Living The Red Life - Why Hobbies & Dead Time Are Killing Your Goals

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

In this thought-provoking episode of "Living the Red Life," Rudy Mawer tackles a rarely discussed yet crucial topic: the impact of hobbies on financial success and productivity.Rudy delves into how successful entrepreneurs manage their hobbies and dead time, contrasting this with the habits of less successful individuals. This episode is a deep dive into balancing work, fun, and the importance of structuring your day to align with your life goals.---Key Topics Covered:The Productivity Paradigm: Understanding the importance of maximizing every minute, and how 'dead time' can hinder life progress.Hobbies vs. Success: Exploring the relationship between the hobbies one chooses and their level of success, particularly financial freedom.Entrepreneurial Time Management: Insights into how successful entrepreneurs structure their day, focusing on minimizing dead space and maximizing productivity.The Trap of Mundane Tasks: Discussion on how mundane tasks and unstructured time can consume a significant portion of one’s life.Reevaluating Hobbies: The importance of choosing hobbies that serve your goals and how they fit into a successful lifestyle.Time Management Strategies: Practical advice on structuring your day, prioritizing tasks, and aligning activities with your life and financial goals.Intentional Living: Emphasizing the need for intentional living and structured time management for long-term success.---Key Takeaways:Value Your Time: Recognizing the importance of how you spend each minute is crucial for success.Quality Over Quantity: It’s not about having no hobbies, but choosing those that align with and support your goals.Structure is Key: Successful people structure their time intentionally, including work, hobbies, and relaxation.Avoid Dead Space: Identifying and minimizing unproductive dead space can lead to significant improvements in productivity and success.Intentional Hobbies: Hobbies should be purposeful and in moderation to support rather than detract from your goals.---Join Rudy Mawer in this episode of "Living the Red Life" as he provides insights and actionable advice on managing time effectively, choosing the right hobbies, and structuring your day for maximum productivity and success.---Subscribe for more insightful episodes and join our community for ongoing discussions and updates!#LivingTheRedLife #TimeManagement #Productivity #RudyMawerPodcast #Entrepreneurship #SuccessMindset #HobbiesAndSuccess---Connect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

You have to look at your hobbies. How do you maximize every minute? How do you maximize your time? How do you give up some hobbies that don't serve you? Keep the ones you love, put them in moderation, and kill the dead time. I promise you the dead time is going to ruin your life. The dead time is going to keep you broke, miserable, unhappy, and not where you want to be in life. Every minute matters. You're always against the clock. The one thing in life, we can earn more money. We can find new relationships. We can find new business partnerships. We can do pretty much anything in this world except buy back our time. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland, and change your life. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life.

Today we're going to talk about hobbies and why your hobbies might be making you broke or less successful in life. What do I mean by that? Well, today we will dive in to the world of productivity, hobbies, how to balance your work and what you do for fun, and why most entrepreneurs have less hobbies and they're very distinct in how they structure their day, and why most unsuccessful people, people that aren't financially free, have a lot of random things going on, random hobbies, random chores and tasks that mess up their day. Now, I've learned this over time. When you look at an entrepreneur's calendar and someone ultra successful, it's not that they don't have hobbies. It's not that they don't have fun.

But what they do is they're very hyper focused on all the dead space in their life. And when I hang around with unsuccessful people, they probably lose 30 to 40 percent of their life because of dead space. I see this all the time when I hang out with friends, family members, random people. Half their life is wasted or half their waking day is wasted in dead space, taking time to do mundane things, hanging out, waiting 45 minutes for someone to show up, going out to return an item that's $7 or across the road to a grocery store to buy some milk. So there's a lot of dead space in people's day. And there's a lot of people that also use a lot of free productivity-based time that could be used to grow businesses, to improve their life in some

capacity, to do hobbies that don't serve them. And this doesn't mean I'm saying you shouldn't have fun, but you should structure your day to be ultimately giving you the outcome in life you want. So if you want to be an entrepreneur and you want to be successful, one of your biggest battles in your entire life will be time and how you manage your day. And if you fill a lot of your day with dead space

and then hobbies that don't serve you, it will be very hard to be successful. So this isn't about not playing computer games or playing them. It's about structuring it where if you have an hour playing a computer game, or you have an hour or two going and playing golf, or you go to the movie theater for two hours, there's no problem with that. But you bet if you look at a successful entrepreneur that does that, the other 12 hours they probably covered more work and productivity than most people do in a week, right? And where most people go wrong, normal people, quote unquote normal people, people that aren't maybe as successful as, you know, really successful entrepreneurs or athletes or anyone in the top 1%. And voila, before you know it, 10 years are gone and they're looking back on their life, they're not where they want to be.

