Today's my thirtieth birthday. For a lot of people that's a pretty big milestone. Some people see it as the start of entering mid-life, some the end of youth. I try to live my life by staying present in the moment whenever possible, and so I aim to avoid finding myself in a position where my birthday comes around and I think "Holy crap, thirty years have already passed". I like to believe (and only time will tell) that one of the best defenses about wasting your youth, your young adulthood, your mid-life, and all of the other incredible phases of your life, is to try and take the time whenever possible to appreciate it.
It seems that right around this age, people typically start to lament a lack of spare time. I think there's a number of reasons for this - one of which is certainly that as our life gets busy, we find ourselves with less time to slow down, turn our eyes inwards, and reflect on what is going on. Probably the most common reason for this problem is that people gradually add more things to their plate over time, and before they know it, they no longer find themselves with spare time.
Filling your spare time with things that you want to do is an efficient use of your time, but often, we lose sight of exactly what we're spending our time on, how much time we have available, and end up wasting time simply trying to manage everything that we've picked up.
There's a couple of things that we, as individuals, can do to avoid this. Today, I'm just going to write about some really simple ways to increase the amount of time that you have at your disposal. None of these ideas will be ground-breaking, but maybe there's a few that you haven't considered before.
Be present in each moment
Okay, I cheated and kind of already mentioned this one. Still, this is a really important part. I picked this up when I first watched Marc Lesser giving a speech at Google called Accomplish More by Doing Less (you can watch that video here). Marc is a quirky character that spent some time as a monk studying Zen habits in a monastery, before earning his MBA. One of the key points he mentioned in his video was one of the fundamental concepts of Zen, which is to be present in each moment.
Being present in each moment isn't a complicated thing, but it isn't simple to accomplish. It's simply a matter of taking yourself out of your headspace and being aware of how you are feeling. Take a minute to reflect and ask yourself some of these questions:
Okay, I confess, this tip isn't really about creating more time, it's about appreciating the time that you do spend.
Improve your typing speed
Okay, this tip is specific to me, and people that spend a lot of their time in the same medium that I do (computers). However, this specific case can be applied to yourself in a more general sense: Figure out ways to make the things you do frequently more efficient.
The aim is to find small things that add up over time. I spend a lot of time writing e-mails, blog entries (these things aren't short!), chatting with people on MSN, and browsing the net. Anything that I can do that will make these activities more efficient is going to gradually lead to more time for me. Consider the following: The greater the amount of time that you spend doing X, the greater the benefit you will reap from a small improvement in your efficiency performing X.
Growing up, I learned quickly the benefit of memorizing the location of each key on the keyboard. But I never moved past that. I could type quickly using two fingers and a thumb from each hand, but I had to keep my gaze fixed squarely on the keyboard, and I made a hell of a racket when I was banging away.
After the first year in Computer Science at UVic, I realized how ridiculous it was for someone majoring in the studies of computers to be unable to type correctly. I tracked down a copy of Mavis Beacon (a typing tutorial), and got to work. At first, progress was slow and agonizing. I would be chatting with friends on MSN, deliberately typing out each word, slowly, but correctly. On an almost per-second basis, I would feel the urge to just hammer out the words the way that I knew how, but I maintained my discipline and stuck with it.
As a result, I can put together long essays, e-mails, win arguments on the internet, and chat with friends without my typing speed being an obstacle. The content I create in those mediums has also improved - not directly because I am able to type faster and thus more, but because I can now forget about typing. It is no longer an obstacle getting in the way of what I'm really setting out to do, which is to articulate thoughts.
Improving typing speed may seem like a small thing, but it's something from which I've reaped big rewards over time, simply due to the sheer quantity of time that I spend sitting in front of a computer (don't talk to me about carpal tunnel syndrome - I'm hoping it's just a fad that will blow over).
Write stuff down
Here's an easy one that leads to big rewards.
The less time you have to spend remembering things in your head, the more time you will be able to spend thinking about how to solve problems you're currently dealing with, resolving issues that may arise somewhere down the line, planning out how you will spend the rest of your time, and just being present in the moment.
If it sounds too simple, or even trite, I can appreciate that. If I hadn't iteratively moved towards this type of approach, I too would doubt its validity. However, I can attest that simply lightening the load that is normally placed on our minds will do wonders for your ability to appreciate and make the most of your spare time.
