Time, the most precious resource we have, often slips away unnoticed. Discover ten transformative strategies to harness its potential, making every moment count. Let's delve into the art of effective time management and elevate your productivity to new heights.
The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly finite.
Given that, it follows that time management should be everyone’s chief concern.
- However, the modern discipline of time management is narrow-minded, focused on devising the perfect morning routine or trying to crank through as many tasks as possible, while investing all your energy on reaching some later state of well-being and accomplishment.
- It ignores the fact that the world is bursting with wonder-and that experiencing more of that wonder may come at the cost of productivity.
Consolidate Your Caring
Social media is a machine for getting you to spend your time caring about the wrong things
- Consciously pick your battles in charity, activism, and politics-and devote your spare time only to those specific causes
- Focus your capacity for care, so you don’t burn out
Seek out novelty in the mundane
Time seems to speed up as we age
- While children have many novel experiences and time therefore seems slower to them, the routinization of older people’s lives means that time seems to pass at an ever-increasing rate
- Pay more attention to every moment, however mundane-to find novelty by plunging more deeply into your present life
Cultivate instantaneous generosity
Give in to the generous impulse immediately, don’t wait to figure out if the recipient deserves your generosity.
- The rewards are immediate, too, as generous action reliably makes you feel much happier, which can be seen in the happiness index.
Decide in advance what to fail at
Strategic underachievement: nominate in advance areas of your life in which you won’t expect excellence
- To live this way is to replace the high-pressure quest for work-life balance with something more reasonable: a deliberate kind of imbalance
Practice doing nothing
Resisting the urge to manipulate your experience or the people and things in the world around you, and to let things be as they are
- Set a timer for 5-10 minutes and then try doing nothing; if you catch yourself doing something, gently let go of doing it and focus on your breath
Focus on what you’ve already completed, not just what’s left to do
One counter-strategy is to keep a “done list,” which starts empty first thing in the morning, but which you can gradually fill in throughout the day as you get things done. It’s a cheering reminder that you could have spent the day doing nothing remotely constructive…yet you didn’t.
Embrace boring and single-purpose technology
Make your devices as boring as possible, removing social media apps and, if you dare, email.
- Choose devices with only one purpose. Otherwise, temptations will be only a swipe away, and you’ll feel the urge to check your screens anytime you’re bored or facing a challenge in your work.
Adopt a “fixed volume” approach to productivity
One way is to keep two to-do lists-one for everything on your plate, one for the 10 or fewer things that you’re currently working on.
- Fill up the 10 slots on the second list with items from the first, then set to work. The rule is not to move any further items from first list onto the second until you’ve freed up a slot by finishing one of the 10 items.
Serialize
Focus only on one big project at a time.
Be a researcher in relationships
When faced with a challenging or boring moment in a relationship, try being curious about the person you’re with, rather than controlling
- Curiosity is a stance well-suited to the inherent unpredictability of life with others, because it can be satisfied by their behaving in ways you like or dislike
