Message of the Day - Getting the Most out of the 30 Hours in Each Day

Good Morning,

 

You may be looking at the title of this message and wondering what I have been smoking lately. Bear with me on this.

 

Our time is extremely valuable. It is a commodity that we only get to spend once and no matter how much we scrimp and save, time flows at its own rate (and faster when we are having fun).

 

One facet of time management that I have found most helpful to me is how you look at time management. Basically, either we manage our time, or our time manages us. Most of us spend a lot of time in the 'being managed by our time' boat, rather than truly managing the time we have allotted to us.

 

Why is that?

 

When our lives get crazy (not a long walk for most of us), we cling more and more to our free time and mull over in our heads what we are going to do with this free time we so proudly have saved.  In fact, we often overfill that save up time and a more ambitious list of to dos then we can possibly accomplish in that time.

 

For example, we have an evening off after work. We decide we will read a book, take in a movie, cook dinner and clean up and do some house cleaning with this time (its only 3 hours) and we have filled nearly twice that (with a short movie).

 

One remedy for this is to step back from our voracious plans and plan less. That is, plan to have stuff to do, which we have no plans for.

 

Wait a minute. This stuff coming out of the woodwork is what often kills our best laid plans.  If we plan our time with gaps so that when these sudden issues invariably come up, we have the time to deal with them.

 

We can then look at time management from the prospective of not filling up our time. Leaving gaps in our day. Over time we end up planning large portions of our day, and then leave gaps for the just in case stuff. We feel like we have an entire day planned, yet we have room for those unexpected to dos. It is almost as if we have more than 24 hours a day to use.

 

Planning for gaps and downtime then helps us get the most of the 30 hours in each of our days.

 

Enjoy!

 

Sanford Berenberg
Sanford@berenberg.net
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