The other thing that will come naturally out of writing things down is an enhanced sense of mindfulness. When you force yourself to write down thoughts and ideas, and to make those ideas more concrete, you will naturally become much more aware of what it is that normally occupies your mind. Maybe you start to realize that you have spent the last three of your breaks at work annoyed about how messy your office at home is. Maybe you've been spending a lot of time thinking about how out of shape you are.
Making the most out of your time doesn't mean have an abundance of time with which you do nothing. It means spending your spare time in the way that will best lead to your happiness and sense of fulfillment. Dealing with the things that are on your mind is how you accomplish this. I guarantee that once you've cleaned that office up, you will no longer be wasting your time in a funk thinking about it.
Stop procrastinating
Again, this is trite right? Procrastinating is a problem that many of us suffer through, but try as we might, cannot overcome. While the subject of procrastination could really be an entire blog post unto itself, I can share quickly a few of the things that I use to avoid this beast.
One of the traps that I notice people run into with procrastination is that they don't really contemplate what it means to waste time avoiding doing the task that they know they need to accomplish. Procrastination usually means the following:
Frivolous activities and pursuits are good. In fact, they're essential. However, you should make a point of consciously making the decision that you want to spend your time this way. When you procrastinate, you let the task that you are avoiding dictate how you spend your spare time, and that's an excellent way to minimize what you get out of it.
When you have a task at hand that you don't want to get done, Focus on the other things that you want to accomplish today. Focus on what you will not be able to do later if you procrastinate now. Procrastination is typically so easy for us to do because we focus on the task that we do not want to do, but this is never how procrastinating works. That undesirable task is typically something that has to be done anyhow, so by procrastinating you are simply delaying the inevitable. The items that are optional and fun to do but require some mental effort, however, are the tasks that we actually prevent ourselves from ever getting to when we procrastinate.
Another tip I was given was taking a more systematic approach, which some people find preferable. When you sit down at the start of your day to begin working (or sit down in the morning on a weekend to begin working on chores and projects), write out a timetable detailing how you plan to spend your time. Include breaks you'll take, time you'll spend making dinner, doing the dishes, having fun watching TV, etc. Once you've done this, get to work. Make a note of any time that you veer off your schedule, either because you procrastinated, or a task went longer than expected, or any other reason. At the end, review your schedule and see how you did.
One of the things I like about this approach is that it forces you to do some reflection. How realistic are you when determining how you'll spend your time? Is it really honest that you put down that you would only watch thirty minutes of television? The other thing that this approach provides you with is another way of seeing what you sacrifice when you procrastinate. When you have everything written out on a schedule in front of you, it's pretty easy to see immediately what you are giving up by delaying on a given task.
Develop a system for tracking your tasks
This last one should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone at all that ever reads this blog. I'm a big fan of staying on top of your tasks. If making the most of your time means accomplishing more things that you want to do, I think a good system that enables you to do that is essential.
Although the systems that I've described using for myself have grown in complexity over time, a system that works for you does not need to be, and can literally be as simple as the tip I already mentioned (write stuff down!). By keeping track of the ideas that you have and storing them in a meaningful way, you'll be able to stay on top of more things that you genuinely want to do.
Before I started to make an effort to capture ideas that I had (note: it's no longer an effort, it's simply become a natural part of my daily process), I would spend the majority of my evenings playing video games. Playing video games are rad, no doubt, but even when I didn't want to do this, I would still fire up the Xbox and zone out for a couple of hours.
These days, when I want to play video games, I do so purposefully. All I mean by that is that I make a mental decision that that is how I want to spend my time. You see, before, I would play video games out of boredom. My thought process would be "I don't know what I want to do, so I'll just play video games". They're easy, they provide interactive entertainment, etc.
In aiming to accomplish more, we should strive to avoid doing things out of boredom. We certainly want (and deserve!) moments when we take a step back, have a deep breath, and maybe just veg out on the couch. But that's different from simply sitting around bored. Being bored is the worst way to spend your time, because it means you're simply letting it slip away.
An effective system will allow you to capture ideas and tasks that you have, and give you something to look to as a reminder when you're not sure what else to do. Having a system that works for you will let you review the thoughts you've had recently and determine if there's anything else you want to do before you decide that you'd really rather plunk down in front of the TV and relax.
