28. How To Get More Out of Your Time
I know that so many of you feel super busy in your lives - like there is absolutely zero time to spare - and I know how you feel. I’ve been there. BUT I also believe it’s important that we challenge this perception. Because we know from confirmation bias that if we keep telling ourselves we just don’t have enough time, that’s exactly what we’ll experience. So, this week, we're talking about time and how to use yours to create more of what you want.
I’m going to teach you to consider time like a resource, just like money. It’s something you spend, yes, but it’s also something you can invest and get a return on (such as getting time back later because of the way we chose to spend our time today).
This may be a more familiar concept when it comes to money, but the truth is, we can do the same with time. And when you start thinking about your time choices as investments vs expenses, you will see different ways you can use your time now to get more of what you want in the long haul.
Time is a finite resource. But that doesn’t mean that any way of spending that time is equal. So, tune in this week to learn how to invest your time in a way that will get you the kinds of returns you want (such as more time overall, even if it takes some time NOW to set up a new system). I’ll discussing the mind drama that often surfaces around time choices and sharing how I help my clients (and myself) use the time we have to get more of what we want in life.
If you love the podcast and want to take this work deeper, I have great news! I have space for new one-to-one coaching clients starting this month, so click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
If there are topics y’all want me to teach and talk about on the podcast, feel free to write in and let me know by clicking here! I’d love to hear from you!
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
The way most of us think about time.
How I like to think about time as an asset that we can invest and grow.
The emotional and tangible returns available to us if we invest our time wisely.
Why you’re going to feel a level of resistance to implementing a new system around time in the beginning.
How to think about your time in a different way and start growing it, no matter how little time you think you have right now.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
FEATURED ON THE SHOW:
If you’re enjoying the show, please leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts!
Feel free to ask me any questions over on Instagram!
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about time.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y’all, this week we’re talking about time. But before I get into that I just want to take a moment to celebrate, I got my second Covid shot this week and I’m pretty excited about it. We found out that they had openings in a different county than where we live so my girlfriend and I actually drove over an hour each way to get our Covid shots. And we’re pretty happy about it because we feel good about our choices and we really wanted to get our Covid shots.
So when we found out they were available we kind of thought about like “Okay, like we can wait and get them later.” Where we live, they’re going to be available later, just because where we live it’s very populated. And the other city was happy to let other, you know, residents of the state but who don’t live in that county come and get their vaccines there. And so we chose to do that.
And some people were like, “Really? You drove like...” It was like an hour and a half there because of traffic and then only like an hour back. But we were like yeah, ecstatic, we’ll do it again. We rearranged our schedules because we really wanted to get that done and to be fully vaccinated and be part of helping like, bring the vaccination levels up and just keep everyone else safe and keep ourselves safe too.
So we’re pretty excited about that. And that actually kind of ties in to what we’re going to talk about today because we’re going to talk about time. But we’re also going to talk about the way we think about time and the concept of investing our time versus spending our time.
So in finances there are the concept of like investing versus spending, right? A cost versus an investment versus an expense. And I'm not a financial person so I don't 100% know the terms that they're using. But the way that I understand it an investment is something that gives you a return. You invest and you get a return on the investment, you get something back for having invested.
Whereas an expense, it's like you buy something and it's a cost. It doesn't necessarily give you anything back. And beyond that, like when you think about taxes and stuff, at least for those of us in the US like me, I don't know about the rest of y'all, we can sometimes do expenses that are then tax deductible. So it like kind of counts as an investment in a way too because that may be is going to bring our tax liability down. And so it has sort of its own different kind of return.
In the financial world, from what I understand, something is an investment if you get a financial return. But when I think about time, I love to think about the idea that we can invest our time and we can get all kinds of different returns. Sometimes you get a return of money, but sometimes you get a return of more time. Or sometimes you get a return of delight, or joyfulness, or more meaning and satisfaction in your work.
So I wanted to bring this up because a lot of people feel super fucking busy. They feel super busy, they feel like they don't have any time. They never have enough time to put things on their calendar. They want to do things in their lives but the blocker for them is this element of time. Do I have enough time to spend an hour on that once a week? Do I have enough time to spend an hour on that three times a week?
