You have more than enough time, you’re just not spending it right

Here’s a hard truth:
You have 24 hours.

No matter how big your dreams are (or aren’t), no matter how much “potential” you have (or don’t) — you have 24 hours.
And in the meantime, the world keeps changing. Nonstop! We are supposed to keep up with all the geniuses, the trends, the news. Who let that happen?

You are busy. I know that because you are alive on this planet in the fastest generation of humans ever.
But still, you have to stay ahead of the curve. You have to learn. You have to grow. And in the meantime, you have to stay sane.

Are you wasting, spending, or investing your time?

Stewart Stafford once said, “The quickest way to run out of time is to think you have enough of it.”

You waste time when you focus on low-value work.

You invest time when you choose to use it for activities that contribute to your long-term growth.

“Time is the most valuable coin in your life. You and you alone will determine how that coin will be spent. Be careful that you do not let other people spend it for you,” says Carl Sandburg.

When people see their time in terms of money, they often grow stingy with the former to maximize the latter.

You have more than enough time, you’re just not spending it right

“I don’t have enough time.” We’ve all said it before.

Time poverty is a distribution issue.

Many people y sense a feeling that they are time-constrained, yet they are more time-affluent than they think.

The key reason we “don’t have enough time” is that we never adequately clarify how much time we should be devoting to the different things we most value.

One of the biggest frustrations many of us feel is having too much to do, and not feeling like we have enough time to do it. We are overwhelmed.

If you keep running out of time, it’s typically because you are spreading yourself too thin.

Sometimes part of the conflict is not having a clear idea of what you should be doing first thing in the morning, or what could be postponed until midday.

This can make you feel like you’re being pulled into a different direction.

Leo Babauta, author of Zen To Done: The Ultimate Simple Productivity System, explains, “By picking your tasks carefully, you’re taking care with the container of your time. You can pick important tasks or joyful ones, but you’re being conscious about the choices. You’re treating it like the precious gift that it is: limited, valuable, to be filled with the best things, and not overstuffed.”

If you systematically set priorities for your week, or day, there will be enough time for your high-value work.

Prioritization and organizing can lead to a more efficient allocation of time.

Step back and figure out what is important to you. Get rid of the unimportant, de-commit, brainstorm long or short-term changes.

You have all the time you need to create value, work on your best work and make an impact.

Time is an asset. It’s a huge aspect of work you probably take for granted.

Start by reviewing your daily routine

Track your daily activities for some time to clearly see where your time is being spent. Meetings, phone calls, emails, notifications, small chats, and many other distractions are constantly splitting your attention.

Record ALL your appointments, deadlines, and everything in-between. Analyse the actual time you spend on each activity with what you think is the best amount for each.

Schedule the heck out of your days. Schedule everything in advance.

Make a plan and know what’s going on each day.

This helps you figure out how you’re spending your time

Notice where time leaks, then declutter your routine.

Revisit your schedule regularly. Check in with yourself weekly to see if your schedule reflects what you want it to.

Stop feeding your distractions

Interruptions like notifications, loud noises, social media, someone knocking on your door, and switching to check emails every now and then, break your flow.

They interrupt your concentration.

They’re just enough to pull your focus away and make you have to start over.

Anytime you are pulled away from your tasks, it takes time to readjust to them when you jump back in — up to 25 minutes in many cases.

Your life keeps diminishing while you waste your time feeding your distractions.

Successful people prioritize! They focus! They disconnect from everything else to get tasks done.

Beware of deceptive time-wasting activities that disguise themselves as your work; Lengthy discussions with colleagues, long meetings and treating other people’s work as “emergencies” when you should be concentrating on your high-value work.

Writing in the first century, Seneca was surprised by how little people seemed to value their lives as they were living them — how busy, terribly busy, everyone seemed to be, and wasteful of their time.

He noticed how even wealthy people hustled their lives along, ruing their fortune, anticipating a time in the future when they would rest.