And the only difference in those 10 years with a successful entrepreneur is how they structured every day. They still had the hobbies, they still had fun, they still did stuff at the weekend, but they valued their time differently and they structured their hobbies differently and they structured the productive time that they spend working in the business or on the business or on their finances, whatever they do, right? Whether they're a stock trader, a salesman, a real estate investor, an entrepreneur, they structured it and were very intentional. So one thing I want you to take away from this

podcast is look at what hobbies you do that maybe don't serve you, that you could do less of, what hobbies you do that you really enjoy. And even though they don't serve you, that's your fun time, your relaxing time, and that's totally okay. But then what I want you to do is how does that impact the rest of your life? Are those hobbies setting you back, right? And are those hobbies causing a problem or a barrier? And are those hobbies causing a barrier to success, right? So if one of your hobbies is going out drinking every weekend, right? And then that means the next two days when you go out drinking, you're hungover, you're not productive, you go out for a, you know, a brunch because you don't feel great and you want some food and then you kind of

eat a big brunch, you go home and nap a little and watch a movie and that's your Sunday, right? Maybe you do that Saturday and Sunday and then Saturday night you recovered, you go out again, right? That's the whole weekend. That's two days of your life right which is like 25 30 percent of your life gone right and then if you work a nine to five and you're trying to be successful the weekends are really the time to get ahead because you know you have a bit of evening time and weekends so really you've actually not got rid of just two days you've got rid of like 85 percent of quote unquote, free productive time. So I would say if I was, you know, mentoring you, I would go, well,

you got to make a choice because you're ruining your whole life with these weekends that don't serve your goals. And if your goal is to just go out and party and have fun every weekend, then congrats, you're doing a great job in that goal, right? But if your goal is not that, if your goal is to be successful or to build a business or start a business or build a business so you can quit your job, right, then you're doing the opposite. So you have to make sure your hobbies fit where you want to be in life. And I always talk about this. I just did an Instagram post. What most people don't understand is it's the small things in life that add up to big levels of success most people think it's the opposite and I used to too I used to

think oh one day I'd meet this one celebrity or get this one opportunity and whatever right and it would just take off all of a sudden and change my life I've realized it's actually the opposite it's like the discipline small things every day so cutting out the hobbies that don't serve you maybe just doing 45 minutes of the hobby a day instead of 90 minutes. Getting up an hour earlier and going to the gym. Getting rid of the dead space. So instead of wasting 45 minutes at lunch driving to go get food, you know, maybe that you bring food with you or you Uber Eats food and you spend that 45 minutes going to the gym or

working on your business because now you're working out in the middle of the day at the office gym, and now that hour that you used to do after work, where you were going to the gym, you've now got that back to go and then build your business, right? It's these small things that may seem silly, may seem tedious, may seem obvious, that I promise you, I promise you will make up a massive difference in how successful you are in life and how happy you are in life and how happy you are in life. Because guess what? Happiness comes from fulfillment and fulfillment comes by doing what you want to do. And how do you get to a point where you're doing what you want to do?

Generally, it's because you have to go out and create it, right? It's not going to happen by accident. So it links back to happiness and fulfillment in life by becoming disciplined. Jocko Wilkins is very famous saying, "'Discipline equals freedom.'" The reason that saying and quote has become so popular is because most people, like 80, 90% in life, aren't disciplined, and then they're not where they wanna be in their life.

They don't have their dreams and goals achieved, so then they're unhappy. So discipline equals freedom, and discipline equals happiness too. So cut out the hobbies that don't serve you. If you still want to have some fun and go to the movies a couple of nights a week or even go out drinking once a week, do it, but make it more reasonable. Go out drinking once a week. Say to yourself, I'm limiting myself to this amount of drinks and no matter what happens

tomorrow, I have a discipline scheduled. Even if I'm hungover, I'm getting up, I'm going to the gym, I'm going to, you know, do whatever, go into the steam room sauna or have a cold shower to get going in the morning. And then I've got a four-hour work block, right? And if you get to a point where you're disciplined like that, you might eventually go, I'm doing this, it's hard because I'm hungover, so I'm not going to drink as much now, right? That's a positive decision moving you to where you want to be in life, right? Now, look, if you're someone that's in a place in your life where you're not going out partying, playing games, and all that sort of stuff,

maybe you're older, more mature, it's about looking at your day a little more. Because over time, as you mature and get older, you take on all these things that don't serve you, okay? And I'm not talking about in the business. You're doing all these chores, all these random errands, random things because you become more responsible as an adult. Maybe it's to do with the kids. A lot of these things can be automated and delegated, okay? Automated and delegated. You don't have to go to the grocery store. I don't understand why anyone