And people feel very stressed about this idea and about kind of like the cost of time. The time cost of doing certain things, usually things that they want to do. And people think about this with money too, right? It's like, maybe they want to buy something but it's $100. And they're like, “Oh, I just don't know if I want to spend my $100 on that.”
And so a lot of times with both time and money we're thinking about it in this way of like it's finite, like we have this much time or this much money, right? 24 hours in a day, or whatever amount of money we have in the bank account. And we're like, “Oh, if I spend this $100 on this, I can't spend it on something else later.” Because it's like the $100 once I spend it, it's like gone. The hour, once I spend it is gone.
And in a way, this is true. If you spend an hour watching Netflix, like I often do, that hour is done at the end. But when we evaluate the things that we're choosing to put on a calendar, when we evaluate the things we're choosing to do with our life, we can also see that some things are investments. So even if they cost us time, cost us money, we might be getting more time and more money back from them later.
So as an example, I teach my clients how to calendar. How to use their calendar more effectively so that they can get more work done in less time. But it's a change, I'm inviting them to learn a new system, and sometimes they don't want to do that because that's going to take time upfront. It's a time investment. The first few weeks they do it, it might take them more time because they're trying to use the new system and get the same amount of stuff done.
So a lot of people don't want to make that investment upfront. But if they do make that investment up front, what's the return on investment? What's the payoff? What I see again and again, is when you learn the new structure, the new system, yeah, maybe it takes you an extra two or three hours a week.
So for the first few weeks, you have that crunch, right? You're like, “Oh, I didn't feel like I had enough time and now I’m spending two to three hours on this.” But when you understand that it's an investment, you make space for it, you clear other things away, you find other things you can cut. And there are always things we can cut. And then over time, once you learn the new system, you implement it and everything's going with it, you get more time back.
So people who learn to calendar more effectively, maybe the first few weeks, yes, it's costing them two to three hours a week, right? So like, let's just say at the end of the month, the month they were first learning it, if it cost them two to three hours every week. Which honestly, I don't think they would be seeing that kind of expense for a full month. But even if it did, let's just say three hours times four weeks, that's 12 hours.
Even if they only got back what they invested, even if they only get back three hours a week. It's like yeah, they spent 12 in the first month to learn the new system. But if they get back three hours every week for the rest of their career, that's so many fucking hours. I'm like, what is the math even? It's like the next month they're going to get 12 hours back, but then they get 12 hours back every month, right?
I think a lot of calendaring systems actually give you more time back than that, so it could be a much bigger number. And then you have to think about like this isn't just like what you'll get back for the next month and the month after that. It's like over the course of your whole career. If you learn a system that gives you back three hours a week, that's hundreds of hours, maybe thousands, I don't know. This is not a math podcast so I'm not going to get into that. I didn't get my calculator out; I didn't calculate it. It's a lot, okay?
So calendaring is only one of these examples. Other examples are things like creating a plan for a project you're doing. Sometimes we don't create a plan, we just go right into a thing and we're just like, “Okay, I'm just going to start and get it done.” Nothing wrong with doing that. And if it's working for you, great.
But if you're feeling the time crunch over and over, you can think about like, how do I make this more of an investment that's going to give me ROI? How can I run this project in a way where maybe I do take more time upfront, but then it takes less time overall to do the project.
And sometimes doing a project plan is an appropriate choice for that. Other times, it's not like you get to decide what's an investment and what's a cost because it's not necessarily a factual thing. It's about the way you think about the things you're choosing to do with your time.
Here's another example, I was giving a talk one time about anxiety. And one of the people who had a question said, “Okay, this thing you're teaching sounds really great, I think it would work. But I don't have enough time to do that.” And here's what I said to her. I said, “You don't have enough time not to do that.”
Because again, investment versus return on investment. And I have a whole podcast about anxiety that's the same as this talk, so you can go listen to it. I don't remember what number it is, but it's one of them.
If you are managing your anxiety in the way that I teach in that podcast, it's going to allow you to be much more effective. But to learn how to do the technique I talk about in the podcast, yeah, it might take you some time upfront. But what is that investment worth to you overall? What is the cost to that woman of not doing the investment, right? She was like, “I don't have time for this.”
But what she's going to then have is like way more unnecessary anxiety because again, this is not clinical anxiety that we're going to a psychotherapist and maybe getting medication for. This is the emotion of anxiety that all humans feel sometimes. The part of the anxiety that's created by the way we think about things.
