Make Better Time

Our time is limited. There's often tension about making the most of our time. The concept of wasting time and the best use of time is highly personal and relevant to each individual's physical lifespan. But, no matter how much time we have, we know much of our happiness is tied to feeling productive, mentally and physically. And so, logically we should strive to do a better job of organizing and prioritizing the use of our time. And, since most of us need to conform to clock time due to work, school, hair appointments, etc., we'll stick to measuring time in minutes and hours. But, I have found these goals to be universally useful to improving happiness as it related to productivity and time.

Make more time- This is my number 1, super secret sauce tip. Get up one hour earlier. But, not at the expense of losing sleep time (get 8 hours). This obviously means something else needs to go. Which leads to the next tip.

Consume less (TV, Movies, Social Media, video gaming, etc.)- One-two hours each day of anything not considered learning or practice. Reading the news is not learning, especially the way most of it is delivered. The packaging is designed to keep you in the loop and to sell you something. If you must read the news for work, consider using an RSS reader like Feedly to keep the noise to a minimum. Most news is not likely to change our day one way or the other. Experiment, try not reading the news and see what sort of disadvantage it creates for you.

Now that you have more time...

Create more- 30 minutes each day of writing, speaking, practicing a craft, developing strategy, etc. Not mowing the lawn, doing chores, etc. Those are tasks. Make something instead.

Read- Read 30 minutes of non-fiction each day. Reading is learning. Curious people learn. Curious people are in forward motion. Forward motion is the fuel to creating change.

Exercise- 30 minutes each day if you're able. Walking is exercise. Don't overdue it, especially if you miss a day. This leads to injury and exhaustion.

Think (Meditate)- 5-15 minutes in stillness, solitude, to think. This can be combined with certain forms of mundane physical action like doing chores. But, the preference is to do physically nothing to allow your mind to wander. Bonus...at the end write about it.

These are all pretty easy to commit do. But, extremely hard to maintain. Doing hard things for extended periods of time is not in our nature. We tend to look for easy and fun. So, the key is to develop habits which turn these hard things into something which comes easier to us, something we look forward to and something we find helps makes things better. Find a subject you're interested in learning more about and incorporate this into your reading and creating habits. Choose an exercise which you can enjoy, perhaps in the company of others. Or, combine solitary exercise with meditation or learning (listen to books or podcasts instead of music). Sometimes, I run just to read.

Developing these habits in itself takes time. Start small. Exercise for five minutes. Go to bed ten minutes earlier to wake up ten minutes earlier. Do the small bits until they become easy. Then ratchet up. But, measure yourself, be honest and disciplined. If we're serious about changing our use of time, we must treat these habits as a profession...we do them whether we feel like it or not. Just like going to work or making school lunches, our own productivity (and happiness) deserves the same commitment. Be ready for failure. It will happen. Learn why you failed. Adjust and keep going. The failure is a sunk cost. It's not a reason to give up.

Most of all, please understand we are all different. This approach works for me. Your mileage may vary.

P.S. My favorite book on the subject of time is The Order of Time. The audio version is particularly enjoyable as it is narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch.

Should We Speed Up Time?

There are many works on the subject of time and how it flows for each of us (my personal favorite). One common assertion is time flows more quickly when we're focused, doing challenging work or engaged in entertaining activities...in the zone if you will. Conversely, it moves relatively slowly when we're bored or doing something we don't care for. Of course, actual clock time doesn't change...it's just our relationship with it which changes. Ten minutes will pass no matter what we're doing. But, it can feel like an instant, or an hour depending on our activity of choice.

If the goal is to make the best use of our time, we first need to decide what good use of time feels like. If we want to make time move more slowly, we can do this by doing less and intentionally creating a vacuum of thought. This is really hard to do...give it a shot. On the other hand, we can speed up our sense of time by increasing activity through doing, focusing, playing and working. However, what we feel during this seemingly short period might actually feel longer while we're doing it. And, it's only once we look at the clock that we realize how quickly it seemed to go by. This is the paradox of time flow for each of us. So, while time seems to fly by when we're fully engaged, it slows down while we're so fully immersed.

Life moves pretty fast. But, we can slow it if we choose to. How to slow it though is an important choice. Do more. Or, do less. Choose wisely.