I DON T HAVE TIME ,REMOVE IT FROM YOUR LIFE

 

I DON T HAVE TIME ,REMOVE IT FROM YOUR LIFE

“I don’t have time.” It’s a simple phrase you have probably thrown out to your friends, significant other, or kids, particularly if you feel as if the elusiveness of time is slipping through your fingers.

But when you sit back and reflect on the statement, what are you really saying? More importantly, consider who you are saying it to, and what it communicates to them. What you are really saying is that your time is being preoccupied with something else. Something your brain has told you is much more important.

We have to stop being victims of time and instead take ownership. The words you tell yourself matter. And if you are telling yourself (and others around you) that you don’t have time, you may just begin believing it.

Once I conscientiously began removing that phrase “I don’t have time” from my everyday conversation, time seemed to loosen its controlling grip over me. I was no longer the victim , I was the one in power.

It’s not time management you need

As someone who has spent years teaching productivity, I have come to this simple conclusion: time management does not exist. You cannot manage time. It is not an angry three-year-old throwing a tantrum in the middle of the grocery store that you can swiftly march out to the car.

No, you cannot manage time (spoken by someone who personally tried to for years), BUT you can manage your activities. We can manage how we individually choose to spend our time. With all the inequalities of wealth in our world, time is not one of them. Time is equally doled out to each of us and it is up to us to decide how to use it.

To determine how we want to choose our time, allow me to break down the four different ways one can spend their time, as well as the importance of each for your productivity.

1. Resting

Resting may seem like a strange place to start but in reality, it is by far the most important if we desire to achieve the success we crave as human beings. Our society mistakenly believes that if we just follow the “hustle mantra” we will find success, so we are afraid to stop moving.

But our brain requires periods of rest. Healthy adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep per night. Acknowledge it, accept it, and move on. Sleep is non-negotiable. In fact, according to Tom Rath’s book, “Eat, Move, Sleep: Why Small Choices Make a Big Difference,” your quality of work can drop down as much as 30% when you are not getting an adequate amount of sleep.

What do periods of resting look like? Well, we just covered sleep, but it can also include meditation, closing your eyes and taking a break away from the computer, or sitting outside in nature for a few minutes. The key to your resting periods is they should feel renewing and restorative , otherwise, it’s not resting!

2. Doing

We know our day is already filled with doing, but what exactly is it we are doing? And are we using our time the way we really want?

When we use the phrase “I don’t have time” what we’re really doing is lying to ourselves. We are simply choosing to not prioritize whatever it is that truly needs the space. For me, I have started using other phrases that show intention, like, “I don’t want to give this my time right now,” or, “That’s not a priority for me at the moment.”

I like these subtle changes to the words because what they do is remind me that I am in control of my choices. Time doesn’t demand how I spend it. I do.

One important caveat to “doing” that must be discussed is that sometimes we have trouble prioritizing the tasks we want to do for ourselves because we are so busy “doing” for everyone else in our lives (I imagine many of the women reading this are nodding their heads right now). When it comes to doing, please remember that you do not have to do it all, and you do not always have to sacrifice time on your tasks for the sake of others.

3. Distracting

Personally, I think we have the wrong idea around the concept of “quitting.” Quitting is not an end, rather it is the first step in refocusing and redefining your life. When we give ourselves permission to let go of the things that no longer serve us, we gain the opportunity to pursue what is aligned with our purpose.

Many of you reading this may assume I am about to lecture you about removing distractions from your day, but that’s not how I roll. Plot twist: we actually need some distractions in our day!

A lot of people believe if they are not spending their time hustling towards some tangible goal, then they are not doing anything worthwhile. That could not be more false! Play is essential for our brains but we tend to undervalue it because it seems so silly next to our serious life or professional goals. What’s ironic though is that when we increase play, give ourselves time to actually enjoy time, we become more productive. When more frequent play is incorporated into our days we see dramatic increases in creativity, attention, and performance.

For those of you asking, how do we determine between good and bad distractions?” Here’s my answer: it is entirely up to you to decide. And before you go panicking, know that the deciding factor is so incredibly simple. After indulging in the distraction stop and ask yourself, “How do I feel after I finish this?” Is your answer along the lines of, “That lifted my mood and was exactly what I needed,” or is it more so, “I feel worse off than I did before.” There  in lies the answer.

4. Thinking

We have a tendency to bind our feelings of self-worth tightly with our daily achievements. We need to loosen these knots because the problem with this is it doesn’t take into consideration the important time we’ve spent thinking.

Every day we have over 6,200 thoughts, which, roughly calculated, means we have about four new thoughts every single minute! The big question though is what are we thinking about?

We spend an excessive amount of time thinking about the things that don’t require it: the worrying and stress, tweaking and reworking of tasks and projects that don’t even need it. We spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about the minutiae, the unimportant.

You may have noticed a recurring theme woven throughout this article: it’s not the action that matters, it is the intention behind it. We don’t want to just find ourselves doing and thinking. We want to choose to think and do what’s most important. With that, you may just unpack an extraordinary life for yourself  that you never knew could be.