Which again, I get into all of that in the other podcast, but that kind of anxiety is resolvable, and we can relate to it differently. And it can give us that beautiful return on investment where like, yeah, maybe it takes a couple hours this week and next week to figure out how to do that thing and teaching. But how much time are you going to get back over the course of your life?
So a mistake I see people make all the time that cost them so much over the course of their entire life is just thinking about like, well, what's the cost right now? What's the time cost right now? What's the money cost right now? What's the discomfort cost right now? Like so often we don't do things because to do them we would have to feel uncomfortable for five minutes, right? You want to ask your boss for a raise and you're like, “Yeah, and I sweat when I think about it.”
So I get that I've been there. But if we're not willing to make that investment, we don't ever get the payoff. Right? So it's just a different way of thinking. Instead of thinking like, do I want to spend this $100 or not? Do I want to spend this hour or not? It's like, what could I get for this $100? What can I get for this hour? And of the choices I have available, which of those is going to give me what in return later.
Is the value of the return greater than the cost? If you're thinking about spending two to three hours a week learning a new calendaring methodology, is the cost of that that it's going to take out of your time now worth the return you're going to get over the long haul?
And another area where we can think about this is also like energy. A lot of times People are trying to like manage their energy. And they're like, “Well, I don't have enough energy to do all this shit.” But it's like, yes, we have a limited amount of energy but what are the choices you're making when you're spending that energy? Are you spending it or are you investing it? \
And actually, my girlfriend pointed out when I was talking to her that another way you can think about this is in self-care. So a lot of people don't want to do self-care because they see it as like a cost. They're like, “That's effort, I already do a lot of effort. I don't want to do any more effort. I shouldn't have to do this effort.” Right?
And I get it because like, I also have a human brain. And sometimes my brain is like, “Flossing again? We did this yesterday, I would like to not do this.” Which is funny. It's just funny to see like, what our brain rebels against. Like I do floss every day and every day my brain is like, “Are you fucking kidding me? Stupid little piece of string in my teeth.” Okay, I digress.
But the point is, what's the upfront cost? Is it an investment? Will there be a return? I floss every day because I don't want cavities. I don't want them. And when I floss the data suggests I do not get cavities. Like that's been my experience. I realize that might not be everyone's experience, we all have different teeth, we all have different lives. But that's been my experience. So I see that as an investment. Right?
Again, from the financial sense, it's not because I'm not like getting money. Although if I don't have cavities, technically, I maybe am getting money. I just thought of that. I feel very clever.
So the point is, not all costs are created equal. And not everything you could spend your money on, or your time on, or your energy on is the same. So I want you to think this week about like, where's my time going? Where's my money going? Where's my energy going on? And what am I getting back for it? Am I just spending it? Is there no return on investment?
And there's nothing wrong with that. Like, listen, I spend a lot of time watching Netflix. I personally happen to think there is a return in delight. So I choose that on purpose. But it's not the kind of investment I'm going to make with all of my time. Because I actually think there's also, this is another thing, it's like the law of diminishing returns.
Sometimes when we spend on something we get a big benefit from it. But if we keep spending on that thing, the benefit that we get back gets incrementally smaller. I actually learned about this from this lady, I used to nanny, and this is how she talked about drinking coffee. She was like that first coffee is amazing. But if you keep trying to have coffee, you get the Law of Diminishing Returns like the second coffee doesn't taste as good. You don't get as much of like an energy bump from it. And it was such a funny example. But it's really stuck with me all these years.
So, to wrap it all back up, not everything you spend is created equally. Like spending $100 on one thing is not the same as spending $100 on something else. Even if it's the same hundo coming out of your bank account. It's not the same, because it depends on, is it a cost? Or is it an investment? What am I getting back? Over the long term of my life what is that going to mean for me? Like is this something I'm spending once and I'm going to get joy out of it one time?
Again, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that, but you just want to be aware of it because a lot of the stuff is not the same. And usually the stuff that's going to take our lives from good to great, that's going to take our lives from like, “Yeah, it's pretty awesome” to like, “Oh my god, holy shit, next level amazing” is going to be something that's going to have a significant investment upfront.
