The changes I’m making with my time for greater productivity!

Heyyyy y’all! I recently did a post on being more efficient, and here is where I get to pinpoint and be specific on which ones I’m going to focus on putting into practice first!

Don’t we all have those days where we know we haven’t been as productive as we know we could have? (#worstdayever!!) It goes without saying that we all want to be superhumans in managing time, but HOW?

The trick is to remember that everything you do takes up a niche of the time during the day that you’re going to want back, so you better think ahead and wonder, “at the end of the day, am I going to be glad I did this?” I’m almost ALWAYS glad when I do chores or school all day because at least I did something productive that makes a dent in my remaining school!!

I’ve found that reallocating time not only allows me to get more things done in a day, but it also allows me to do everything BETTER than I used to be able to. Once I stopped my extra reading and self-reflection, I noticed a MAJOR spike in my productivity and effectiveness on the job. Yet, there STILL remains changes to be made that will greatly reduce time-wasting.

The first thing I’m going to change is to write down or bookmark topics or articles I would like to study throughout the week. At a point in the week where I have free time I’ll come back to the list and look up the things that I still think are important. This saves tons of time because it keeps me organized, and it keeps me from surfing the net when I should be doing my school. 😬

The second re-allocation I plan on trying out is to reduce the time I spend in pleasure reading and use that time to write essays. Although I love to learn, take notes, and store knowledge, writing essays on certain subjects can take me a long time. I need to plan a time for me to sit down and write those essays I’ve been putting off for weeks!

As I re-enter the official school year, I feel better and nearly ready to start again! My third and final reallocation is to spend less time drawing and reading books and articles, and spending more time in school, math, essay-writing, and reading the Bible.

Stay awesome, y’all!

Makayla

(Business I, Lesson 60)

What recent time re-allocation changes have you made? Any tips for a gal like me?

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Social Media

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Social media has become the most popular pastime in the world. Seriously! From blogging to Instagram to Pinterest to YouTube to Facebook, everyone’s on and wants to know what’s going down in the world.

There are many positive things associated with social media viewing:

• Keeping in touch with friends.
• Faster communication between people you don’t know.
• Faster information than ever before.
• Gives you inspiration and ideas for fun projects.
• It’s a mindless activity to help you relax (Some people do this … not me.)
• YouTube has made it super easy to listen to music.

Unfortunately, not everything about social media is peaches-and-cream. A host of problems could arise, like:

• Getting addicted and spending WAY too much time on it.
• Getting screen neck (from bending over to much)
• Getting headaches and problem skin from the blue light.
• Feeling badly that you don’t look like those other (photoshopped, hint hint) people, or have the idealistically perfect life that they have (again, “photoshopped”, hint hint!!!)

Why do people go on social media? To connect with others (or get inspired.) But studies have shown that online relationships don’t fill up your emotional tank so much as a real, physical relationship (I’m talking about real friendships here!)

I think that as long as people are using social media in order to …

a. Connect with people they already know,

b. Grow their business (or learn about their work), or

c. Learn about something important, or something they’re interested in,

… then it’s alright. But if people aren’t setting time limits on how long they can be on a social media platform, or are surfing the net (too often I have done so and regretted it!), or have spent too long  sitting down that their legs fall asleep or they miss out on the awesome world right in front of them and forget to live the way we were made to … Then it’s just SAD, PEOPLE!!

So here’s a plan of action that I challenge you to follow up on …

1. Spend only 5-10 minutes a day on each social media platform you’re involved in (this includes Facebook and homeschool forums. Does not include personal emails, but does include group hangouts.) Feel free to spread these minutes around.

2. Get up every half-hour of sitting at the computer and move around.

3. No matter what you do, DO NOT SURF THE NET!! This tires you out and makes you lazy and unproductive.

4. Do this for a few days. See how you feel. After this, increase your social media time but not by much. Only do what is really important to you.

It’s important to remember to take EVERYTHING in moderation. Social media itself is not the bad guy … over-use is. We are a race of variety – put a little spice in your life! Act like a pauper, think like a prince. This means to work hard, but work with a goal. You are awesome … so act that way! Don’t imprison yourself by the standards that bodybuilder-YouTubers or Instagram baddies live by. Be free from the hold of the world!

Stay awesome, y’all!

Makayla

My journey to becoming more efficient!

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No one ever has as busy a schedule as you, right? Wrong!

Even I think that often, but the truth is that people make time for what they care about, and put those things into their schedule. Everyone has the potential to overbook themselves (*raises hand*!)

Not only can taking things OUT of your schedule help with efficiency, so can putting things in!

Huh?

I know it sounds counterintuitive, but keep in mind that things like breaks, replacing ill-spent time with productive work, patience, determination, and perseverance, can all work together towards a WAY better usage of your time! Everyone has the same amount of time, so we should all use it well.

