Free Time Matters at the End of the Day

What do you do with your free time? You spend your life in thirds. You sleep one third of your life away given the average sleep time is 8 out of 24 hours. The other one third of your life is work, 8 – 10 hours a day plus commuting time. The last one third is your free time.

It’s what differentiates between you and somebody else. Your free time makes up who you are as a person and demonstrates what you value. After work, do you sit at the couch and watch TV until it’s time for bed? Or do you do chores instead of putting it off for the weekend so you can maximize your valuable time?

I’m definitely guilty of perpetually sitting down and watching Youtube videos right after work. Even after insisting and highlighting how valuable your time was. I just can’t help but feel overloaded with information and physically tired.

One thing that I will consciously try to do in 2021 is to make use of the time after work. While I won’t do high brain draining activities, I will look into doing low brain draining activities. I consider leisure to be an important aspect of my life and some days I may just do nothing after work.

I will of course be highlighting the progress and failures at this on my blog for transparency so stay tuned.

The last one third of your time that you spend can be the most valuable use on getting ahead. After all, if everyone sits at home and watches TV afterwards, that’s time you can spent working just a little bit harder. Devoting 1% of your time to better yourself compounds to huge returns by end of the year.

Things to Do

Now that I’ve got your attention, I’ve compiled a list of things that you could do in your free time to separate yourself from the pack. It will take maybe a week or two of putting in conscious effort. Afterwards, it’s just like clockwork. You won’t even notice doing it and then it’ll become a habit.

The problem with following articles like these is that most of the activities are complex activities. Listening to a podcast or writing are activities that require focus. Trying to focus while your energy is drained is a recipe for disaster. I do not recommend going this route.

Instead, there’s other things to do to separate yourself from the crowd. One of the things that you can do today is to SMASH that social share button for the Google algorithm named BERT 😊 . As you know, BERT for the most part doesn’t like gentle taps of the share button. He likes complete and total destruction of them.

So let’s destroy those share buttons and continue on to doing things to make you more successful.

Free Time Work: Chores

We’ve all been there and experienced the dreaded “that time of the week again” feeling. You guessed it, chores. You may be thinking, “hey what gives, I wanted to know about doing hard things like reading books”! The focus is to do low brain draining activities after work.

So that afterwards, you can leave the most important tasks to do for the weekend. Spending weekend time to do chores takes away too much of your attention and time. Chores are maintenance activities, not income generating activities.

Meaning, whether rain or shine, chores HAVE to be done. You can certainly spend money and outsource that task to save yourself time. But if you prefer not to spend money on things you can do yourself, it’s best to do it after work.

Things like laundry, vacuuming the house, dusting, and mopping up the floor can all be done after work. It certainly does not take up a noticeable amount of brainpower to do so. If you’re like me, I usually have on music in the background to pass the time.

It’s time consuming work, not complicated work. These things are best done when your mental capacity is at low points.

Free Time Work: Work Out

Health is indisputably far more valuable than wealth, without any question. Anyone knows that it’s arguably very difficult to work out on the weekends. You have to get dressed, drive to a gym, work out for some time, and come back.

On top of which, you feel less focused after you work out and come back home. It’s difficult to focus and work your memory even after the adrenaline rush of working out wears off. It’s like that for the entire day. Therefore, it’s best to work out on days where it was about to end anyway.

As long as you don’t start working out at least two hours before your scheduled bed time, it shouldn’t interfere with your sleep. By your bedtime, it should actually be easier to fall asleep. On top of that, you’re better off by being healthy.

In 2021 when gyms are starting to be open again, I plan on working out for 40 minutes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I used to adhere to this schedule for a solid two years and do not like that I stopped adhering to the schedule. I can’t imagine how far I would already be if I didn’t stop.

One of the reasons was that for the first two years, the gym would be completely free. When I moved to a new job, they charged $29.99 a month. I passed and started doing body weight exercises.

Now that I think about it, $30 a month for my physical health is not a big price to pay. 2021 is when I will start my workout regime again.

Free Time Work: Maintain Relationships

We neglect our loved ones more easily than you realize. I personally have my family all the way in South Korea so it’s especially hard to maintain that relationship. Instead of watching TV these days, I usually call my parents and see what they are up to.

It’s a time to deepen relationships and stay in touch. Your genuine relationships are more valuable than you realize. Not valuable in terms of business purposes. But valuable in that it’s very difficult to have friends that you truly care about and who truly cares about you.

After all, we’ll only be able to count on one hand the relationships that truly matter. Take the time to nurture these relationships. Just talking on the phone with them for 10-15 minutes matters significantly. Say how’s it going? Wanted to catch up, etc.

Not time consuming at all. A few minutes every week to see how one friend is doing will impact your life dramatically. It may not happen today or tomorrow but one day you’ll see the effects.

One day I had a conversation with the head of my group. She was saying how hard it was to have friends with a full time career and family. While it is difficult, it isn’t as difficult as you think it is. If one week it was hard for you and a friend to catch up, try again next week.

Then the week after, so on and so on. A simple text can suffice as well. If I like the person, I usually send a personalized happy birthday text. I know that it is appreciated that I remember.

Watching TV is Holding You Back

Watching TV produces zero value to your life. The person who wins when you watch TV are the advertisers. They’re getting their products and brands into your brain. When they successfully seep into your mind and leads to one day buying their product, they win.

Your free time should be value adding to you, not to someone else. Getting ahead isn’t as difficult as everyone makes it out to be. It’s the little things that we do over a long period of time that makes the difference. The big wins help but they happen maybe once every 1 – 2 years.

A promotion happens after 2-5 years of putting in your craft. Or buying a house that appreciates in value happens so many times. Winning in both small and big ways is the ultimate goal. It’s decidedly easier to win in small ways over a long period of time than the alternative.

Personal finance bloggers rarely support trying to outperform the market by buying individual stocks. We do not look for home run wins in a given year. No lottery winnings here.

Almost all of us always support trying to perform at the market over a long period of time. It’s a winning formula for everyone to move forward. It withstood the test of time over and over again and it will continue to do so. It all starts with switching up your free time routine.