In his book (translated by John W. Basore), “On the Shortness of Life,” Seneca offers powerful insights into the art of living. He observed, “It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. … The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.”

“Life is long if you know how to use it,” he counselled.

Focus on importance and suppress urgency

Urgency wrecks productivity. Urgent but unimportant tasks are major distractions. Last-minute distractions are not necessarily priorities.

Sometimes important tasks stare you right in the face, but you neglect them and respond to urgent but unimportant things.

You need to reverse that. It’s one the only ways to master your time.

Your ability to distinguish urgent and important tasks has a lot to do with your success.

Important tasks are things that contribute to your long-term mission, values, and goals. Separating these differences is simple enough to do once, but doing so continually can be tough.

Jory MacKay of Crew explains:

Urgent tasks are tasks that have to be dealt with immediately.

These are things like phone calls, tasks with impending deadlines, and situations where you have to respond quickly. Responding to an email, when you have to do it, is usually an urgent task.

Important tasks are tasks that contribute to long-term missions and goals.

These are things like that book you want to write, the presentation you’d like to make for a promotion, and the company you plan on starting.

The problem is that important tasks usually get trumped by urgent tasks.

Don’t take on too much

“One of the greatest resources people cannot mobilize themselves is that they try to accomplish great things. Most worthwhile achievements are the result of many little things done in a single direction.” — Nido Qubein

It is easy to get excited with goals and try to take on too much but if you do, you’ll be spending your energy all over the place.

The basic principle of success is to focus. It is what makes the difference between those who are successful and those who are not, regardless of how much talent, resource, and energy that they have.

The most accomplished and well-known people in history were known for something unique to them. Einstein pursued the theory of relativity like his whole life depended on it.

Relativity is one of the most famous scientific theories of the 20th century. Mozart was incredibly passionate about music. He was the very best for many generations before and after him. Even today, is there a second musician who could match his genius?

Spend most of your time on the right things and the rest takes care of itself.It’s not enough to just ‘work hard’. Hard work is not necessarily a bad thing. But hard work can be a waste of your life when it’s thrown at the wrong things. Decide what is good for you in the long term, and pursue it with all you’ve got.

Each time you have something extra to do or an additional goal to pursue, you further split your power.

Don’t be available all the time

Time is the raw material of productivity and creativity. Time, not money, is your most valuable asset. Invest your asset. There are 168 hours every week. Let that sink in for a moment. That is a monumental amount of time. Where could it possibly go? Or better still where are you spending all those hours?

In his book, “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity”, David Allen says, “If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.”

According to David “You are the captain of your own ship; the more you act from that perspective, the better things will go for you.”

Ultra-productive people focus on getting a lot done with every minute they have at their disposal. Allocate time to each task you need to get done every day. And don’t get distracted by everything other’s expect you to do.

“You can’t let other people set your agenda in life” says Warren Buffett.

Each task of the day should be attainable, realistic, and time-bound. And most importantly every task should advance your goals for the day, week or month. The time constraint will push you to focus and be more efficient.

Stephen Covey once said: “You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage pleasantly, smilingly, and non-apologetically — to say “no” to other things. And the way to do that is by having a bigger yes burning inside.”

Say these magic words

“I love you, but I can’t give you my focus right now.”

This drawing by Larry Kim stopped me in my tracks the other day.

I thought I was pretty good at monotasking. Then one morning, I wrote 200 words of a blog post, went to check Twitter, answered some email, and then returned to the blog post. This cycle lasted a long time.

My problem was this — everything I deemed “productive” fell under the same task. Website changes, research, writing, and making graphics for posts logically fell under the same big objective. But biologically, my brain wasted energy fighting off all kinds of attention residue jumping from thing to thing.

Now I say “I love you, but I can’t give you my focus right now” to Twitter, Quora, phone calls, and text messages when I’m trying to tackle a new subject.

Learning is progress, even if it doesn’t feel like a priority. When I’m reading or researching, that’s ALL I do.