Hello everyone, this is Helen Huang @ Organizing, based in Beijing, China. In order to better learn and practice the YiXiaoNeng Time Management System, after finished publishing 100 Chinese articles, I decided to continue writing and publishing a daily English article in another 100 days based on the "YeWuBin Time Management 100 Episodes" audio program. Today is the 117th day.
Today's topic is: How You Spend Your Day is How You Will Live Your Life!
Today, I want to share with you a simple concept: how you spend your day is how you'll live your life.
Whether you are rich or poor, successful or unsuccessful, each of us has only 24 hours a day. All of us from one end of the Earth to the other, from the beginning of time to now and into the future, have the same 24 hours each day to use. Each of us uses that time differently giving us different results and very different lives.
Each of us has a lot of repeated habits. In fact, 70% of our behavior on any given day is the result of habits that we repeat each day. 70%！Therefore, each day we are simply repeating the actions of the previous day. Our lives then are the product of these repeated habits.
So I often tell my Yixiaoneng students one thing: “how you spend your day is how you'll live your life.”
Each day we are given 24 hours and we actually do not spend most of it working.
In the last lecture, we talked about the "three basic habits of life": eating, sleeping and exercising. These three habits will account for about 13 to 15 hours of our time in a day. If you can make full use of these 13 to 15 hours, then you will be healthier and have more energy to do the "important things" in the remaining 8 hours of your day. In this way, you will maximize your efficiency, and have the time to do what you want – those things that will get you closer to your dreams.
Most people live chaotic and inefficient lives. And can you guess why? It's because they have bad habits, and are unwilling to change those habits.
I often tell my students that there two ways to live life: offline and online.
What is offline life?
We talked about this in our last lesson. Remember that person who wakes at 7AM and sleeps at 11PM? Remember the person who is woken unnaturally by an alarm clock with little energy? The inability to wake up in the morning comes from your decision to socialize or entertain guests at home, or stay up late until 11:00 PM at night. Then when you get home and lie in bed, do you go directly to sleep? No, we often lay in bed, look at WeChat or other social networks, read some magazine articles or messages with someone over our phones. And then, you actually sleep later around midnight. It's no wonder you cannot wake in the morning. And when you do, you have no energy! You are simply not getting enough quality sleep.
And if you don't get up early in the morning, you will have no time to plan your day and organize your tasks, or even to have a good breakfast. Then you will be hungry well before noon. You will be hypoglycemic, that means low on sugar. At 11:00, you will begin to feel faint. You will be unable to concentrate and will not be able to work efficiently. And when you begin working, you will be distracted and complete unimportant tasks like shopping on Amazon or TaoBao or gossiping with your colleagues. Thus, the important things are pushed from the morning to the afternoon. If your energy is lower in the afternoon than in the morning, your frog will become bigger and uglier and it will be more unpleasant to complete. And in the end, your work is inefficient so it takes longer to complete your tasks. You must extend the time you spend working. Instead of leaving at 5:00 PM, you must work until 8:00 PM. And then after work, you have a late meal with your colleagues and friends, and then go to the bar for a while. And then your day is over before you know it.
This hurried, inefficient, non-productive, unfulfilling life is the one most people live: The life of 7 to 11.
This is the offline life. Getting up late and going to bed late. No exercise. Lack of focus. Working longer hours. Not having the discipline to go to bed when you arrive home and end the day, but rather lying on it and distracting yourself with unimportant things. Because nothing meaningful was accomplished during the day. Each day continuing to sleep late, vowing that things will be different, then he or she will change. But living the same life day after day, until slowly he or she begins to hate himself, or just becomes numb with the cloak of hopelessness and the feeling of powerlessness to change. This is the life a person controlled by his bad habits. This is the offline life.
What about the online life? How does it compare?
Well, in the online life, we get up when the first ray of sunlight enters the room. Automatically, we begin our morning rituals: take a cold shower, meditate for 10 minutes, write in the morning diary, read a few pages of certain books, run for 30 minutes, list the tasks we want to complete today, and set the Pomodoro clocks to begin the task of eating the frogs. This time is designed to squeeze as much as work into a little time as possible so that work time can be reduced into spurts of focused energy, so that we can use our time later to do the things we want to do.
In this way, you will increase your energy more and more. You will achieve greater things in your life. And your life will burst with excitement. People will come closer and closer to you. And most importantly, you will have the energy, the time and the means to focus on what is truly important to you – the opportunity to go after your dreams whatever that may be. To create a life that is meaningful for you. This is the online life.
What is the difference between the online and offline life?
Not much. Not much difference between these two. The difference is in the small things:
Go to sleep two hours earlier.
Wake up two hours earlier.
Eat a healthy breakfast. Eat a full and reenergizing lunch. Eat little supper.
At work reverse the order of tasks you complete. Start with the important things. End with the unimportant things.
Exercise just a little more in your life.
And finally, eat frogs with vigor and energy.
But this is not most of people live their lifes. Day after day, year after year, the gap in the number of people who live the offline life and the online life grows wider and wider. The lives of online and offline people are drastically different. But if you look at their everyday lives, each day is only a little different.
So focus on this day. Focus on the small things. Make the small changes. And from these small changes, your entire life will change dramatically.
There is one last thing I want to tell you today.
Kobe Bryant, one of the NBA's greatest players, gets up at 4:00 AM every morning;
Ben Franklin, woke up at 5:00 AM and slept at 10:00 PM every day, and every morning he asked himself, "What will I do today?" and each night he would ask “What have I done today”?
Michael Esiner, the President of Disney gets up at 4:30AM every day. Steve Jobs when he was alive and Tim Cook – the leaders of Apple rose early in the morning.
Tseng Kuo-Fan, a famous Chinese leader in the 19th century, rose early every morning. He said: "Getting up early is the basic rule to build a family, and getting up late is the bad quality that will destroy a family's happiness and fortune."
So, the whole day's work depends on a good start in the morning. If you can get up early, plan your day and eat frogs in the morning, your life will change dramatically.
Of course, you don't have to do this every single day, and you can relax during a holiday. But we must be dictated by habits and to do that you must first develop it.
So which life are you living? The online life or the offline life? Are you willing to change the little things make them your habits? If you are and if you do, you will watch your life change before your very eyes. Open a new chapter in your life. Try it today! Begin today!
That's all for the class. Thank you being with me together today. Have a wonderful day!