 

KEEP SOME GOALS

 

KEEP SOME GOALS 

 

Our education system is without doubt faulty and flawed. The time to educate a child is ‘hundred years before he/she is born’ said Bertrand Russell, many decades back. There is no allowance in any curriculum that makes an effort to draw the attention of the students to discover their true strengths and inclination. Hence, we have rote learning in place.

Till the time, a youngster arrives at say standard 10th  or ‘O’ levels, there is no formal evaluation done by either the student or the relevant educational institution to see where the child should head with his unique composition of mind, that gives him/her distinctive skills, traits and abilities.

Once I got out of the childhood fascination to be flying aircrafts , I was unsure, what I would want to take as a profession - medical and engineering were and are still the most popular route taken; another matter only a few make it; so having swung the pendulum between medical sciences to engineering, I arrived at a conclusion, that neither suited me – so, the obvious choice was business education. This is not to claim that a well thought decision was made: being no good in sciences, it was more an accidental deduction, the option was to try the untapped and unknown.

we continued without any meaningful alteration, the inherited system of education.  Where the centrality of objective was to make oneself an employable commodity.

When natural indicators and talent aren’t recognized , that’s where the society at large suffers, and due to non-recognition the blessings are wasted. Since the possessor is oblivious of his distinctive skills, these remain unused and unemployed. At the basic level, efforts must be made firstly by the family and then by the educational institution, to provoke a child to set for himself a goal or objective. The likely tilt in determining the goal would be closest to what the child is capably blessed, to exploit and use.

The process can begin by requiring each youngster to write down their wish list (not all of them will ever be goals) of what they wish to achieve and make of their life? Some will have set goals of Himalayan heights, whilst many would be lost in the mundane quest of which job will give them the quickest success – here, at that age, success is largely about dollars and cents, make of car, house, etc.

Once this is done, a parent/ teacher (manager) must sit down to examine the ambition charter, where through conversation, distillation must take place, to render the non-doable to what is realistically possible. No goal can be achieved by a single leap forward. The goal will have to be broken- down into small bits of efforts, each of whom should be successfully achieved, to later join the dots of efforts, towards accomplishment of the goal. After determination of goals, it is time to break them down for achievement, in a measurement, of both time and the ultimate outcome.

Let’s now take these arguments to the corporate floor. Every unit of the organization has to have written down measurable goals for achievement within a predefined timeframe. After clubbing the goals and objectives of all units, the organization has in place a business plan. This strategic business plan can then be reduced into annual budgets. Goals inherently must be inspirational. They must carry within itself unlimited supply of hope. Goals are essentially the outcome of specific vision and purpose of either the individual or the entity. Nature has blessed us all with thinking power; a persistent reminder of the big picture by our minds allows us to internalize these objectives of life, as part of our sub-conscious mind.

Life without a goal is like a rudderless ship on the ocean of living. It will merely get tossed by currents and waves that are never in our control.

It is only worthwhile to have goals achieved that go beyond respective lives. Gainful is the objective to determine where do we stand and where we could be!

All goals are intertwined. The moment you arrive at the successful achievement of ‘one goal, there is another goal waiting -- when you have arrived at something, that’s the point where you begin.

When Michael Heseltine wrote as a student in the mid-fifties, about the 90s decade, as being “10, downing street”, he was clear headed that his goal was to become PM of Britain (and he almost made it, but for the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher and the Helicopter deal) similarly as a lad, when Charles Dickens told, when he was steeped in abject poverty, to his father, that he would one day own the attractive on the hill house, called, “Glady’s hill”; he knew he would have to earn enough to be able to purchase that dream house. So, after amazing persistence, when he hit the Eldorado, with his publishers support; Dickens finally bought the house. The lesson learned is that the objective (goal) must be ‘clear’ and ‘measurable’.

Those, who form this desirable habit of writing their goals and objectives of life, known  fully well, that these are not written on stone with a chisel. Hence those must be re read and revived at regular intervals, for either alteration or may be a paradigm shift of either the goal itself or the relative strategy employed.

Goals are an elixir of life, they can also serve as directional for pursuit. He is wise who looks ahead. The most important aspect to bear in mind is first the determination of goals and then to develop steps and strategies that must be undertaken.

Most do not realize their goals, due to their own foggy mind, that doesn’t permit them to either define with clarity or they themselves suffer from lack of faith and belief, that the goals are achievable.

The possibility of achieving any goal without resistance will remain Utopian. The stumbling blocks, impediments and barriers will always be many during the quest of achievement of goals. Constancy is a primary ingredient for accomplishment of goals. Since the goal/ objective achievement is dynamic and active, it is essential to review it periodically, for the institution of new approach or for jettisoning some of the past methodologies. With changing priorities, the methods must change too.

“The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder- a waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life and having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you. The will of labor will formulate the results. If the pursuit is regular, consistent and persistent, then every single hour, is an honor of calling.”

Personally, I have always found Leonardo Da Vinci words most inspirational for pursuit of an objective, “obstacles cannot crush me; Every obstacle yields to stern resolve; He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.”

I am filled with fear, when not having a goal than when I am not able to achieve one. Life has to be a mission. A noble pursuit.