Things I could cut out (or minimize) to increase my efficiency:

• Project Research. Only a few of the things I read on the internet help my creativity, and it will be better for me to stay away from the screen as much as possible, especially since I already do my schoolwork on the laptop.
• Self-reflection. It’s important, for sure, but with years and years of homeschooling and most of my friends being scared to open the windows lately, I’m pretty sure I know myself quite well enough, thank you. 😉
• Cutting out sleeping in the morning. I know it sounds crazy! But I don’t want to stay up late and sleep in, I want to go to bed early and wake up 30 minutes earlier (6:30 AM.)
• I need to cut out negative attitudes toward positive assignments and/or activities, and insert a positive attitude.
• Writing. I’m a gal who really loves her notes, outlines, story ideas, lists, sketches, posters, project ideas … you get the picture! It’s very time-consuming, and although I love it, my creative writing often keeps me from doing my homework-assigned writing. I need to get the necessary stuff done first.
• Reading. After taking this business course, I censor a lot of what I read. My motto is “read only gold.” I will read on almost any topic but it has to be worth its weight in gold. Unfortunately, my love of reading can come between me and my school reading books as well!
• Blogging. Ron Paul Curriculum introduced me to blogging, and I am grateful that I have learned in the first few months to stick to following only the few people who give me the best information.
• Discussion Forum. It doesn’t take long, but it occupies a ton of headspace. And I am SO done with forum vibes! So I’m gone. Maybe I’ll return someday.
• Multitasking. I love it, and I wish it always worked, but it doesn’t. Unfortunately.

Even cutting out or minimizing the above doesn’t mean I’ll immediately be more efficient, but I have noticed instant results, like a clearer head, more enjoyment in school, and more school done in a day!

Stay awesome, y’all!

~Makayla

The Outrageous Cost of TV

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How many times have you heard a friend talking animatedly about a TV show, film, or video game that just came out? Have you ever wondered “Does it matter?”

How much time do we spend watching TV that we could otherwise use to do something that could enrich our lives? Are we missing out on potential growth, or even stunting our growth? What is the true intended purpose of TV and screen time? And do the latest blue screen editions zone us out?

When TV was created, an enormous market opened up because people were fascinated. Children are fascinated with the screen, but when they are exposed to it over long periods of time, they become immune to the novelty and begin to take it for granted. In many cases, this produces tv-addict toddlers, video-gamer teens, and adults who devote hours of the day to sports and following up on their favorite players.

The reality can be depressing, but there are many people who are responsible with TV-viewing and video-games. TV was meant to be a diversion for people who wanted to relax and clock out for a few minutes. There are very few scenarios where a hobby connected to television can be helpful to overall physical/emotional and character growth.

One potential thing to consider is money loss. If one spends a lot of time on TV that they could otherwise have spent working, IT ADDS UP. Let me tell you how much it added up for me.

The past week I kept track of my FOR-PLEASURE VIDEO-VIEWING viewing, to get a rough idea of what I take in per week. Of course, the Ron Paul Curriculum has video lessons every day, but I was asked to keep track of the pleasure viewing I did, including video games.

I did no TV-viewing. We don’t have cable, so we never watch TV. However, we watched ‘One Night with the King’, (a movie on the Esther story,) on Purim, the day the Jews remember their salvation from the Agagite Haman. The running time was just over 2 hours. On Friday we watched ‘Hidden Figures’ … well, half of it … a biographical movie based on famed NASA engineer Catherine Johnson.

I expected the entire week would come to a total of 2 hours of video-viewing. If we assumed 2 hours per week, 56 weeks a year, and assumed minimum wage ($15 an hour) for my hourly wage, that comes to a grand total of $1,680 lost per year! That’s a lot of money lost per year, for TWO hours a week! (Many people get paid above minimum wage, so the yearly figure would then be a lot higher.)

The total from Monday to Monday came to about 3 hours. A whole HOUR more than I had estimated! Calculating again under minimum wage, if I spent 3 hours every week, 56 weeks a year, at minimum wage ($15 an hour) money count, the total loss comes to $2,520 lost per year.

(I was assigned to do the next two paragraphs, but I find the numbers unrealistic, so you can skip them if you’d like.)

I was assigned to test certain hourly wages at an estimated amount of hours per month, so in Lesson 23, I computed my “movie-watching-money loss”.  I computed 7 hours a month, using an hourly wage of $20 for the first decade, and $50 for the next 40 years. I found that the total amount of money I would have lost from watching 7 hours of screen time a month (with reinvesting), for over 40 years, is $3,070,699.41!)

The last assigned test took into account the 3 hours per week, and I would now assume that I spend about 9 hours per month on screen time. Then I recalculated the new amount from now to age 70 … and the total money loss (with reinvesting) came to $3,948,042.40.

(Okay, back to regular reading …)

Never before this past week had I realized just how much my time is worth. If spending only NINE hours a MONTH (which, let me tell you, is much, MUCH less than some other people I know spend) counts up to a couple thousand dollars lost in the end, how much is TV/movies/screen time really worth? It isn’t free anymore. It isn’t worth it anymore. Not to me.

That being said, everyone relaxes differently and has different interests. If you recharge a few times a week by watching news, or hang out with your friends by having gaming competitions, then that’s up to you. Just be sure that any kind of screen time for relaxing gives you information and growth, and that you use it in a healthy way. The monetary benefit of less TV is HUGE, as you can see from my experiment.

Stay Awesome y’all!

~Makayla

(Below is the link for the investing calculator I used…)

https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calculators/compound-interest-calculator