You Have Enough Time You Just Need to Start Spending it Right

Ever felt like you never have enough time? That somehow your life is messed up with so many tasks and responsibilities that you never get time to properly live your life? If so, then you need to stop for a moment and take a look at how you are managing your time. 

When most people say that they have very little time for any activity, mostly it’s because of poor time management. Everyone gets the same number of hours in a day, how you spend it makes a huge difference in how much work you get done and how much time you can take out for yourselves. Today we talk about four reasons why you might be starving on time and how you can resolve it for leading an abundant life.

1. Control Distractions

The human mind can be distracted by many things while trying to focus on any single activity. And the more one is aware of being distracted, the more the mind moves towards these distractions. As such, one generally ends up wasting too much time thinking about these distractions rather than focusing on the main activity.

For example, suppose you are required to finish an assignment by 3 PM in the evening and you start working on it at 10 AM in the morning. Under normal circumstances, this might be sufficient time to complete the project. But if you start checking out Netflix in the middle of the work, and go checking one episode after another, then by 3 PM, you may not be able to finish the project – an extremely common scenario also known as procrastination. Your phone is one of the biggest distractions because it gives you many channels to procrastinate.

If you experience situations where you get so distracted by many things that you lose focus on the job at hand, then you must immediately start making efforts to train your mind to defeat distractions. Fix a time slot when you will only do the work, and commit yourself to it. But once the time is up, stop working and move on to other activities.

2. Prioritize Activities

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Another point to keep in mind when handling multiple activities is to prioritize them according to their importance. Many people just try to handle various activities as per their instinct and end up never doing the important things. Later, they might blame it on ‘not having enough time’, which obviously is untrue.  

For example, imagine that you are required to submit a report tomorrow evening. But you have a few activities of your own that are pending, including watching a movie, a party, and visiting your friend who is in the hospital. Now, if you give importance to these activities, then your report might not be ready by evening the next day. And this can lead to various complications.

To avoid this, try to arrange activities as per their importance to you. Activities like watching movies can be done any other day. So, they should have the least importance. Next, visiting a friend at a hospital may be necessary. But again, since you can visit them on any of the upcoming days, you can postpone it. Next, a party that is scheduled today can be one of your priorities since you won’t be able to attend it on any other day. And lastly, the report will come at the top of the priority list since it is related to your work.

Now that you have identified the priority of the activities, the only thing left to do is to follow them. So, start doing your project today and check-in at the party later in the night. Tomorrow, you can continue with the project and finish it off. 

Then if you have time, you can visit your friend at the hospital. You can then finish the day by watching a movie late at night. And by following this tactic, you will never make an excuse for ‘not having enough time’ when required to do something within a time limit.

3. Don’t Take Up Unnecessary Work

We usually have the habit of overfilling our plates – taking on more work than we can manage to do. This keeps us from doing the work that we are actually supposed to do. It also stems from our inability to say ‘No.’ Just like this beer bottle, if we don’t realize and stop when we are full, things are going to overflow and get out of hand.

Remember to never take up unnecessary work. This is specifically applicable to professionals. Your co-workers might request you to chip in with some help and finish a few tasks from time to time. And if you think that the co-worker’s request is unreasonable and that they are just trying to pass over their responsibilities, then have the courage to politely say ‘No.’

Some people have a hard time saying ‘no’ to such requests. And if you are one of them, then you better start asserting yourself and turning down such requests. If you start doing extra work, you will never be able to get the free time you need to enjoy your life or take care of your priorities.

4. Be Wary of Procrastination

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

-Parkinson’s Law

You should also be wary of procrastination. Many people have the tendency to keep postponing an activity for trivial reasons, only to end up never being able to do it. And when this becomes a habit, your life can go off-track in the sense that you find yourself never able to achieve your goals.

For example, suppose that you aim to join the local quiz club. But for that, you will have to pass a test being conducted next month. Now, you might think that since there is a month left for the test, you only need to start preparing for it in the last two weeks. But when you are in the last two weeks, you might think that only a week is required to prepare correctly.

And then when there is just a week left, you’ll again procrastinate and think that you will start preparing three days before the test. But then you will later find that three days are not sufficient to prepare well and you will end up failing the test and as a result not being able to enter the quiz club. This did not happen because you were short on time, but because you never utilized the time when it was available.

If you have such a habit of procrastination, then it’s high time you start changing it. A good way to do this is to train yourself to finish the required task first. So, instead of waiting for the last two weeks to start preparing for the test, do it right now. It may be hard to adhere to such a habit initially. But if you put in the effort, then you will surely be able to manage time much better.  

Follow the time-tested Ivy Lee Method to increase productivity in your daily life and work. It goes like this. At the end of the day, each day, note down the six most important things to be accomplished the following day. Remember, not more than six. Next, prioritize them in the order of their importance. Start the following day with the most important task. Focus on this one thing until it is done. Then, move on to the next. If any tasks remain unfinished, move it on to the next day. Repeat this process, and you will be amazed at the time you save each day.

Final Thoughts

Like I said earlier, everyone has the same hours given to them in a day and how we spend it defines what we are going to achieve. To achieve what you want, it is really important to learn how to prioritize – there will always be a number of things you want to do but they will never all be at the same level in the priority chart. You need to learn to teach yourself to decide on what is important and stick to doing that.