We’ve squeezed 31 hours into a 24 day through multitasking. Yet, numerous studies indicate that most people feel perpetually time poor. A global study by EY found that insufficient time accounts for four of the five biggest hurdles that professionals face.
These seven strategies will help you get over the ‘I’m too busy’ hurdle.
We’ve squeezed 31 hours into a 24 day through multitasking. Yet, numerous studies indicate that most people feel perpetually time poor. A global study by EY found that insufficient time accounts for four of the five biggest hurdles that professionals face.
If you’ve ever thought, there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done, this reflects time poverty. Time poverty is the default mindset for most professionals.
These seven proven strategies will enable you to create time wealth and get over the “I’m too busy” hurdle.
- Pivot to Abundance
We usually think about time in scarcity terms. Pivot that mindset. Rather than think about how little time you have, consider the abundance of time you have going forward. Consider all the hours and days that you can fill with purposeful activity. If you sleep seven hours each night, that leaves seventeen hours each day, 119 hours each week, and 6,188 hours each year to accomplish what’s most important.
This abundance mindset inspires, empowers, and provides a darn good reason to get out of bed each morning.
- Spend Your Time Like You Spend Your Money
Suppose I gifted you $1 million. But there’s a caveat: what you don’t spend in 24 hours you forfeit. Would you maximize spending? I suspect you’d be very determined and deliberate to use it before you lose it.
Now consider this real-world scenario. Instead of the gift of money, you have the gift of time –24 new hours each day. Do you share the same intensity and drive to fully utilize this gift before it expires?
- Prioritize What Matters
Dwight Eisenhower once gave advice, now known as the Eisenhower Matrix, to some college students. “I have two kinds of problems,” Eisenhower said. “The urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
How you spend your days equates with how you spend your life. Each day, give preference first to your priorities. Then, allocate whatever time remains to all the things which would otherwise fill up a calendar. Usually, for time-poor professionals, it is the other way around: schedules clutter, often with urgent but inconsequential matters. This crowds out the far more important items. You can exhaust yourself responding to other people’s priorities, or you can impose discipline and protect your own.
Parkinson’s Law states that work, and all the other demands on your time, expand to fill every available second. Cut out all the time sucks that drain your energy and do not enrich your life. The Global Web Index, for example, calculates that we spend 147 minutes every day consuming Facebook likes, Instagram posts, Tweets, and other social media. This translates to more than thirty-five days a year on social media! At this rate, in the next ten years, one full year will be devoted to non-stop social media activity.
All the unconscious ways we kill time each day add up, which is why if we value time, we must prioritize how we allocate it.
- Simulate Urgency
We should not allow seemingly “urgent” matters to distract. However, there is value in simulating urgency. When we think we have all the time in the world, we take all the time in the world. Human nature defers and delays.
We need some anxiety – “optimal anxiety,| as the psychologists call it – to perform to potential. With optimal anxiety we become more productive, creative, engaged, energized and efficient. To create optimal anxiety, simulate pressure through an internal deadline to force concentrated, deliberate effort. When you add an element of time pressure, real or artificial, it results in a positive urgency to get moving and get things done.
- Mind the Opportunity Costs
Economic opportunity costs are widely understood. But what about your time opportunity costs? What do you forego – the personal price you pay — for overscheduled calendars? Or enduring an uninspiring job? Or hustling to finance a lifestyle you can’t afford? What other possibilities might exist if you did not expend your time and energy on low priority activities? To assess the total cost of your time usage, factor what you sacrifice by not directing your time toward meaningful and enriching activity.
- Avoid Time Creep
Can you recall in any detail the events of a random recent year of your life? A random day three weeks ago? Unless those randomly chosen moments involved some significant event, chances are the days and years blend into unremarkable sameness. That is time creep, the unconscious accumulation of time.
Make your time memorable by making your days meaningful. There’s a simple but highly effective tactic to avoid time creep. Fill your days with intentional, purposeful activity, and avoid the time sucks at all costs.
- Make Time. Literally.
Here’s another hypothetical: while the rest of the world revolves a 24-hour cycle, imagine you have the gift of time, an extra hour each day. How would you spend this hour? Perhaps exercise, a hobby, or with your kids? Now contemplate the benefits of this extra hour. Would this 25th hour materially enrich your life? If so, why?
If this magic hour would improve your life, how can you perform some magic with your schedule to actualize it? How might you rearrange your schedule to incorporate this 25th hour activity into your 24-hour day?
Consider the common expression, “make time.” Making time means just that: relentless, deliberate, directed effort.
There’s strong correlation between time and happiness; how we think about time
has a big impact on life satisfaction.
Get Over The ‘I’m To Busy’ Hurdle
There’s strong correlation between time and happiness; how we think about time has a big impact on life satisfaction. Time poverty does not have to be the default professional setting. These seven strategies will help you create time wealth.
If you think abundantly, spend your time like you spend your money, prioritize, simulate urgency, mind opportunity costs, avoid time creep, and make time for a magic hour, you’ll join an elite minority of time-rich professionals. And when you control your time, you control your life.