Although less than half of the people in my own phone agenda are hired (the most part are entrepreneurs or consultants), there is this primary conception than 8 hours a day you work, 7 hours a day you sleep (the minimum necessary), one hour a day you have the lunch break. So what do you do with the rest of your 8 hours? The 8 hours should have been active relaxation, as the expert Ovidiu Bujor elaborates in an interview. I’m fascinated by how people stress themselves doing task management so ineffectively.
Andy Szekely says that time management is actually self-management. I would say it is more particular: time management depends on the quality of task management. Sandra Ghiţescu has written an excellent article on classifying your activities based on whether they bring energy or take energy.
Most people don’t realize there’s the same period, say, between 4 AM to 9 AM, like between 11 AM and 4 PM. Most people have a fragmented program, not allowing themselves to use the 8 available hours. So how much of your time is really productive?
Let’s consider what a hired person would do besides stay at work and have a lunch break. Almost everyone does these things. They consume time. It wastes time, considering the impact on your life in the long term.
– wash, dress and pack. During this time, you can listen to audio training, audiobooks, and self-help programs, which you can find on youtube, Trilulilu, or Google Video. Or you can buy some or download them from the internet. Back a few years, you couldn’t access so much free content from masters like Tony Robbins, Richard Bandler, etc.
– go to work & come from work – Bucharest, like any other significant world capital, is where you can combine a lot of means of transport. It is preferable, if you can, to choose a means of transportation that also offers the possibility of reading. For most people going somewhere is a slow time. It shouldn’t be. How would your life be if each time you would get out of the home, you would have a learning experience? So if you drive to work, shut down the radio crap and put on audiobooks.
– waiting in lines. This is the most appropriate moment to have a book or to put some order between your personal things. Write in your agenda, plan stuff, or even get your laptop to work on something. Who knows, you might even have wireless access.
– throw away the TV on the window. Most people say they use the TV to get information. Your time is much too precious to listen to information spoken by others, the information you haven’t filtered. If you want to be informed, and not advertised to, get on the subscriber list from the news sources you’re interested in. I personally use comunicatedepresa.ro, gandeste.org (the most critical selection of all the daily papers), Twitter, and subscription to Yahoo forums with people who generate and promote events I might be interested in. If you continue to use information not filtered by your own criteria, get ready to be considered an illiterate in the following 5 years.
Other people say they use the TV for entertainment. What are you, 60? Get real! Use the internet. You don’t even have to download the movies you want anymore. Do keyphrases research on a search engine after “watch “XYZ” movie online,” and you will most likely find what you wish to already be streamed online.
– Cut from your program the people who waste your time. Each time someone solicits time from you, think whether there is someone else that would deserve that time of yours more.
– If you’ve got more than 5 minutes to walk on foot, call a friend to have a talk. Most people think it’s inappropriate to have such short calls, and seeing that friendly face-to-face is preferable. But that often does not happen. Years pass, and friends get forgotten. Before you know it, months and years have passed, and you haven’t contacted the people you care about the most. Sometimes, less is more.
– instead of tormenting yourself, wasting time trying to sleep, or staying late, make some tea of St. John’s wort. Some say they don’t like to take such stimuli, be they even natural. No. They prefer to waste their hours on poor-quality sleep, killing their neurons and destroying their health daily. That’s a way to go!
– instead of using coffee to get up every morning, use some cold water on the ears, do some jogging, have a walk in the morning, or use some inspiring music that will wake you up immediately. I prefer American soundtracks. If you require inspiration, check the Music from Film subcategory on the blog. If you are really addicted to coffee, I recommend you soluble rice. It has the same taste and a better effect.
– Plan your activities. Don’t go out just for one thing. Solve more than one thing when going somewhere. Make lists of what you have to do and what you want to buy, and respect them. The brain knows how to actively search for what’s apparent on a list.
– Stop wasting time on Facebook, messenger, and funny videos on youtube. Instead, if you need a break, you better watch a movie over the internet in small sequences (youtube is excellent for this).
– use the phone (or even better, Skype) and not messenger. It wastes a lot of time to type messages.
– learn how to look for information on google. Use ” ” for searching related words. See, for example, the difference between the query job satisfaction research and “job satisfaction research“.
– stop wasting time on social networking sites to find people to talk to. Come to networking events.
– plan your meetings in the same area, preferably somewhere in the city’s center. Consider fast foods, parks, etc. Meet your friends out, not at their places. It will take less time to prepare, clean, cook, and do other activities that might take you even more than the visit itself.
– if you’re in a relationship or married, don’t forget your friends. Your friends, not the couple’s friends. Don’t let your partner have control over your whole time. The more diverse your social field will be, the more diversity you will have to balance the need for certainty you get from a stable relationship.
– when traveling long distances, use a night route and sleep during it. Then, get some sleeping pills (I recommend valerian, it’s natural), drink some calming tea, and use that time! Or, if you really can’t sleep, get some books to read or audio training to listen to.
Keep in mind that someone else will if you haven’t planned your time. Some say this takes the savor out of life. It’s the same people who don’t have enough time to connect with their friends (and I don’t mean online), hurry to ride in busy means of transport, have a hard time waking up or sleeping, complain don’t have time to read (but they waste all the time spent on the road). Most importantly, these people have time to worry. Because the internal dialogue already goes at 600-800 words per minute in your head. If most of your time spent in all these activities is busy getting strokes from the inside and not from the outside (like, for example, a book or an audio training), you will most likely not get any other different ideas than your own.
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