in the world goes to the grocery store. If you want to be successful in life, never enter a grocery store ever because you're wasting an hour of your life buying groceries. Tell me how that's going to make you successful. Unless that's one of your most favorite things to do in an entire week and it's your hobby, you should not be going ever to a grocery store. And the same applies to everything else in life, doing the laundry, doing the dishes, all of that can be automated or outsourced to someone that is probably earning less than what you're earning, right? Now, if you're on a low-wage job and you can't earn more, if you're in a nine-to-five, it's a little different, right? But if you're an entrepreneur, you have unlimited potential

to earn X amount per hour, Okay? I started in a gym. I was paid $8 an hour by the company, right? And then when I did a personal training session, I got 20 to 25 pounds or dollars an hour, which at that age was insane. It's like 4X what I'm earning hourly, right? Now, as an entrepreneur, I charge $5,000 to $10,000 an hour. If someone wants to sit with me for an hour,

that's what my team charge out we sell a hundred K program where they get access to five or six hours of me over a year you can do the maths on that they get some other stuff too but you can do the maths on that right so I know what my time is worth so I will happily give up hundreds of dollars I pay last night I got my hair done right if you're watching you see the red hair it's's a three-hour thing, three-hour thing. The first time I got it done, because I didn't know anyone in Miami, I had to go to a salon and find someone and do it. Straight away, as soon as I did it, it was two and a half hours because I got

it cut, dyed, blah, blah, blah. I go, I'm never doing this again in my life. What a waste of time. And I was working the whole time on my phone with an Audible booking, just to be clear, right? But that's because I was super productive still as much as I could but I said I'm never going to do this again in my life I'm either not dying my hair anymore just going back to 30 minute haircuts or I'm getting them to come to my house now they come to my house I pay them double the price right so it's like you know it goes from $250 to say $500 okay but I when they get there they set up in my kitchen I have a big monitor here. I had my iPad here and I had my laptop here. I had my drink there. I had my AirPods here. I had

my phone charger here. Boom, bing, bang, bong. All the time I missed, guess how much time I lost? I had to lose five minutes, which still annoyed me because I had to go down and let him in from valet because I had just moved to a new place and he didn't know how to get it. Even that five minutes annoyed me. I said, thank God I don't ever have to do this again because now he knows where I live and how to get up there, right? That's how I operate. That five minutes annoyed me. I didn't even let him out of the house. I said, you know where to go, right? And then I didn't even pay him. My team paid him. My assistant or my wife pays him. So I said, yeah, they'll memo you later. Appreciate it because I'm so obsessed with my time, so I got free out yes I was getting my hair done I did free interviews in that time

probably hiring two of those people and I did a ton of work I got a ton of stuff sorted ton of projects updated in that time working because I was super productive now yes did it cost me more money of course it did but how much time did it save me right when I compare my iPhone working if I went to the salon versus the computers free computer setup I probably did double or triple the amount of stuff it would have been harder to interview people on the phone if I was having to do the interviews in a salon where everyone's getting their haircut and stuff right plus the time to get there and I don't drive there by the way when I do go I over so I can work in the car but that would have been another 30 40

minutes each way right Miami traffic so you know you're talking about three hours plus an hour commute that's four hours and I probably got eight nine hours of work done right so did it cost me two hundred fifty dollars more yeah but I probably got four hours of extra productivity time in, which is worth thousands of dollars to me. So that's how, if you really want to be successful and obsessive, that's how you should look at it. Optimize every minute.

And guess one thing that did annoy me, which I kicked myself for. He was 30 minutes late and I should have gone to the gym, but he kept saying he was five minutes late. So I said to my assistant, next time you're going to ring him and make sure how close he is. Ask for his location because in that 25 minutes he was late, I could have got a gym session in, but I didn't because I kept thinking he was five minutes away. So next time you need to monitor how close he is because he's been late a couple of times and I don't want to wait for 30 minutes.

I was just working on my phone, but then I missed the gym session that I was trying to do. Blah, blah, blah. You get the idea. So look, you have to look at approaching things like this. You have to look at your hobbies. How do you maximize every minute? How do you maximize your time? How do you give up some hobbies that don't serve you?

Keep the ones you love, put them in moderation, and kill the dead time. I promise you the dead time is going to ruin your life. The dead time is going to keep you broke, miserable, unhappy, and not where you want to be in life. Every minute matters. You're always against the clock. The one thing in life, we can earn more money. We can find new relationships.

We can find new business partnerships. We can do pretty much anything in this world except buy back our time. Your biggest competitor ever, forever, even more than the government, the IRS, everyone, everyone will be your time you can never fix or replace that so it should be the number one thing you optimize that's how you ditch your hobbies optimize your time kill dead time to be more productive and that is Thanks for watching!