Change Your Life in Just Eighteen Minutes
Eighteen minutes is not a lot of time, so how can someone claim that you can change your life in just eighteen minutes? It’s kind of like the joke, “How do eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”. All joking aside, what if you took just eighteen minutes a day to work on being better at something? Do you think you could create that time in your day for reaching your goals? If so, great! If you’re skeptical, read on and find out if it’s worth it to you to create the time.
Use the Wasted Eighteen Minutes a Day to Change Your Life
Most of us waste far more than eighteen minutes on any number of things; scrolling social media, watching TV, or playing video games are just a few examples of areas that suck a lot of time from you quickly. Multiple different studies have shown that people waste anywhere from 3-5 non-working hours a day! That’s a ton of time! If you devote just eighteen minutes a day to working on your craft, whatever it is, you will be better at it than 95% of the population! That’s crazy to think it’s that easy, yet still most won’t stay consistent and create that time.
Now I know some of you will be skeptical, so just follow along for a minute. Let's say you like to play golf and you play once a week. If you took eighteen minutes a day to work on your putting game, do you think you would start to see an improvement? Of course you would! And if you kept doing that every day, do you think that you would be a way better putter in a relatively short time? Of course you would! At the end of the year, there is a good chance you would be golfing better than most, if not all, of your golf buddies. The same can be applied for other skill-based passions and goals.
How to Use the Eighteen Minutes Each Day
How Amy and I have personally used this eighteen minutes a day may look different for you in your craft, but hopefully it will inspire you in ways you can also use that time to better your craft. Even when we don’t need to be working on a project for Gregg Media, we work on our craft at least eighteen minutes a day. This keeps us sharp. It keeps us learning. We set big scary goals for ourselves and then work eighteen minutes a day to get just a little closer to those goals. It's consistency that will win the day. Taking just eighteen minutes to work on something that matters to you will also change your brain.
The Changes Eighteen Minutes a Day Make on your Brain
If taking just eighteen minutes a day will change your brain for the better, then why doesn’t everyone do it? I asked the same questions myself. Here’s what I found. You see most people don’t believe in themselves, so they don’t invest in themselves. People will make time to sooth their pain in lots of different ways, like endlessly watching TV or scrolling social media for hours on end. This is not investing in yourself. You need to believe you are worth investing in, before you will make the time. So why not give it a try? Start with just one day tomorrow. Just eighteen minutes. Then do it again the next day and the next. Eventually it’ll become a habit. This habit will turn into sometime 1-4 hours on somedays, but at least eighteen minutes a day. We can tell you from experience. You’ll be surprised how far you get in 3-6 months. In 6 months alone, at just eighteen minutes a day, you will have put about 54 hours into your self-improvement. That’s a lot of time! Your brain will recognize the effort you have put into yourself and it will start looking for other opportunities to help you invest in yourself. It because a healthy cycle that will help you reach your goals far faster than any short term push.
It’s not easy to develop new habits and we’d highly recommend reading the book, “Atomic Habits” by James Clear to help you establish a system that works for your personal life. We found great value in the pages of that book. Once you’ve committed to working your eighteen minutes a day on something that really matters to you, don’t stop. It’s not easy to create a healthy habit, but it’s worth it! Keep climbing your mountain! We’re cheering you on!