I actually did call to cancel my cable one time.\u00a0 And in typical fashion, the person who was supposed to come unplug us didn’t show up. But when our bill came the next month, we noticed we weren’t paying for cable anymore.<\/p>\n Sweet.<\/p>\n Not entirely satisfied but happy to be paying less, I again did nothing, and kept on watching TV.\u00a0 Not a lot, but enough.<\/p>\n Until Comcast benevolently stepped in and weened me off of it.\u00a0 One day, several months of mindless half hours later, I turned on the TV to find about half the cable channels gone.\u00a0 Replaced by a message, about something digital box something something.<\/p>\n I almost called to get a box.\u00a0 But I still had ESPN, and doing nothing was pretty easy, so again, that’s what I did.<\/p>\n And then one day a few weeks ago, everything was gone.\u00a0 Something digital box something something.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yesterday I drove for two hours.\u00a0 And spent three hours writing emails and some Twitter.\u00a0 And met with my thesis adviser for an hour, and wrote a Calculus II quiz and gave that Calc II quiz.<\/p>\n That was the “work” part.\u00a0 But there was plenty of time for stuff I like.\u00a0 I went for a run, a hill workout at the trail.\u00a0 And I helped my wife cook dinner by shelling fava beans for this recipe<\/a>, and got to hang out with her and play with my son for a few hours too.\u00a0 I also listened to an album (Death Cab for Cutie, Plans<\/em>) and a seminar about self-publishing, both while I was driving.<\/p>\n Oh yeah, and I went to the grocery store.\u00a0 And I read some of a book.\u00a0 The first fiction book I’ve read in a long time; it’s called Seven Types of Ambiguity. <\/em>And I enjoyed a beer while I did that.<\/p>\n My point isn’t that my day was so interesting.\u00a0 In fact, it was pretty typical.\u00a0 What do I hope you see is that there’s plenty of time to do stuff when you aren’t wasting time on things that don’t matter.<\/p>\n The internet doesn’t need another time-management post.\u00a0 But a few days ago when I surveyed people who get the No Meat Athlete newsletter about what they wanted to see in the upcoming Half Marathon Roadmap<\/em> (the half marathon counterpart to Marathon Roadmap<\/a>), a huge number of you said “how to find time to train for a half marathon.”<\/p>\n This shocked me.\u00a0 Now, I understand that a half marathon is a big deal if you haven’t run one before.\u00a0 It’s hard; it takes a lot of desire and the willingness to put in some sweat.\u00a0 But time<\/em>?<\/p>\n You can train for a half marathon with three 30-minute runs a week, plus a long run of an hour or two on the weekend.\u00a0 We’re talking about less than four hours a week, and some of that can come from the time you already spend on exercise.<\/p>\n If running (or anything else) is important to you, you can find four hours a week for it.\u00a0 How?<\/p>\n Like this.<\/p>\n Maybe it has to do with running, maybe not.\u00a0 Maybe it’s learning a language.\u00a0 Or taking violin lessons.\u00a0 Or reading a book a week.\u00a0 Or taking a class.\u00a0 Something that would bring you a lot of joy and satisfaction, something you’d look forward to every day.\u00a0 It’s gotta be something exciting.\u00a0 No cleaning the house.<\/p>\n Now think about how much you could accomplish if you could commit just half an hour, uninterrupted, to that each day.\u00a0 Or, if you want to get really crazy, an hour.\u00a0 With no Facebook, TV, or anything else to distract you.\u00a0 (I know, just ridiculous.\u00a0 An hour<\/em> on something you love?)<\/p>\n Where would you be after a week of that?\u00a0 After a month?\u00a0 A year?\u00a0 You can create a lot in an hour a day.\u00a0 You can change your whole life in an hour a day.<\/p>\n Time management people classify the type of activity you’ve picked for your hour as “important but not urgent.”\u00a0 It doesn’t have the interruptive power of a ringing phone, an email alert, or the thoughtless escape offered by a Facebook message.\u00a0 And so it gets put off.<\/p>\n And yet, it’s the only thing that will make you happy.<\/p>\n There are a few ways to go about this.<\/p>\n Option 1: Write down every single thing you do for two or three days. <\/strong><\/p>\n It’s kind of a pain to do this time diary, but it’s eye-opening.\u00a0 When I first did it, I was on a Minesweeper kick, and this exercise made me realize that deleting the program was my only choice.<\/p>\n Option 2: Sit down and write out what you did last week.<\/strong><\/p>\n Doesn’t have to be perfect, just as much as you can remember.\u00a0 Figure out how much time you spent watching TV, driving, exercising, cooking, Facebooking, whatever.\u00a0 Then classify each activity as one of four types:<\/p>\n Then add up the hours you spend in each type of activity.\u00a0 Don’t be perfect, just guess.