Do you want to achieve more in your life or let me put this way, do you want to achieve more with your life?

We all struggle with procrastination, we all complain about lack of time.

It’s like we are stuck somewhere and can’t move. If you were to review last year or even 5 years of your life, you will realise that nothing is happening. 

Life is just flowing and it seems that we don’t have any control over it. 

We come up with n number of plans like weight loss, up skilling or just some personal or professional project but somehow we fail to implement them. 

If you are interested in achieving more in your life, mantra is very simple- Execution.

Just be agile and move with your execution and you can do whatever you set your mind on but the problem is it’s easier said than done. 

We can come up with plan anytime and fail when it comes to execution. 

And primary reason is lack of visibility in our life. As a human, we are conditioned to respond better to data or some kind of metric, that’s provide some kind of visibility into our life.

But right now there is proper way of getting a bird eye view of our life.

If you take example of fitness or quit smoking programs, there are so many apps in the market, providing deep insights into these issues which helps us.

For example, when a fitness app tells you that you walked 5000 steps or lost 200 calories, it serves as a motivation to do more. Or if you take example of quit smoking apps, they tell you how many minutes of your life have been saved or how much money you have saved. 

These metrics helps you by motivating you to achieve more. 

Similarly we need something in our life to provide us some kind of metrics. If I know that I spent 90 days out of last 365 days on Netflix or 100 days with Facebook or Instagram, it helps me in visualising how much time of my life I have lost on these unproductive activities.

Now imagine if you had such information for last 10  years of your life, you will be probably shocked to know that you might have wasted time equivalent of years on something which is just not adding any value in your life. 

Take this example;

Do you spend 2 hrs everyday on social media? 

If yes, 2*365 = 730 hrs/annum 

which means over 30 days in a year on social media

& if you are not using it for professional purposes, you are wasting a month of your life every year on social media which include apps social media apps. I think it’s quite common nowadays.

How to achieve more with your life

Start tracking your activities because as I have explained so far, you don’t even know much time you spend daily on these activities.

I am using Quickurself to track and manage my life.

It’s a android and iOS app so you can use it whether you are using android devices or iPhone.

You just need to add your activities and it will tell you how much time you are spending on it.

Free version doesn’t give you access to charts and advance metric like days spent on a category.

But you will still get number of activities and number of hours spent on these categories. It include most popular apps & activities like 

1. Twitter
2. Facebook
3. Instagram
4. Linkedin
5. Youtube
6. Netflix
7. Prime video
8. Exercise 
9. Meetings
10. Amazon
11. Walmart
12. Flipkart 
13. Meetings
14. Emails
15. Office work

When you add these activities in the app, it will generate a snapshot which will look something like this. Please note this image is from premium subscription so you have charts and days also but as mentioned earlier, free version will also provide information about number of activities and hours spent on it.

Over a period of  time, you will have a 360 degree view of your life. Knowledge is key to fixing a problem.

If I know that I spent 2 months on social media or 1 month on e-commerce sites,  I can divert my time & efforts towards more productive activities.

Imagine if I am saving 4 months every year (which doesn’t look like a big deal), in 10 years I have 40 months which is more than 3 years. 

Technically speaking I can become a rocket scientist if I were to put these 3 years in learning rocket science. 

Now if you are targeting something less complex like learning some other skill, you can imagine that it won’t be tough anymore.

Biggest problem today is that we are always distracted. 

We don’t even realise how much time we waste on things which simply doesn’t matter to us. 

Acknowledging and accepting the problem is the first step towards fixing any problem.

Second step is collecting all the relevant information or metrics related to that problem.

Third and final step is to prioritise and dedicate our time towards productivity activities. 

Therefore I use QuickurSelf and add all my activities. 

I track how much time I am spending on different activities like Facebook, Twitter, home, entertainment or official activities like meeting, emails etc. 

I can confidently says that I have managed to cut down my unproductive activities by minimum 30% in a months time.