How to Spend Free Time Like a Badass
Time is the most valuable resource we have. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. But despite that, most of us never put any real thought into how we spend free time.
It’s time to wake up. If you want to become a badass, you need to be intentional about how you’re spending your time. Doing that will result in massive gains towards becoming the person you want to be.
However, there is one problem here that you should be prepared for.
Most of us can generate a long list of all the things we want to do with our lives. Skills we want to learn. Places we want to visit. Things we want to create.
When you add all these things together, it can quickly become so overwhelming that you’ll have no hope of cramming everything into your day.
Fortunately, there are 2 key solutions to this problem. Let’s go through them.
Solution 1 - The Weekly Schedule
Anyone who’s read my articles before will know that I’m a huge proponent of consistency. If you want to achieve anything, you need to find a way to devote time to it as often as possible. The gold standard here is a daily practice - time devoted to a goal every single day. But that’s not always practical, especially if you’ve got a bunch of different pursuits worth spending time on.
That’s where the weekly schedule idea comes in. I first discovered it in the book - 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, written by Laura Vanderkam, and it had a profound impact on how I approached my goals.
As Laura explained, almost nobody can fit everything they want to do into 24 hours, but almost everybody can fit it into 168 hours (1 week), as long as they’re strategic and understand how to spend free time.
You might not fit in everything every day, but you’ll still manage to devote time to each thing 3-4 times per week. And that’s enough to make substantial progress in a short period.
So, that’s the first solution - use a weekly schedule rather than a daily one. Next, let’s look at priorities.
Solution 2 - Choose Your Priorities
The previous point probably gave you some hope. Finally, somebody telling you that you can fit everything in with no consequences.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s time to get realistic. Priorities matter. However, they matter more or less depending on your goals.
If you’re aspiring to become world class at something, you’re going to have to be harsh with your priorities. You won’t be able to get away with pursuing it 3-4 times per week. It’ll have to be your number 1 priority every day.
However, becoming a badass isn’t about becoming world class at one thing. It’s about becoming great at many things, and that, while still requiring a lot of hard work, doesn’t demand total devotion to any one thing.
If you’re aiming to become a widely skilled, capable man, you can and should work towards a range of goals at once. But you still need to know what’s most important - the things that should fill the top 4 or 5 spots on your priority list. I’ve outlined my suggestions below.
The Most Important Things:
Sleep
Probably not what you expected but sleep NEEDS to be one of your top priorities. I’ve mentioned this in a previous article, but the quality of your sleep affects who you are and everything you do. If you aren’t sleeping well, all of your other pursuits will suffer.
With that in mind, make sure you’re getting a solid 8 hours per night… and keep in mind that time spent in bed does not equal time spent asleep. A lot of people are in bed from midnight to 8am but are only actually getting 6 hours of quality sleep.
Keep that in mind when you’re choosing when to wind down for the night.
Work
Just like sleep, money is necessary to support everything else. Lacking a solid income source leads to much higher stress levels (at the minimum) and that affects your ability to do everything else effectively.
With that in mind, it’s important to keep this as a high priority, even if it may not be as exciting as some of the other things in your life.
Now, with the two boring priorities out of the way, let’s get into the more exciting stuff.
Physical Health
I don’t remember the last time I wrote an article without mentioning physical health.
This is partly due to it being an area of passion, but it’s also an illustration of just how important it is. I’ve covered the benefits in other articles, but getting routine physical exercise and making sure you’re eating a nutrient-rich diet will have profound impacts on your mood and cognitive abilities.
Even if you don’t aspire to look like a bodybuilder or elite athlete, putting routine effort into this area will help you perform in all areas of your life.
Mental Health (Stress Management, Relaxation, and Enjoyment)
Just like physical health, time spent on protecting and improving your mental health can be massively beneficial.
As the title suggests, I’ve split this into 3 core areas:
Stress Management: Anything that actively helps you cope with stress. The most common methods here are meditation (how-to article HERE) and exercise.
Relaxation: Anything that allows your mind to unwind and wander aimlessly. Common methods include walking in nature or lying in the sun.
Enjoyment: This should be obvious. Give yourself something to look forward to and build enjoyable activities into your schedule. Just make sure to keep them in moderation. Enjoyment loses its power when you overindulge.
Learning and Developing Skills
Becoming a badass means becoming capable. And to become capable you need to be constantly learning and building skills.
With that in mind, build time into your schedule to learn in whatever ways suit you. It could be reading books or actively practicing a skill. Ideally, you’ll want a blend of both. For helpful tips on what you should learn about, check out this article here.
Socialising
One that often gets neglected, it’s important to dedicate time to this on a routine basis. We’re social animals after all - separate an individual from other people and it quickly impacts their mental health.
While many high performers advocate for sacrificing social events in the name of their higher goal, I genuinely believe it to be something you should never compromise on. Besides all the benefits of socialising, the skills that come along with it are vital to becoming a badass.
Customise Your Weekly Schedule
We’ve covered what you should include and why, but it’s important to note that everyone’s needs and priorities are different.
With that in mind, you’ll want to alter your weekly schedule with your own needs in mind.
Here are some examples:
Most people need around 8 hours of sleep per night but you might need a little more or a little less.
You might need more or less socialising in your schedule depending on whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert.
Different people can handle different workloads. I’ve figured out that I can handle around 10 hours of work plus physical training per day. Any more than that and I’ll start to burn out within a few weeks.
If you have 1 powerful priority at the top of your list - like building a 7-figure business - you’re going to have to reduce the time you spend on everything else.
Where to Start?
We’ve covered a heap of information so I figured it’d be useful to give you a starting point.
Try writing out a timetable for what your ideal week looks like. You don’t need to do it down to the minute - 30 minute or even 1 hour blocks will be fine.
Finally, keep in mind that it’s not something you need to stick to. It’s a guide for how to spend free time in order to achieve your goals. If you find yourself struggling to follow it, some things might need to be changed around, and that’s
okay.
Get started now and see how you go.