Maximize Your Dead Time For a New Approach To Life 

I’ll be totally honest with you. I’ve struggled with poor time management skills most of my life. Planners never seemed to work because I was horrible at keeping them up-to-date. Those online project management programs that “automatically” track time, projects, and tasks? I've tried them all with no effect.

The result was that there just wasn’t extra time to pursue anything else and the concept of side hustles didn’t seem practical or even possible either.

I'm assuming others have felt that as well. We're so busy occupied by our professional and family lives. For some of us, we feel compelled to change our situation, but time seems so limited. Again, that's how I felt.

Net Time vs. Dead Time

Eventually, I caught a drift of the notion that time is your most valuable resource. 

What that meant was that instead of focusing on net income, I realized I should be focusing on net time—the free time I have after obligations and doing things I don’t enjoy.

That's when things started changing for me. I started trimming unnecessary activities and low-value time killers by outsourcing help or eliminating those activities altogether.

It helped me to find the time to devote to different side hustles like investing in real estate.

That started to work well, but when I wanted to take time management to the next level, I found ways to make better use of the time I didn’t want to trim.

Examples of net time are things like exercising, commuting, walking my dogs, sitting in line for coffee, or even playing golf.

No Extra Time vs. Dead Time

If you're my friend on Instagram, you've seen that I attended a Tony Robbins event this past weekend. Lots of awesome takeaways that I'll be slowly sharing over time. 

But one powerful concept that they mentioned was the concept of utilizing N.E.T. time (or No Extra Time).

The concept is that if you wanna optimize your time, you can use what might be considered a wasted time and educate yourself in those moments. It doesn’t take any extra time out of your day to do these things but you’re able to squeeze so much more out of the same hour.

How do you do that? Well, you can read, listen, or interact. Perhaps you’re commuting in the subway, you can read a book or blog. Maybe while you’re walking your dog, you can listen to a podcast or audiobook. Perhaps when commuting, you can hop on a call with someone you’re trying to learn from like a mentor or friend (or again listen to podcasts/audiobooks).

Some say you should simply sleep less to gain more time; however, I’m a big advocate of good sleep.

I think most people know how much time they need. My idea is seven hours although I can get by pretty well on six. If I get a solid interrupted seven hours, I feel ready to take on the world.

For those of us who have gone through residency, we know we can function on a lot less. However, we all know how important sleep is for mental and physical health.

What I aim for is shifting my sleeping routine and wake up a bit early to get things done before anyone else is awake. It doesn’t work for everyone, but I find I’m not productive later on in the night. So the morning shift has been a game changer for me.

Maximizing Your Dead Time

So what are some practical steps to maximize your dead time?

1. Figure out what those dead times are in your life, like exercise or commuting.
2. Be intentional about how to fill those times and create a list of things you’d love to get through in those slots (i.e., is it a podcast, an audiobook, a book? Keep this list on your phone so you know you’ll never be without it.
3. Carry headphones (My Airpods go with me everywhere).
4. Next time you’re on your commute or in line at Starbucks, remember to make the most out of that time. Look at your list and take action.

The great thing is that this can be put to use immediately and add time to your day without adding to the full plate you already have. After a while, it becomes second nature and ingrained in you.

In fact, I crave it to a degree.

We all have the same number of hours in a day, but how we maximize those hours, especially the dead time helps determine how quickly we achieve our goals.

How do you maximize your dead time or are you willing to try it now? Find Passive Income Docs on Facebook to share your thoughts with the community.