Throughout the day you can spend your time doing many different actions. In this article I want to look at budgeting time in terms of activities. Instead of looking at your activities in terms of time it takes to complete them, consider looking at your time in terms of types of activities that you can fill it with. Here is how this works:

All activities can be pretty much divided into three groups: productive actions, consumptive actions and investing actions.

  • Productive Actions are the actions that produce something other people can benefit from – such as a song or an article or a computer game. These actions are targeted at serving other people.
  • Consumptive Actions are the actions that are targeted at serving ourselves. This includes consuming food, various types of entertainment, watching films and playing computer games. Sleeping also falls into this category.
  • Investing Actions are the action that are consumptive in nature, but are targeted at improving our ability to produce better quality of service. This includes reading books relating to the area of your production, going to seminars, practising your speaking skills and any other activity that has the potential to increase the volume of your production.

Unfortunately most people are stuck in the consumption mode where they spend very little time producing something of enduring value and spend almost no time on investing into their productive abilities.

Ideally we want to minimize the time we spend on consumption and instead focus our energies on the activities that are productive and the activities that improve our productive abilities. This is because the only thing that matters in life is the value of the things that we produce. So if we want to become financially independent then we need to produce an abundance of valuable stuff that will justify the financial rewards that we become entitled to receive in return.

The interesting thing is that when we are engaged in creative production then it feels just as rewarding as consumption – except it creates value instead of dissipating it. Ideally what we want to do is align our lives with production in such a way that all our consumption is targeted at improving our ability to produce.

For instance, if you are running a news website then watching news is indeed a very valuable experience for you because you will be able to produce more content for your website after watching the news. However is it really valuable to watch the news if you are doing what you are doing today? What if you were to read a book on how to become better at what you are already producing today?

What Can You Produce?

We are all good at something. We are born with our unique talents and abilities which we can get really good at. All we have to do is figure out how to apply these talents to build something valuable within our material world – to bring the ideas from our minds and into the material world. For instance, Brian Tracy uses his analytical ability and knowledge to produce incredibly valuable informational products that teach us the very strategies that we can use in order to get into the habit of production.

Whatever you produce will be the direct reflection of who you are. And in fact, if you are in the right occupation where you can apply your built in talents to produce something valuable then the whole process of production will be very rewarding to you emotionally. If you are producing something that you are naturally built for producing then you will not feel like your work requires any major efforts on your part. It will just seem as an enjoyable experience.

The problem that most people have is that they are afraid of looking foolish when they first start out working for themselves. They are afraid that what they produce will not measure up with the products of the professionals who dominate the market. Consequently most people never try to produce something valuable because of this fear of ‘failure’ to measure up with the big corporations. What’s tragic about all this is that by never getting started, these people for ever eliminate any possibility of success from their lives and so consequently live their lives unproductively.

Investing In Your Productivity

If you find yourself wanting to produce something personal and at the same time feel this fear of appearing foolish – just remember that “there never was a winner who wasn’t a beginner.” If you are currently unable to produce something of real value then what you need to focus on is investing more energy into the development of our skills. How do we become better writers? We train our minds by reading a lot of valuable content and at the same time producing content that is our own. You need to get into this habit of production and just produce an abundance of stuff regardless of how good you consider yourself to be at the moment. Eventually you will get better with time – if you just keep practising.

Generally, all the time that you spend investing into your abilities will eventually pay off because it will make you more valuable to other people who are looking for your skills. A book on how to become better at what you are doing may not cost much money today, but will increase your chances of earning more money in the future as you get better at what you are already naturally inclined to be good at.

Final Thoughts

Think of production as the outward flow of energy from yourself and into the world, consumption as the inward flow of energy from the world and into yourself and investment as a throttle on the outward flow of energy. When you look at budgeting your time in this manner then choosing the right activities to do becomes a whole lot easier.