People face the same issue with money as they do with time. There’s always too little of both. Until something very sudden and important happens.
The most engaged people you know as well as the laziest will say very often: “I don’t have time”. Does that really mean they have no time at all? Or maybe they’re just wrapped up with stuff?
Imagine your car brakes. Suddenly you have to schedule few things: a tow, a repair, a visit to a mechanic workshop. Let’s say it takes you four hours to find the mechanic and the towing company, to arrange everything and then to come and collect your four wheels. You had to find those four hours by moving other things around your schedule, squeezing here, chopping there. If somebody asked you in the beginning of that week, do you have four hours to study new language, what would you reply? Let me guess – I have no time. But wait! You found four hours to fix your car.
Is it the issue of time or priorities then? Turns out, if something is important and urgent you’ll find the time, even if you’re a CEO with old parents and children that you have to take care of.
Does it work in similar way with money? Imagine you have only £200 on your account. It’s two weeks to payday, you still have to pay your bills and buy groceries. You need this money. Now your colleague asks you to lend him £200. What do you say? Sorry mate.
Let’s imagine the same situation, but instead of a colleague asking for a loan, your hard drive and power supply unit got fried by a power surge. Well, you must have a working computer, right? Now you’re thinking: “Oh… I could pay my bills later one time… Or sell something on eBay.” Next day you’re at home with new parts for your PC. Was your money situation different? No. Your PC was higher priority than your colleague’s request. Simple as that.
How can you use this knowledge? In both cases it’s best to think about your future self. Everyone has some goals for the future: a house, a better job, a journey around the world. Because these goals are something that seems to be far away now, we let life, small stuff, little things get in a way. Our minds work on current problems, even the tiniest of them, because they happen now.
When you have an hour of spare time, it’s more appealing to your brain to tell you to watch a TV show than to think about how this hour could get you closer to mastering this Spanish, Photoshop, programming or whatever you’re trying to achieve. It’s also easier to buy dinner for £20 now then to think about how that amount of money could buy you half a week of food. After all, you’re hungry now, right?
The trick to beat your brain is treating your goals as they were burnt hard drive or broken car. They must be urgent priorities for you! It requires constant focus on what is the most important for you to achieve in the future, so that future you could be grateful instead of being disappointed. So, schedule your priorities first in your calendar and pay your future self first, by transferring money to savings account first after the payday. This way you’ll have money and time for what’s important for you.
Now brainstorm for a while and write down your five most important goals in the comments below. Do you think the advice above might be helpful to you?
