The Other 8 Hours: Use Your Free Time to Create Wealth

If you’re like most people, you have a job that takes up about eight hours of your day, and you sleep for eight hours a day. That leaves you with eight hours a day of free time (or, better stated, time that is your own). What are you doing with your free time? Are you making good use of that time? Those are the questions that Robert Pagliarini asks in his book, The Other 8 Hours: Maximize Your Free Time to Create New Wealth & Purpose.

The premise of “The Other 8 Hours” is simple: Anyone can improve their life, if they find some free time in which to do so. In addition, you can find the time by taking a look at how you’re currently using your eight hours and looking for ways to make better use of that time. Start thinking of your “other eight hours” as your most valuable resource for improving your life.

Read more about “The Other 8 Hours” below.

What Eight Hours?!

When most people read the title of the book, “The Other 8 Hours”, they immediately think to themselves, “What eight hours? I don’t have eight hours of free time!” With the busy schedules that most of us are juggling, the suggestion that we have eight hours a day lying around can be infuriating. This can lead some people to dismiss the book entirely.

However, Pagliarini argues that you do have eight hours of free time. Those eight hours when you’re not at work and you’re not sleeping are “your time”. The thing is, you’ve already assigned activities and commitments to those eight hours. What you need to do is to re-examine how you’re using those eight hours in order to determine if it’s the best use of your time.

In addition, even if you conclude that your eight hours of “free time” are being put to good use—after all, you have to fix meals, drive your kids to soccer practice, do the laundry, and so on–, you can find at least half an hour, or forty minutes a day, which you can devote to building a better future for yourself. After all, small things done consistently lead to big changes.

Therefore, the first thing that you need to do is to look for ways to save a little time here and there in order to invest that time in yourself. You can start doing this with a strategy that Pagliarini calls “PERK”. This strategy is explained below.

PERK – Strategy for Carving Time Out of Your Day

Here’s how you apply PERK in order to free up time in your day: Begin by making a list of all of the activities that you engage in throughout the day. List everything, including activities like the following:

• Brushing your teeth
• Driving the kids to school
• Laundry
• Making dinner

After you’ve listed everything, go down the activities one by one, and next to each one write one of these four letters:

• “P” for those activities that you can postpone.
• “E” for those activities that you can eliminate.
• “R” for those activities that you can reduce.
• “K” for those activities that you have to keep.

As an example of an activity that you can postpone, Pagliarini shares that when he was writing his book he was also taking Spanish classes. Although learning Spanish is something that’s important to him, finishing his book was more important. Therefore, he decided to postpone learning Spanish until he finished writing his book.

An example of an activity that you can eliminate is to drop out of committees that really aren’t a priority for you. As for activities that you can reduce, if you find that you’re spending a lot of time on activities such as watching TV and playing video games, you don’t need to cut out those activities from your life completely. Just reduce the amount of time that you devote to them. Lastly, there are those activities which you decide to keep.

By using the PERK strategy Pagliarini indicates that you should be able to carve out about an hour of time which you can invest in your future.

Use Your Free Time to Become a Creator

Of course, you need to decide what you’re going to do with the free time that you carve out for yourself. You could use that time to start a new hobby, lose weight, learn a new skill, and so on. However, Pagliarini is a financial consultant, and he recommends that you use your free time in order to create wealth. In addition, he argues that the best way to build wealth is by becoming a creator (he calls it Cre8tor™).

Seth Godin said the following about Pagliarini’s book: “Just one simple decision, to become a creator, is enough to change your life for the better.”

So, what is a creator? A creator is a creative entrepreneur who has a day job but wants more. They know that the only way to get a new financial life is to do something different during their “other 8 hours”. That is, they devote the time that they carve out of their “other 8 hours” to apply their strengths, passions, and/or expertise to create something unique and valuable.

Pagliarini argues that if you settle for a paycheck, you’ll only get paid what your employer thinks that you’re worth. However, if you create something valuable there is virtually no limit to how much money you can make.

Here are five reasons Pagliarini sets forth of why it’s important to become a creator:

1. Mansion Money: If you create something special that takes off, it could potentially catapult you into a whole new level. It’s an amount of money that’s so large, that you can quit your job and buy a mansion. It’s a game changer.

2. Mo’ Money: Maybe you’re not interested in mansion money. However, everyone can use a couple of thousand extra dollars a month.  You can pay off your debts, improve your life style, invest for your retirement, and so on.

3. Be Your Own Boss. Are you tired of long commutes, working at a job you don’t love, and having to work more years than you’d like? By becoming a creator you can potentially become your own boss, and design a new life where you call the shots.

4. Move On Up. Maybe you don’t want to strike out on your own, and you prefer working for someone else. Even then, what you create in the other 8 hours can help you get a better job, or move up the ladder in your present job. You can gain credibility and recognition, and attract new clients, by creating a blog, writing a book, teaching seminars, and so on.

5. Purpose and Passion. A boss you don’t respect and an empty bank account can wreck havoc on your sense of well-being. Becoming a creator will spark new passion into your life. Even if you don’t enjoy your job, while you’re at work you can be thinking of the fact that soon you’ll be home, and then you’ll be working on your side project which you do love. And that will infuse all the hours of your day with purpose and passion.

Ways to Make Money As a Creator

Pagliarini recommends ten ways in which you can make money as a creator. As a creator you can sell the following:

• Thoughts (Blogging; Writing Books or Screenplays; Composing Music)
• Things (Inventing; Starting a Company; Reselling, Affiliating and Licensing)
• Time (Working for Stock in a Company; Advancing or Jumping Careers; Freelancing; or Turning Hobbies into Income)

Here’s a quote from Pagliarini: “With very few exceptions, anybody who has attained any level of financial success has created something. It might be a book, a CD, an invention, or a web site. Look around you. Everything you see was originally just an idea in someone’s head. It took vision, determination, and action to turn those ideas into what you see today.”

Conclusion

In his review of “The Other 8 Hours” J.D. Roth, owner of the popular blog “Get Rich Slowly”, explains that before starting his blog he was a slacker. He’d get up each morning and go to a job that he hated. Then he’d come home at night and watch TV or play computer games. As he started his financial turnaround, he made the decision to make better use of his time. He indicates that making the decision to use his “other 8 hours” to create wealth changed his life.

How can you carve out time from your “other 8 hours” to create a better life for yourself? What do you plan to do with that time? How will your life be different a year from now because of the time investment you’re going to start making? Please share in the comments.

Related Posts:

1. 18 Powerful Tips for Overcoming Procrastination
2. Prosperity Tips – 18 Ways to Increase Your Wealth
3. Stop Procrastinating Tip: Practice Discomfort

I Recommend:

1. How to Live Your Best Life – The Essential Guide for Creating and Achieving Your Life List
2. Make It Happen! A Workbook for Overcoming Procrastination and Getting the Right Things Done

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