Accomplish
So that's really it. Some of these tasks are simple, like improving your typing speed, and some may requiring overcoming some inertia to start putting in motion. However, whichever angle you decide to start on, think about the next steps, and ignore the nagging voice in the back of your head that tells you all of the reasons that you can't do something. Determine what you want, figure out the next step, and then act on it.
Get out there and accomplish!
Okay, I cheated and kind of already mentioned this one. Still, this is a really important part. I picked this up when I first watched Marc Lesser giving a speech at Google called Accomplish More by Doing Less (you can watch that video here). Marc is a quirky character that spent some time as a monk studying Zen habits in a monastery, before earning his MBA. One of the key points he mentioned in his video was one of the fundamental concepts of Zen, which is to be present in each moment.
Being present in each moment isn't a complicated thing, but it isn't simple to accomplish. It's simply a matter of taking yourself out of your headspace and being aware of how you are feeling. Take a minute to reflect and ask yourself some of these questions:
- What am I doing?
- How does it make me feel?
- Why do I feel that way?
- How might my actions currently be affecting other people?
Okay, I confess, this tip isn't really about creating more time, it's about appreciating the time that you do spend.
Improve your typing speed
Okay, this tip is specific to me, and people that spend a lot of their time in the same medium that I do (computers). However, this specific case can be applied to yourself in a more general sense: Figure out ways to make the things you do frequently more efficient.
The aim is to find small things that add up over time. I spend a lot of time writing e-mails, blog entries (these things aren't short!), chatting with people on MSN, and browsing the net. Anything that I can do that will make these activities more efficient is going to gradually lead to more time for me. Consider the following: The greater the amount of time that you spend doing X, the greater the benefit you will reap from a small improvement in your efficiency performing X.
Growing up, I learned quickly the benefit of memorizing the location of each key on the keyboard. But I never moved past that. I could type quickly using two fingers and a thumb from each hand, but I had to keep my gaze fixed squarely on the keyboard, and I made a hell of a racket when I was banging away.
After the first year in Computer Science at UVic, I realized how ridiculous it was for someone majoring in the studies of computers to be unable to type correctly. I tracked down a copy of Mavis Beacon (a typing tutorial), and got to work. At first, progress was slow and agonizing. I would be chatting with friends on MSN, deliberately typing out each word, slowly, but correctly. On an almost per-second basis, I would feel the urge to just hammer out the words the way that I knew how, but I maintained my discipline and stuck with it.
As a result, I can put together long essays, e-mails, win arguments on the internet, and chat with friends without my typing speed being an obstacle. The content I create in those mediums has also improved - not directly because I am able to type faster and thus more, but because I can now forget about typing. It is no longer an obstacle getting in the way of what I'm really setting out to do, which is to articulate thoughts.
Improving typing speed may seem like a small thing, but it's something from which I've reaped big rewards over time, simply due to the sheer quantity of time that I spend sitting in front of a computer (don't talk to me about carpal tunnel syndrome - I'm hoping it's just a fad that will blow over).
Write stuff down
Here's an easy one that leads to big rewards.
- Buy a small notebook and pen, and keep them on you at all times
- Whenever you have an idea, write it down
The less time you have to spend remembering things in your head, the more time you will be able to spend thinking about how to solve problems you're currently dealing with, resolving issues that may arise somewhere down the line, planning out how you will spend the rest of your time, and just being present in the moment.
If it sounds too simple, or even trite, I can appreciate that. If I hadn't iteratively moved towards this type of approach, I too would doubt its validity. However, I can attest that simply lightening the load that is normally placed on our minds will do wonders for your ability to appreciate and make the most of your spare time.
The other thing that will come naturally out of writing things down is an enhanced sense of mindfulness. When you force yourself to write down thoughts and ideas, and to make those ideas more concrete, you will naturally become much more aware of what it is that normally occupies your mind. Maybe you start to realize that you have spent the last three of your breaks at work annoyed about how messy your office at home is. Maybe you've been spending a lot of time thinking about how out of shape you are.
Making the most out of your time doesn't mean have an abundance of time with which you do nothing. It means spending your spare time in the way that will best lead to your happiness and sense of fulfillment. Dealing with the things that are on your mind is how you accomplish this. I guarantee that once you've cleaned that office up, you will no longer be wasting your time in a funk thinking about it.