Every coaching program I've ever done as a client has been like this, I've given somebody a big chunk of money, you know, to invest and then given them time every week with them. Given them my brain space, given them my energy, given them my money, given them my time. But what I get out of it is always worth more. It's worth more than the time I put in, it's worth more than the money I paid. It's worth more than all of it. Especially when I look at like over the trajectory of my entire life.
I've invested over $70,000 in coaching, I'm just going to say that. Holy shit, what? I know y'all are like, “Oh my fucking God, 70 grand?” I could have like multiple liberal arts degrees. Maybe not multiple anymore, I could have half of a liberal arts degree for 70 grand. I’ve spent 70 grand on coaching in both certifications and in coaching for myself for my business and my personal life.
But the return on that, first of all, my relationship is much better than it would be. Honestly, if I had never done coaching, my relationship probably would have ended about 2.5 years ago. And my girlfriend's in the room and she's laughing because she knows it's true. She knows what's up, we talk about this shit.
But also in my coaching business, to date I've made over $200,000. I left my steady ass, sweet, very cozy corporate job to launch this business. And that was scary y'all like because when I first left, I was like, “All right, I've spent thousands in coaching, and I've left my job. What am I doing?” I'm like charging $600 for my first package way back in the day, and I didn't know what was going to happen.
But now I have the benefit of having seen it play out. And I had the belief, let's be honest, because if I didn't think I could do this I wouldn't have ever left my job. So I had the vision and the belief to see like what I've invested in myself, what have invested in my mind and my capacity could create huge financial results for myself. Huge life meaningful results like having a functional happy relationship with a significant other. We’re going on, it's going to be for years this summer, y'all.
So these are the kind of returns on investment that I'm talking about. And it doesn't always have to be this giant thing. It could be like, “Am I going to take five minutes to like say something nice to myself before I go into this meeting where I know that the CFO is going to ask me really tough questions?” It can be a tiny little investment that has a huge return also, it doesn't all have to be like me spending 70K on coaching.
But for everything you're spending that time, energy, money, anything else you could be spending, for everything you're spending, I want you to ask yourself like is this a cost? Or is this an investment? What's the return if it's an investment? Do I like the return?
Just because it's an investment and you get a return doesn't mean you have to like it and you want to keep doing it. You might be like, “Actually, I don't want that return anymore. I don't want to do that investment anymore.” Even if it's “wise” or the smart move.
There's no right or wrong here, y'all. It's just about you understanding what the way you're thinking is creating for you. And if you want to keep creating that, or if you want to create something else.
And if you love what I teach, and you want some help taking things a little bit deeper and figuring out how this all applies to your own life. I've got good news for you. I've got space for a few new one on one coaching clients starting this month. So let's hop on a call. I'll give you some coaching right away to help you get going. And if it seems like a good fit, I will share with you how we can work together. Just head on over to my website and click on the work with me button and get started there.
Also bonus my coaching offering is totally virtual so as to better serve my global audience. And yes, I do work with people who are not native English speakers, and we've had great success doing that. There's even a testimonial on my website with someone in that category. So you can check that out on the testimonials page. All right, y'all have a lovely week, and I will talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y’all, this week we’re talking about time. But before I get into that I just want to take a moment to celebrate, I got my second Covid shot this week and I’m pretty excited about it. We found out that they had openings in a different county than where we live so my girlfriend and I actually drove over an hour each way to get our Covid shots. And we’re pretty happy about it because we feel good about our choices and we really wanted to get our Covid shots.
So when we found out they were available we kind of thought about like “Okay, like we can wait and get them later.” Where we live, they’re going to be available later, just because where we live it’s very populated. And the other city was happy to let other, you know, residents of the state but who don’t live in that county come and get their vaccines there. And so we chose to do that.
And some people were like, “Really? You drove like...” It was like an hour and a half there because of traffic and then only like an hour back. But we were like yeah, ecstatic, we’ll do it again. We rearranged our schedules because we really wanted to get that done and to be fully vaccinated and be part of helping like, bring the vaccination levels up and just keep everyone else safe and keep ourselves safe too.
So we’re pretty excited about that. And that actually kind of ties in to what we’re going to talk about today because we’re going to talk about time. But we’re also going to talk about the way we think about time and the concept of investing our time versus spending our time.
