“I am out of time”. “Didn’t have time to do that”. “Oh, if only I had more time for this.” These are just some of the phrases that countless people never tire of repeating, either to themselves or to other people. The fact that they don’t know how to manage their time better ends up harming them much more than they can imagine!
Just to start the conversation, I’m going to remember something that a friend of mine taught me a few years ago: there is no lack of time, what exists are priorities. That is, time is the same for each one of us: as far as I know, until the last time I had a watch, it told me that every day had 24 hours… Always! And if time is the same for everyone, why does it seem “longer” to some people than to others?
You can’t “enlarge your day”, but you can make the most of it
I always find people saying that they are too busy, that they don’t have enough time to do everything they want, how nice a 30-hour day would be, and so on goes the “wailing wall”. The Earth rotates the same for all of us, which means that we all have the same time, and since no one is going to “brake” the Earth so that it rotates more slowly (also because this would have serious environmental consequences), so it’s better to get used to it with the 24-hour day.
However, if you know how to make the most of those 24 hours a day, rest assured that you will be able to perform better in your tasks and still be able to rest a little longer! Previously, we wrote an article called Manage your time better, where I described some of the most effective advice for not wasting your time in such a way that I won’t rewrite all of your content here – it would be a waste of time, and we’re avoiding that here, aren’t we?
Very briefly, two are the main actions to be taken: eliminate all distractions and plan ahead. In addition to these two great lessons, I have two others that I have been putting into practice and that greatly complement the previous ones: avoid “information overdose” and don’t try to “multitask”.
Avoiding information overdose
Reading “Four Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferris, I learned that the overdose of information, that is, the excessive and unnecessary absorption of information, can be much more harmful than the lack of information!
Who hasn’t spent hours and hours on the Internet, browsing aimlessly, reading thousands of sites that didn’t add any value to their lives? Who never stayed in front of the television watching countless programs when they should be doing a job or studying something?
In addition to the cost of time, information overload can also be detrimental to decision-making and taking action – after a certain level of absorption of some information, continuing to absorb more and more of it will not help much. Think of the example of someone who wants to learn to play the guitar and instead of looking for one or two handouts, reading them, and starting to practice, ends up visiting countless websites, reading different figures, downloading a bunch of handouts, and, lost in all of this, ends up not starting to train.
Periodically I force myself to practice the “low information diet”, which is nothing more than avoiding contact with any and all sources of unnecessary information. I usually practice for a week and then I go back to my normal routine and during the time I’m “on a diet”, I seem to have plenty of time!
We are not “multitasking”!
Another problem we encounter when we want to make the best use of our time is trying to multitask, that is, able to perform more than one task at the same time.
We can read that book for the math test while watching the newspaper since it will be important for the essay and having dinner at the same time. Oh, not to mention that sometimes we do all this hanging from a phone or cell phone!
Although it seems that you are doing too many things at once, in fact, you are doing even more harm! According to some authors, such as Tim Ferris, it takes human beings around 15 minutes to switch from one task to another and manage to focus on it. So imagine that you need to do two tasks A and B and that, in the middle of task A, you interrupt and start taking care of task B. With this, about 15 minutes of your attention will be wasted. Thus accounting for the time to go from A to B and return with the task completed, we will lose at least 30 minutes just for this!
Managing your time better is not an easy task, but it is not impossible. It is a daily exercise, a challenge where we seek to enjoy our time more and better! And for you, dear reader, what is your opinion on the subject?