<\/p>\n This approach is so cliched it’s in just about every time management book on the planet.\u00a0 But that’s because it’s good.\u00a0 You create great things when you spend time on “important but not urgent.”<\/p>\n But like I did, you’ll probably find that most of your time is spent in the first two groups.<\/p>\n That’s where you should find encouragement.\u00a0 For me, those were huge numbers.\u00a0 When I did this back in November, I came up with 36 (!) hours in group 1.\u00a0 That’s a full-time job of time-wasting!<\/p>\n Seeing that number is a life changer.\u00a0 When you see how much time you spend on things that don’t matter (and might not even be urgent), you realize you have all the time you need.<\/p>\n Even better, when you do start spending more time on things that exercise your mind and body, and less on TV and Facebook and checking your email every 15 minutes, the funny thing is that you feel more energy<\/a>.\u00a0 Which leads to the perception of even more time.<\/p>\n The final, most important step:<\/p>\n Don’t immediately say you’re cutting out every group 1 and group 2 activity.\u00a0 That sounds hard and miserable, and you won’t stick with it.<\/p>\n But find an hour a day (or half an hour, if that’s really all you can do) that you can use on that thing that matters.\u00a0 This should be easy; you’ll probably be tempted to do two or three new things with all that time you find.\u00a0 But just do one for now, and build some momentum.<\/p>\n Warning: this is where most people won’t follow through.\u00a0 They’ll do the first two steps, but won’t actually change anything.<\/p>\n Be different.\u00a0 Write down what you’re going to do, and take some action (cancelling your cable, maybe?) that makes it concrete.\u00a0 If you’re not really excited about what you’re going to do with that hour, go back and do Step 1 again.<\/p>\n Then kick ass with your hour today.<\/p>\n If you do that stuff, you should be proud.\u00a0 But there’s one more thing I’ll recommend that will really allow you to enjoy more of the time that should be yours.<\/p>\n Go on an information diet.<\/strong><\/p>\n I got this term from Tim Ferriss in Four Hour Workweek<\/em><\/a>, but I first learned the concept from Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book Fooled by Randomness<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n We’ve gotten it in our heads that information is good.\u00a0 The news, talk radio, magazines, how-to books.\u00a0 All things many people would consider “smart.”<\/p>\n But it’s bad.\u00a0 At least, to the extent that most of us flood our minds with constant information.\u00a0 Most of it, unfortunately, is noise.\u00a0 Very little is signal.<\/p>\n Think about news and otherwise “time-sensitive” information like a graph, one that increases over time but that has many jagged ups and downs along the way that, when viewed up close, make it easy to miss the forest for the trees.<\/p>\n If you were to start watching, reading, or listening to the news just once a week instead of every day, you’d see less of the jagged ups and downs, but you’d get just as good (or better) a sense of the message.\u00a0 And those ups and downs don’t just take time and attention to understand — they also cause stress.<\/p>\n You can actually stop listening to or reading the news entirely; if something is important you will hear about it.<\/p>\n I’m sure I’ve offended somebody who loves the news.\u00a0 If politics is your hobby or you get entertainment from learning what’s going on in the world, that’s cool.\u00a0 For me, that doesn’t hold anything, and that’s why I don’t watch or listen to or read news.<\/p>\n But even with other, non-news information sources, it’s worth taking a break.\u00a0 I’m the first to admit that I love non-fiction and self-improvement books and even sports talk radio, so this is hard for me.\u00a0 But when you step away from it all and replace it with art — music, fiction, etc., even for just a few days — it really does have an energizing effect on you.\u00a0 It’s like a vacation for your head.\u00a0 Your brain has some space to be creative, rather than consumed.<\/p>\n![\"Word](\"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/iStock_000014505558XSmall.jpg\")
But I liked ESPN.\u00a0 And reruns of The Offic<\/em>e. And even a helping of Top Chef<\/em> once in a while.\u00a0 So I did the easiest thing, which was to do nothing.<\/p>\nHow Comcast helped me finally quit cable<\/h3>\n
What did you do yesterday?<\/h3>\n
How to Find the Time to Do What Matters<\/h2>\n
1. Choose something you’d really, really like to do if only you had more time.<\/h3>\n
2.\u00a0 Now find that hour a day to spend doing something great.<\/h3>\n
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3. Commit to making time for the awesome thing you’re going to do.<\/h3>\n
Bonus: free your mind<\/h3>\n