So in finances there are the concept of like investing versus spending, right? A cost versus an investment versus an expense. And I'm not a financial person so I don't 100% know the terms that they're using. But the way that I understand it an investment is something that gives you a return. You invest and you get a return on the investment, you get something back for having invested.
Whereas an expense, it's like you buy something and it's a cost. It doesn't necessarily give you anything back. And beyond that, like when you think about taxes and stuff, at least for those of us in the US like me, I don't know about the rest of y'all, we can sometimes do expenses that are then tax deductible. So it like kind of counts as an investment in a way too because that may be is going to bring our tax liability down. And so it has sort of its own different kind of return.
In the financial world, from what I understand, something is an investment if you get a financial return. But when I think about time, I love to think about the idea that we can invest our time and we can get all kinds of different returns. Sometimes you get a return of money, but sometimes you get a return of more time. Or sometimes you get a return of delight, or joyfulness, or more meaning and satisfaction in your work.
So I wanted to bring this up because a lot of people feel super fucking busy. They feel super busy, they feel like they don't have any time. They never have enough time to put things on their calendar. They want to do things in their lives but the blocker for them is this element of time. Do I have enough time to spend an hour on that once a week? Do I have enough time to spend an hour on that three times a week?
And people feel very stressed about this idea and about kind of like the cost of time. The time cost of doing certain things, usually things that they want to do. And people think about this with money too, right? It's like, maybe they want to buy something but it's $100. And they're like, “Oh, I just don't know if I want to spend my $100 on that.”
And so a lot of times with both time and money we're thinking about it in this way of like it's finite, like we have this much time or this much money, right? 24 hours in a day, or whatever amount of money we have in the bank account. And we're like, “Oh, if I spend this $100 on this, I can't spend it on something else later.” Because it's like the $100 once I spend it, it's like gone. The hour, once I spend it is gone.
And in a way, this is true. If you spend an hour watching Netflix, like I often do, that hour is done at the end. But when we evaluate the things that we're choosing to put on a calendar, when we evaluate the things we're choosing to do with our life, we can also see that some things are investments. So even if they cost us time, cost us money, we might be getting more time and more money back from them later.
So as an example, I teach my clients how to calendar. How to use their calendar more effectively so that they can get more work done in less time. But it's a change, I'm inviting them to learn a new system, and sometimes they don't want to do that because that's going to take time upfront. It's a time investment. The first few weeks they do it, it might take them more time because they're trying to use the new system and get the same amount of stuff done.
So a lot of people don't want to make that investment upfront. But if they do make that investment up front, what's the return on investment? What's the payoff? What I see again and again, is when you learn the new structure, the new system, yeah, maybe it takes you an extra two or three hours a week.
So for the first few weeks, you have that crunch, right? You're like, “Oh, I didn't feel like I had enough time and now I’m spending two to three hours on this.” But when you understand that it's an investment, you make space for it, you clear other things away, you find other things you can cut. And there are always things we can cut. And then over time, once you learn the new system, you implement it and everything's going with it, you get more time back.
So people who learn to calendar more effectively, maybe the first few weeks, yes, it's costing them two to three hours a week, right? So like, let's just say at the end of the month, the month they were first learning it, if it cost them two to three hours every week. Which honestly, I don't think they would be seeing that kind of expense for a full month. But even if it did, let's just say three hours times four weeks, that's 12 hours.
Even if they only got back what they invested, even if they only get back three hours a week. It's like yeah, they spent 12 in the first month to learn the new system. But if they get back three hours every week for the rest of their career, that's so many fucking hours. I'm like, what is the math even? It's like the next month they're going to get 12 hours back, but then they get 12 hours back every month, right?
I think a lot of calendaring systems actually give you more time back than that, so it could be a much bigger number. And then you have to think about like this isn't just like what you'll get back for the next month and the month after that. It's like over the course of your whole career. If you learn a system that gives you back three hours a week, that's hundreds of hours, maybe thousands, I don't know. This is not a math podcast so I'm not going to get into that. I didn't get my calculator out; I didn't calculate it. It's a lot, okay?
So calendaring is only one of these examples. Other examples are things like creating a plan for a project you're doing. Sometimes we don't create a plan, we just go right into a thing and we're just like, “Okay, I'm just going to start and get it done.” Nothing wrong with doing that. And if it's working for you, great.
