Do you have enough time to write your book?

by Kim Vermaak

Imagine coming to the end of your life and asking, what did I really achieve?

Many people have a “Writing a Book” on their bucket list. A bucket list is an opportunity to reflect on what is important to you and allow you to tick off important milestones for you. But how many people actually tick off writing a book or most of their other dreams?

Why don’t we ever complete that list? It is mainly for two big excuses humans love to fall back on. Time and money. There is not enough time and there is not enough money. So we spend most of our waking hours working for that paycheck that we have to keep working for month in and month out.

The real reason for not achieving what we set out for is that we lack skills, mindset, and discipline. That isn’t a reason to keep putting off what you want to do. If you work on your mindset, you can achieve what you want. You can find mentors, coaches and even free content to help you grow your mindset and your skill. But you have to choose to be disciplined in pursing your dreams.

This is the reason that leaders and top earners commit to regular reading. When you read, you infuse into your DNA a bigger being. And to have more, you definitely have to be more and do more of the right things.

Many years ago, I went on a quest to solve this time and money problem and I tried a number of solutions. But many of them had a promise of passive income, but no real passive income, just more work. Then I came a across a book by Timothy Ferris, called The Four Hour Work Week.

Coming from an industry where I was working myself to the bone, this intrigued me. Ferriss’ promise of escaping the 9 to 5, living anywhere and joining the new rich, intrigued me. One thing that he points out in this book is that the timing is never right. As a published author, I know this to be true. There is never the perfect time to do anything. When something is important to you, you carve out pockets of time.

Although you can not describe The Four Hour Work Week as a time management book, it has some valuable insights into how we spend our time. When I look at current events at the time of this writing, I realise I spent way too much time in the early days of lockdown researching about Covid: Whether vaccines are a good or bad thing and getting involved in discussions about that. Considering that I can write 1200 words for a new book in a single morning, I wonder how many chapters I could have written instead of talking about Covid.

I almost got sucked down that rabbit hole when the tension between Russia and the Ukraine started. Although it is trending, interesting and heartbreaking, I know I am not in a position to do anything about the war right now. Tim Ferriss refers to cultivating selective ignorance. He wants to know what are the big things happening in the world, but does not need to know all the details. If I apply this principle to my own life, I know that while I can’t make a difference in the political agenda of countries, I have the ability to use my time is to build my self publishing career and help others to do so so that we can all escape the 9 to 5 and impact the long-term success of our families.

I noticed that my book royalties took a spike when I published book 3 and that the effort I had to exert to get sales dropped after that book came out went down. When you look at it that way, it makes made me rethink my priorities. Ask your self, “Does this world problem, political unrest, have real importance in the long term financial stability of my family? If it impacts me, what can I do about it? If the answer is nothing, then why am I spending productive hours thinking about it?”

Tim Ferriss’ book is all about taking action, which is exactly what you need when getting to a place where you can tick off items on your bucket list.

My challenge to you today is to find out what are those time thieves you can eliminate to get your book writing to gain traction.

What actions do you need to take today to get to the next level?