The Take Away Lesson
It turns out there actually really are a lot more hours in a day than most of us realize.
The key, much like with saving money, is simply in not wasting what we already have.
It may sound overly simple, but it’s true: what we choose to do with our time shows where our true priorities lie. If your actions aren’t aligning with what you feel your priorities are, there is a problem. Chances are, at the end of the day, and at the end of your life, you aren’t going to look back with deep regret and think “man, I really wish I had spent more time watching TV”.
We all need a break now and then. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with TV (or any other time waster), in fact I watch it myself. But there is a problem with it if there are things you want to do that you aren’t getting done, or if you feel like you don’t have enough time.
The secret is actually very easy (in principal; but only slightly harder in practice):
Do the most important and time-sensitive things first.
If you have a project due in a week, there are two different ways you can go about doing it:
A) You expect it will take about 10 hours of time, so you set aside one hour in the morning and one at night for the next 5 days. You have plenty of time, so you aren’t too worried about it, so maybe you skip morning one because you have other stuff to do. As you get started later in the day, you leave the telly on in the background. When you get bored, you check email, when you are hungry you stop for a snack, if the phone rings you answer it. After each distraction it takes a minute to transition to and from the task, and it takes another minute to find your place and remember exactly what you were doing. A minute here and there isn’t much, but it adds up and you end up spending 1.5 hours each session. By the 5th day you have skipped a couple sessions, and end up having to work on it over the weekend in order to get it finished.
B) On day one you sit down - with no TV, no internet, phone turned off - and crank out the entire project with only two short breaks for meals, and 10-minute breaks every hour which you spend exercising. The exercise invigorates and refreshes you, allowing you to have more focus when you get back to work. Without any distractions, you get it done even faster than you expected, and still have a little time left over to unwind at the end of the day.
In option A, because each break adds extra time, you end up spending 15 hours all together. In option B you spend 9 hours, (maybe less), giving you 7 extra hours of free time in the week. Not only that, but in option A you feel increasing pressure as the week wears on, knowing you have a deadline pending. The closer the deadline gets, the more stress it causes, until you end up spending your entire weekend proofreading or troubleshooting or whatever. In option B you have 6 full days of emotional freedom, which means you not only get more time, you can enjoy that time even more! By procrastinating, you exchange one day of hard work (and a week of leisure) for a week of mild stress followed by a weekend of hard work plus much more stress.
The end result is causing significantly more stress and more work for yourself.
This example does not only hold true for projects. Compare these two hypothetical scenarios, in which you are expecting a ride to pick you up for a day trip:
Option 1: Option 2:
7am wake up, get dressed 7am wake up, check email
7:30 pack 7:30 talk to roommates
8am eat breakfast 8am exercise
8: 30 exercise 8:30 get dressed, eat breakfast
9am talk to roommates, check email 9am pack
9:30 go 9:30 go
Notice that in both scenarios all of the exact same things get accomplished. You spend the exact same amount of time on each thing in both. But in the 2nd, eating breakfast and packing are hurried. The first is stress free, because you know that the most important step is already taken care of. In scenario one if your ride shows up early, no problem. In scenario two, now they have to wait for you. In the first one exercise fits in just fine, but in the second one, it might just get skipped because of watching the clock, knowing the packing still needs to be done. In option 1, if you finish early, you can sit back and really relax and enjoy your time talking to roommates knowing that you have nothing you need to be doing.
To put it another way - the major difference between those two time management scenarios is that in the first you do things in the order of how time sensitive they are. That doesn't mean that anything gets bumped off the schedule completely.
But even though the exact same things are being done for the exact same amount of time, one leads to less stress than the other, and is more flexible. In the first option you don't feel busy. In the second you do. In the first, if packing takes longer than expected, you can always skip email and check it at night, or have a shorter conversation. In the second, if packing takes longer than expected, you are stuck. In the first you have more time to savor and enjoy your breakfast.
Want to work out more? Do it first thing in the morning, right after you get up. If you put off exercise until 11pm, its going to feel like it is imposing on your time. But when you just wake up and spend 15 minutes doing it first thing in the morning, I guarantee you that you will not notice that lost 15 minutes at any point during the day afterward. Not spending enough time with the kids? Make it the priority, and then do all the other stuff that needs doing afterwards. Whatever it is, just do it. Get it over with. Then you don't have to worry about it. That makes the free time you have afterward much higher quality time than the "free" time you have when you put it off. That is what makes the difference between stress and no stress.
I used to do tasks I didn't like slowly, because I wasn't motivated to do them, until I realized that it just meant I spent even more time doing something I didn't like. When I realized that, I made the decision to change my own habits, with the result of getting the same amount done faster, leaving more free time for other things.
Going back to the exercises, let’s look at the average person’s discretionary time:
There are 168 hours in a week. Of that time, there are a few things that you have to do:
56 hours per week of sleep
40 hours of work (plus 5 hours of mandatory lunch breaks and 5 hours commuting)
9 hours cooking and eating
4 hours of home maintenance: shopping, laundry, cleaning, etc
3 hours of body maintenance (getting dressed, shower, toilet time)
= 122 hours of time each week that are filled by necessities
-> 168 hours total – 122 hours = 46 hours per week of discretionary time
( 46 hours divided by 7 days =average of 6.5 hours of free time per day
Whether it is working out, keeping up with emails, reading books, or projects, 46 hours a week is more than enough time to get done all the things a person wants to do.
Most people don't actually deliberately prioritize all the crap they end up wasting time on. It’s more that they just aren't very aware of time. Since we have a limited amount of time in this life, it is worthy of mindfulness.
I think a lot of people actually don't realize that they have, on average, 6.5 hours of free time every day. They don't really realize how much time they put into things that aren't really that important to them.
Most people (myself included) like to take their time doing things, because they don't like to feel hurried. The irony is, all that taking their time ends up being the reason they feel time stress later on.
Remember that any second you spend doing any one thing is a second you can't spend doing something else. Any time you spend on small talk is time you can't spend on meaningful conversation. Any time you spend watching TV is time you can’t spend reading a book.
All the possible things that can be done can be put somewhere roughly within a few categories:
1 things which need to be done, and are time sensitive.
2 things which need to be done, but not by any specific time
3 things which don’t need to be done, but will benefit you in the long run
4 things which are enjoyable
5 things which are neither practical nor enjoyable
There are some things which fall into both categories 1 and 4. Spend plenty of time on those things!
Everything in 1 and 2 should be done first and as quickly as possible, to get them out of the way and over with and leave more time for the stuff in 4. 4 is good, but only after 1 and 2 are finished. Where 4 goes in relation to 3, well that is up to the individual circumstances, and often comes down to a judgment call or a personal preference. But most important of all, 5 should NEVER be done, under any circumstances.
And yet, you may begin to notice, after having done the previous exercises, that a lot of your unaccounted for time is actually going into category 5 items. Stuff like responding to Facebook messages by people you don’t even know or particularly like, or finishing a book you aren’t into just because you started it, or sitting in rush-hour traffic (when you could be reading on the train or getting exercise on your bike, but still getting where you need to go).
Look for those things. And then eliminate them. In that way you can reclaim your (already existing!) 46 hours of free time every week.
And almost like magic, you have done the impossible: you have actually created more hours in the day!
