgent everything you need to do is. Will sitting for five minutes mean that you are late for the second shift of another job? Of course, you probably won’t be able to save that time. However, would sitting for five minutes mean doing the dishes after five minutes? Will that mean five minutes less playing or watching Netflix? If you find yourself in this situation, you may have more free time than you think.
Life After Debt – Experimenting With Financial Balance | Get rich slowly with Rockstar Finance