PTCC #004: 📺 TV destroys side hustles
In the mail 📧
The story: Americans spend 10 years of their life watching TV. Yikes.
Small ideas: Ideas to ponder.
Web highlights: Alex Hormozi teaches us how to get rich in three years, Tintin Smith teaches us how to turn our life around and Sean Kernan talks about book deals.
Read time: 2 minutes
THE STORY
Nearly 10 Years of Your Waking Life Is Spent Watching TV. You Don’t Need More Time.
“That’s not right, is it?!”
Those are the words that came out of my mouth right after reading this fact: the average American spends 10 years of their waking life, watching TV.
I had to double take but I ran the math. On average an American watches 3 hours of TV a day. That means if the average lifespan is 78 years old. 3 hours a day is 12.5% of 24 hours. 12.5% of 78 years is nearly 10 years.
That stat alone makes me want to hide under a blanket and stare at the black box but that’s part of the problem. The reality is, we don’t lack time, we just use it poorly. And that’s what I want to talk about.
1. Plan religiously, flex appropriately
Here’s the deal, Brits spend over 100 days of their life deciding what to watch on TV. Wild. Imagine just sitting in front of a screen for 100 days straight switching between channels and deciding what to watch.
What a waste of time.
Here’s what you should do instead, time block and plan. Set specific times in your day for writing, learning, reading, whatever. But then go one set further by working out exactly what you are going to be writing, learning, reading, whatever.
My writing block: 6 am — 8 am.
My headlines tomorrow: “4 Simple Ways to Find Time to Write Alongside Your Day Job” and “These 5 Easy 1-Minute Habits Made Me Thousand This Year”.
My prep: I’ve already written out my outlines and got bullet points about what I’m going to say in each section.
This is all good and well but if something pops up tomorrow morning and I can’t write for whatever reason, I’ll be able to flex and save these ideas for later in the day.
2. Making hard tasks feel good
Your hardest tasks are the ones you want to untangle first. Why? Because like anything, if you leave it too late it’ll go onto tomorrow’s to-do list. You don’t want that. You want to tackle the things you set out to tackle today, in the next 14 hours.
You do that by doing hard tasks first and stopping your brain from using procrastination as a way to avoid negative emotions. The reality is, procrastination is all about avoiding negative feelings. It’s a response to feeling uncomfortable.
If something looks too hard, too confusing, or you’re not sure how to approach it then what tends to happen is you procrastinate. Instead of facing it you avoid it and feel better by doing something easier, something that you know how to do.
Instead, you need to get good at feeling bad. I know that sounds weird but bear with me. If you can train your brain to face hard tasks, to sit with the discomfort and do it, next time it’ll get easier. Over time you’ll build up a habit of facing hard things and those things will feel easier and easier.
3. Squeezing time like the juice of a lemon
The way we use time is the equivalent of throwing a lemon at the wall and expecting all the juice to fall out. It won’t. If you want the juice out of a lemon you need to cut it in half and squeeze.
The same is true for the time you have. You have to work hard at getting the best out of the time you have. You can’t just show up and expect things to happen. You need to sit down, with a game plan, a series of actions that are thought through and work. You have to squeeze.
The best way to do this is to work on your flow states. It’s to figure out the way you get into the zone the quickest and keep repeating that over and over until you have a set of principles that work you up to your flow state.
Here are things that have worked for me in the past:
Headphones without music
Coffee before writing
2L of water
Slippers
Sometimes it’s the simple things that make the biggest difference.
SMALL IDEAS
There is a lesson in everything. Big setbacks = big lessons.
Apply design thinking to your creative pursuits. It’s a killer productivity hack.
You need to master your workflow. Write it out and optimise it.
Your side hustle fails because you play too small. Think long-term.
WEB HIGHLIGHTS
Alex Hormozi sat down with Lewis Howes to tell us how to get rich. Whilst we’re not in love with the title, Alex H spits some real magic.
Tintin Smith talks about changing his life. Over the last year, he went from not being excited about work to being way more excited about work. Which is obviously way worth knowing about.
Sean Kernan is a fantastic writer and I read his brilliant article on his recent involvement with a major publisher and what he’d learned. It’s well worth the read.
My new book is out now! : 100,000 Words — The Quiet Secrets to Building a Writing Practice Alongside Your 9–5 — grab your copy for $0.99!