I’ve always said that procrastination is the root of all evil.* Everybody does it – don’t think you’re weird if you spend hours in the evening scrolling through your phone. I often get distracted – usually it’s YouTube on my phone or TV, and occasionally just daydreaming.
Aha! I spot an area of our lives that can be made more efficient from the Slow Down and Save mindset. We should stop procrastinating as much as possible – and trade the time for building our dream lives brick by brick while everyone else is watching the latest episode of The Night Manager**.
Stop thinking about tomorrow – look to the horizon
It’s all a matter of perspective. Which way you see it depends on how long your horizons are. Can you only vision the next month, week or perhaps even day ahead? Or do you look out on life with a telescope – seeing how your life might look in the far future, decades ahead?
This is the kind of long-term thinking required to build an intentional life. Here at Slow Down and Save, we are just as concerned with how our life will look ten years from now as what we are doing next weekend. It’s about getting your priorities in order and fixing your eyes on the prize at the horizon – how you can best manage your time.
The average UK worker spends over two hours procrastinating each day. And that’s just during an 8-hour office day! What do you do during your free time in the evenings and mornings around work? How much of what you do will really be of benefit over the long-term, or is just for a short-term dopamine hit? These are the questions you need to ask when building an intentional life.
Nobody cares about your procrastination
Stop going around looking for short-term gains when the real, satisfying rewards in life can only be found through intentional choices and long-term plans of action! You’re literally wasting your life away. Nobody’s going to remember you by those re-runs of Friends you watched – in fact, nobody cares. Let me say that again – nobody cares about your procrastination. It has no positive effect on society or anyone else.
How do you want to be remembered? Picture your funeral and all the mourners. How do you want them to remember you? As someone who sat around enjoying the latest TV shows and going to work every day on autopilot, or as someone who really contributed to society?
Be the person who works their ass off for their employer and rises through the ranks quickly. Someone who consistently exercises to keep their body in top shape and has a VO2 max in the top 1% for their age and gender. Someone who started a side hustle outside of work – and gradually built this into a successful business. Be the person who gets involved with the local community and is known for their charitable work.
Procrastinating does nothing for you and nothing for society. It reduces your attention span, makes you addicted to quick dopamine hits and robs you of time you could otherwise use to improve your life.
Never sit still – always aspire to be the best version of yourself
I see life as a constant learning process. A decade ago when I left university, I was naive enough to believe that most of my learning was behind me, and I was ready to use my newfound knowledge in the big, wide world.
Oh how wrong I was.
Even within my academic background of meteorology, the science is constantly evolving and requires further studying to keep up with developments. Once you’ve left university or school, you may well have graduated from your academic degree, but you’ve only just been admitted into the School of Life. This degree is so long that it takes an entire lifetime to finish – and even then, you still haven’t learnt everything.
The past decade has continued to provide a steep learning curve for me. From learning how to behave in the workplace, to on-the-job learning, to managing my finances, buying a house and discovering how to prioritise my own health and fitness, it’s been non-stop learning. Some of these skills have been learnt out of necessity, but many others have been voluntary, like learning how to manage my own finances.
Life is a canvas – paint it yourself
Don’t let society or cultural norms tell you what to do. Don’t watch the latest on-trend TV series just because everyone else is. Use this time in any number of productive ways to improve your life:
- Listen to podcasts. This is a great place to start as you can listen while doing other things. I often put my favourite podcasts on while driving.
- Read. Read. Read. Read books, read blogs, read journals, read magazines. Just read. You would not believe the amount of free information you can find in blogs, articles and journals online. If you want to learn about something, you can probably find enough free information online to become an expert. Use your library or charity shops to get books rather than buying them brand-new.
- Exercise regularly to improve your health and live a longer life.
- Get enough sleep and eat healthily to give yourself the best chance of performing well the following day.
- Build a side hustle. This is not easy and requires a long-term mindset. But it could be your route to fast-tracking financial independence if you manage to scale it.
- Network. Create genuine connections with real people to accelerate your career development. (We’re not talking about having 1000 connections on LinkedIn here – while this is great, how much do you actually know these people? Instead, it’s better to form real relationships through physically meeting people.)
- Be a genuine, kind person to everyone you meet. Adopt the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People to get the most out of your life and others in your circle of influence.
Wake up early…
Are you a morning or evening person? When is your mind most mentally acute? Personally, I’m a morning person and prefer to get the bulk of my work and heavy mental lifting done before lunch. During the afternoon and evening I’m less mentally acute, so I leave this time for other tasks like exercise, cooking, housework and chill time.
If you’re like me, how can you adapt your routine to get some hours to yourself in the morning before work? Consider going to bed earlier so you can wake up earlier. Never deprive yourself of sleep – this has strong negative health implications over the long-term. Develop an evening routine that helps you to get to sleep quickly.
The key here is to make sure you get time for yourself – for your own self-development. Think of it this way… you may be sacrificing a couple of hours of TV in the evening for longer and better-quality sleep, a daily workout that improves your quality of life dramatically and even time to start developing a side hustle that you love.
…Or go to bed late
You may be a night owl, preferring to get work done in the evening. That’s absolutely fine as well. How can you be more efficient with your time to fit in a crucial period for personal development every evening? Waking up early is generally a better use of your time than going to bed really late, due to the structure of school and working hours – which tend to allow more time in the evenings than mornings relative to our normal sleep schedule.
The point is this – think about whether you’re a morning and evening person and stop procrastinating to allow time for self-development. You may even be an afternoon person. For most of us at least, we don’t have the luxury of deciding how to spend our time most afternoons (it’s usually decided by work, school and other commitments). So, work with the time you do have; mornings and evenings, and try to make them as productive as possible.
An intentional life is about taking back control
Once you start living your life more intentionally, you realise that you must closely manage your most precious resource… time. Time is finite for all of us and it’s running out. Rather than letting society and work dictate how your time is spent, deciding to live intentionally puts the ball firmly in your court.
Money plays a big part here. Money is not just a resource that can be used to buy more stuff. It is a tool that you can use to better manage your time. The more money you have, the more power you have over your own time – and the more you get to decide how you spend it. Through building wealth and achieving financial independence (FI), you can trade your money for time – since you no longer need income from an employer to sustain your lifestyle. Of course, you can continue to work, but only if you want to.
The power you gain from having money is not binary and only available once you reach FI. It is a continuous spectrum, with a little power even available once you build up an emergency fund and become debt free.
Stop procrastinating – start building today!
What can I say? It’s not going to be easy. Nothing worth having ever is. But then again, what would be the point in life if true happiness and joy came easily? So get your ass off the sofa and into a 5k run; stop watching YouTube videos and start making them; stop online shopping and start your own online shop; stop being a consumer and start being a producer. Think long-term, think intentionally, and your life will never be the same again.
Thanks for reading! I hope you found this article interesting. If you did, here are some others you may enjoy:
2025 review – the year of Life
State of the UK’s electric charging network in 2025
Retire early by not being a moron with your money
The unexpected benefits of lifting heavy weights
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*I’ve never actually said this, but it sounds kinda good for a blog.
**In my opinion, The Night Manager is one of the best TV spy thrillers out there – and oh so British! I highly recommend it.
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