Stop procrastinating
Again, this is trite right? Procrastinating is a problem that many of us suffer through, but try as we might, cannot overcome. While the subject of procrastination could really be an entire blog post unto itself, I can share quickly a few of the things that I use to avoid this beast.
One of the traps that I notice people run into with procrastination is that they don't really contemplate what it means to waste time avoiding doing the task that they know they need to accomplish. Procrastination usually means the following:
- You need to accomplish task A
- Instead of accomplishing task A, you put it off, and instead do a mildly distracting task
- You waste three hours of time, then spend the rest of your time frantically trying to accomplish task A
Frivolous activities and pursuits are good. In fact, they're essential. However, you should make a point of consciously making the decision that you want to spend your time this way. When you procrastinate, you let the task that you are avoiding dictate how you spend your spare time, and that's an excellent way to minimize what you get out of it.
When you have a task at hand that you don't want to get done, Focus on the other things that you want to accomplish today. Focus on what you will not be able to do later if you procrastinate now. Procrastination is typically so easy for us to do because we focus on the task that we do not want to do, but this is never how procrastinating works. That undesirable task is typically something that has to be done anyhow, so by procrastinating you are simply delaying the inevitable. The items that are optional and fun to do but require some mental effort, however, are the tasks that we actually prevent ourselves from ever getting to when we procrastinate.
Another tip I was given was taking a more systematic approach, which some people find preferable. When you sit down at the start of your day to begin working (or sit down in the morning on a weekend to begin working on chores and projects), write out a timetable detailing how you plan to spend your time. Include breaks you'll take, time you'll spend making dinner, doing the dishes, having fun watching TV, etc. Once you've done this, get to work. Make a note of any time that you veer off your schedule, either because you procrastinated, or a task went longer than expected, or any other reason. At the end, review your schedule and see how you did.
One of the things I like about this approach is that it forces you to do some reflection. How realistic are you when determining how you'll spend your time? Is it really honest that you put down that you would only watch thirty minutes of television? The other thing that this approach provides you with is another way of seeing what you sacrifice when you procrastinate. When you have everything written out on a schedule in front of you, it's pretty easy to see immediately what you are giving up by delaying on a given task.
Develop a system for tracking your tasks
This last one should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone at all that ever reads this blog. I'm a big fan of staying on top of your tasks. If making the most of your time means accomplishing more things that you want to do, I think a good system that enables you to do that is essential.
Although the systems that I've described using for myself have grown in complexity over time, a system that works for you does not need to be, and can literally be as simple as the tip I already mentioned (write stuff down!). By keeping track of the ideas that you have and storing them in a meaningful way, you'll be able to stay on top of more things that you genuinely want to do.
Before I started to make an effort to capture ideas that I had (note: it's no longer an effort, it's simply become a natural part of my daily process), I would spend the majority of my evenings playing video games. Playing video games are rad, no doubt, but even when I didn't want to do this, I would still fire up the Xbox and zone out for a couple of hours.
These days, when I want to play video games, I do so purposefully. All I mean by that is that I make a mental decision that that is how I want to spend my time. You see, before, I would play video games out of boredom. My thought process would be "I don't know what I want to do, so I'll just play video games". They're easy, they provide interactive entertainment, etc.
In aiming to accomplish more, we should strive to avoid doing things out of boredom. We certainly want (and deserve!) moments when we take a step back, have a deep breath, and maybe just veg out on the couch. But that's different from simply sitting around bored. Being bored is the worst way to spend your time, because it means you're simply letting it slip away.
An effective system will allow you to capture ideas and tasks that you have, and give you something to look to as a reminder when you're not sure what else to do. Having a system that works for you will let you review the thoughts you've had recently and determine if there's anything else you want to do before you decide that you'd really rather plunk down in front of the TV and relax.
Accomplish
So that's really it. Some of these tasks are simple, like improving your typing speed, and some may requiring overcoming some inertia to start putting in motion. However, whichever angle you decide to start on, think about the next steps, and ignore the nagging voice in the back of your head that tells you all of the reasons that you can't do something. Determine what you want, figure out the next step, and then act on it.
Get out there and accomplish!
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