Have you ever stopped to wonder where the time has gone? Minutes, hours, even months and years go by and you feel like you just blinked your eyes? As I get older, I realize that more and more. It feels like someone is fast forwarding through my life. The kids are growing up too fast, and I am realizing time is not on my side. Do you ever feel like that? I have spent years of my life chasing things that I shouldn’t. Doing things that don’t matter, and working towards an unfulfilled destination. I finally figured out that it needed to stop. My husband and I run several companies together.  In the past few years, we were working harder and harder, more travel, more work, less life. We felt we had to work that way to sustain our lives and provide for our family. The only thing was, we were hardly able to see our family, or enjoy our lives at all. From the outside, people saw us traveling and living our lives through social media. It looked like a lot of fun, but I assure you it was NOT. It was killing us. We hadn’t been on a proper family vacation in almost 10 years. That is crazy. The time just flew by, and in the blink of an eye 10 years had slipped by.

We realized a lot about ourselves. We were working harder and definitely not smarter. We knew there had to be a better way.  So we finally decided to go on vacation. We ended up making it a little bit of business with a lot of vacation. We had the best time with our kids, and really connected with our family. We decided we were never going to miss that again, and were sad that all those years went by without memories like that. A lot of things can change your perspective on life… a tragedy, a failure, an accomplishment, etc. I decided I was not going to waste time and waste my life. Don’t get me wrong, I still get sucked into social media, and television shows that keep me in a time warp. But I try to purposefully and intentionally live my life. Last year some friends of ours invited us to a marketing event they put on. We went not knowing anything about it and by the time we were done, realized we had NO idea what we were doing and definitely needed to make some serious changes! Talk about a waste of time, all the years we had spent doing business the way we had been, just the same as everyone we knew were doing, and we were missing the boat. Here are some things that helped us to stop wasting time and start living our lives on our terms.

1- Make a plan. Having a plan or schedule in place helps you to manage your time and your days more effectively. It doesn’t mean you have to stay exactly on a schedule all the time, or have it right every day, but it really does help you pace yourself and not get sucked into the vortex of time wasting.

2- Get yourself organized. I am a huge fan of freaky organization. Sometimes its a little extreme, but it seriously saves a ton of time! No more time wasted looking for things, or trying to figure out where to put stuff. If everything has a place, you can always find things and wont run around like a chicken with your head cut off. For us and all of our business this is an on going process. I try to do a little bit of organizing or cleaning things out every single day, that way it it not overwhelming and I can get things done. Check out my blog post Coming out of the Closet for some great tips on this!

3- Set goals. Setting goals makes you pace yourself differently than you do when you don’t have any. I also realized that our goals had changed a lot over the years. What we used to want was absolutely not what we wanted now. We needed to re evaluate our priorities and set new goals.

4- Realize what is important. Take the time to look into your heart and soul and see what is really important to you in your life. Eliminate the toxic people, the clutter, and all the things that fill time in your life with no meaning. Treasuring the things that are the most meaningful and that add to the quality of your life are so important. When you do this, you never feel like you are wasting time, you are spending your time wisely.

5- Invest in yourself. This is something I did not see value in at all until now. The more you invest in  yourself to either learn a new skill, or be mentored or coached by someone that is smarter and more successful than you, the better you will be and the better you can work towards the goals you have. It is just like anything else, when you have the map you wont waste time driving around in circles. I just did not realize how vital having someone give you perspective, kick you in the butt, and teach you there is a better way was.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.- Steve Jobs . I love this quote, and it rings true. None of us are going to make it out of here alive, so you need to make the most of each moment you have. Make the biggest impact you can, and share your gifts with the people in your life. Don’t waste time with the things that are not important. With the people that suck the life and the time right out of you. Take the time to live your life with intention and purpose.  If you have any tips on not wasting time in your life, please comment and share. I would love to hear from you!