But if you're feeling the time crunch over and over, you can think about like, how do I make this more of an investment that's going to give me ROI? How can I run this project in a way where maybe I do take more time upfront, but then it takes less time overall to do the project.
And sometimes doing a project plan is an appropriate choice for that. Other times, it's not like you get to decide what's an investment and what's a cost because it's not necessarily a factual thing. It's about the way you think about the things you're choosing to do with your time.
Here's another example, I was giving a talk one time about anxiety. And one of the people who had a question said, “Okay, this thing you're teaching sounds really great, I think it would work. But I don't have enough time to do that.” And here's what I said to her. I said, “You don't have enough time not to do that.”
Because again, investment versus return on investment. And I have a whole podcast about anxiety that's the same as this talk, so you can go listen to it. I don't remember what number it is, but it's one of them.
If you are managing your anxiety in the way that I teach in that podcast, it's going to allow you to be much more effective. But to learn how to do the technique I talk about in the podcast, yeah, it might take you some time upfront. But what is that investment worth to you overall? What is the cost to that woman of not doing the investment, right? She was like, “I don't have time for this.”
But what she's going to then have is like way more unnecessary anxiety because again, this is not clinical anxiety that we're going to a psychotherapist and maybe getting medication for. This is the emotion of anxiety that all humans feel sometimes. The part of the anxiety that's created by the way we think about things.
Which again, I get into all of that in the other podcast, but that kind of anxiety is resolvable, and we can relate to it differently. And it can give us that beautiful return on investment where like, yeah, maybe it takes a couple hours this week and next week to figure out how to do that thing and teaching. But how much time are you going to get back over the course of your life?
So a mistake I see people make all the time that cost them so much over the course of their entire life is just thinking about like, well, what's the cost right now? What's the time cost right now? What's the money cost right now? What's the discomfort cost right now? Like so often we don't do things because to do them we would have to feel uncomfortable for five minutes, right? You want to ask your boss for a raise and you're like, “Yeah, and I sweat when I think about it.”
So I get that I've been there. But if we're not willing to make that investment, we don't ever get the payoff. Right? So it's just a different way of thinking. Instead of thinking like, do I want to spend this $100 or not? Do I want to spend this hour or not? It's like, what could I get for this $100? What can I get for this hour? And of the choices I have available, which of those is going to give me what in return later.
Is the value of the return greater than the cost? If you're thinking about spending two to three hours a week learning a new calendaring methodology, is the cost of that that it's going to take out of your time now worth the return you're going to get over the long haul?
And another area where we can think about this is also like energy. A lot of times People are trying to like manage their energy. And they're like, “Well, I don't have enough energy to do all this shit.” But it's like, yes, we have a limited amount of energy but what are the choices you're making when you're spending that energy? Are you spending it or are you investing it? \
And actually, my girlfriend pointed out when I was talking to her that another way you can think about this is in self-care. So a lot of people don't want to do self-care because they see it as like a cost. They're like, “That's effort, I already do a lot of effort. I don't want to do any more effort. I shouldn't have to do this effort.” Right?
And I get it because like, I also have a human brain. And sometimes my brain is like, “Flossing again? We did this yesterday, I would like to not do this.” Which is funny. It's just funny to see like, what our brain rebels against. Like I do floss every day and every day my brain is like, “Are you fucking kidding me? Stupid little piece of string in my teeth.” Okay, I digress.
But the point is, what's the upfront cost? Is it an investment? Will there be a return? I floss every day because I don't want cavities. I don't want them. And when I floss the data suggests I do not get cavities. Like that's been my experience. I realize that might not be everyone's experience, we all have different teeth, we all have different lives. But that's been my experience. So I see that as an investment. Right?
Again, from the financial sense, it's not because I'm not like getting money. Although if I don't have cavities, technically, I maybe am getting money. I just thought of that. I feel very clever.
So the point is, not all costs are created equal. And not everything you could spend your money on, or your time on, or your energy on is the same. So I want you to think this week about like, where's my time going? Where's my money going? Where's my energy going on? And what am I getting back for it? Am I just spending it? Is there no return on investment?
And there's nothing wrong with that. Like, listen, I spend a lot of time watching Netflix. I personally happen to think there is a return in delight. So I choose that on purpose. But it's not the kind of investment I'm going to make with all of my time. Because I actually think there's also, this is another thing, it's like the law of diminishing returns.
Sometimes when we spend on something we get a big benefit from it. But if we keep spending on that thing, the benefit that we get back gets incrementally smaller. I actually learned about this from this lady, I used to nanny, and this is how she talked about drinking coffee. She was like that first coffee is amazing. But if you keep trying to have coffee, you get the Law of Diminishing Returns like the second coffee doesn't taste as good. You don't get as much of like an energy bump from it. And it was such a funny example. But it's really stuck with me all these years.
So, to wrap it all back up, not everything you spend is created equally. Like spending $100 on one thing is not the same as spending $100 on something else. Even if it's the same hundo coming out of your bank account. It's not the same, because it depends on, is it a cost? Or is it an investment? What am I getting back? Over the long term of my life what is that going to mean for me? Like is this something I'm spending once and I'm going to get joy out of it one time?
Again, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that, but you just want to be aware of it because a lot of the stuff is not the same. And usually the stuff that's going to take our lives from good to great, that's going to take our lives from like, “Yeah, it's pretty awesome” to like, “Oh my god, holy shit, next level amazing” is going to be something that's going to have a significant investment upfront.
Every coaching program I've ever done as a client has been like this, I've given somebody a big chunk of money, you know, to invest and then given them time every week with them. Given them my brain space, given them my energy, given them my money, given them my time. But what I get out of it is always worth more. It's worth more than the time I put in, it's worth more than the money I paid. It's worth more than all of it. Especially when I look at like over the trajectory of my entire life.
I've invested over $70,000 in coaching, I'm just going to say that. Holy shit, what? I know y'all are like, “Oh my fucking God, 70 grand?” I could have like multiple liberal arts degrees. Maybe not multiple anymore, I could have half of a liberal arts degree for 70 grand. I’ve spent 70 grand on coaching in both certifications and in coaching for myself for my business and my personal life.
But the return on that, first of all, my relationship is much better than it would be. Honestly, if I had never done coaching, my relationship probably would have ended about 2.5 years ago. And my girlfriend's in the room and she's laughing because she knows it's true. She knows what's up, we talk about this shit.
But also in my coaching business, to date I've made over $200,000. I left my steady ass, sweet, very cozy corporate job to launch this business. And that was scary y'all like because when I first left, I was like, “All right, I've spent thousands in coaching, and I've left my job. What am I doing?” I'm like charging $600 for my first package way back in the day, and I didn't know what was going to happen.
But now I have the benefit of having seen it play out. And I had the belief, let's be honest, because if I didn't think I could do this I wouldn't have ever left my job. So I had the vision and the belief to see like what I've invested in myself, what have invested in my mind and my capacity could create huge financial results for myself. Huge life meaningful results like having a functional happy relationship with a significant other. We’re going on, it's going to be for years this summer, y'all.
So these are the kind of returns on investment that I'm talking about. And it doesn't always have to be this giant thing. It could be like, “Am I going to take five minutes to like say something nice to myself before I go into this meeting where I know that the CFO is going to ask me really tough questions?” It can be a tiny little investment that has a huge return also, it doesn't all have to be like me spending 70K on coaching.
But for everything you're spending that time, energy, money, anything else you could be spending, for everything you're spending, I want you to ask yourself like is this a cost? Or is this an investment? What's the return if it's an investment? Do I like the return?
Just because it's an investment and you get a return doesn't mean you have to like it and you want to keep doing it. You might be like, “Actually, I don't want that return anymore. I don't want to do that investment anymore.” Even if it's “wise” or the smart move.
There's no right or wrong here, y'all. It's just about you understanding what the way you're thinking is creating for you. And if you want to keep creating that, or if you want to create something else.
And if you love what I teach, and you want some help taking things a little bit deeper and figuring out how this all applies to your own life. I've got good news for you. I've got space for a few new one on one coaching clients starting this month. So let's hop on a call. I'll give you some coaching right away to help you get going. And if it seems like a good fit, I will share with you how we can work together. Just head on over to my website and click on the work with me button and get started there.
Also bonus my coaching offering is totally virtual so as to better serve my global audience. And yes, I do work with people who are not native English speakers, and we've had great success doing that. There's even a testimonial on my website with someone in that category. So you can check that out on the testimonials page. All right, y'all have a lovely week, and I will talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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