Sunday, September 22, 2013

Time Management Tools: Create More Free Time Using Two Simple Tips

By Lachlan Haynes


Did you know that time is actually the most important resource you have. Why? Well, it's the one thing in your life that is not renewable. Once you spend it you can't get it back and you certainly can't ever get more of it. No matter what. You can never ever get more time.

Worse still, we don't even know how much time we have to spend! We have no idea if we have 60 years left to spend or 60 seconds left to spend. And yet humans spend it without a second thought. Humans spend it like it's going out of fashion. Don't we? Don't we spend hours every day surfing the web or trolling through Facebook or other social sites for no particular reason? Don't we watch hours of TV often without even knowing why we're watching it? Don't we often have to try to think of things to do so we can "fill" time?

In truth the way humans approach time is completely flawed. There is no guarantee on time. You could have 60 years or 60 seconds left. There is one thing you can be certain of though. You can be certain that you don't know how much time you have left. So, can you see that your time is valuable and not to be wasted?

So how do you spend your time? Have you been wasting it? Or do you spend your time wisely? Whilst we now know we can't get more time, we can always save time can't we? We can work faster or we can work smarter and by doing these things we can save time. When we save time we create more free time. We all like free time don't we?

We all love free time don't we? Free time is time free of any outside obligation. It's all yours to do with as you please. Ideally, your entire day (every day) would be free time. That would be time nirvana! But that's a discussion for another day. You want more free time so that you can spend more time doing whatever you want to do (like play video games or sit on the internet for 6 hours straight for no reason). So let's look at two simple strategies that you can use straight away to create more free time.

Number one: Add lots of short breaks into your study schedule. Four 15-minute breaks each night is one hour of free time. If you do that from Monday to Friday that's five extra hours of free time this week! If you don't take breaks regularly your mind will wander anyway and you will be in a "junk time" phase - where no work is being completed but you are still "studying". If you feel like you've lost focus always take a break.

Number two: There are certain times that are what we call "dead time". Dead time is time when you're not working towards any of your goals but it's also not free time. It's just dead time. For example, you might be walking the dog, riding your bike, sitting on the bus or in a car (not being driven by you!), or waiting at the train station for the train to come. This is time that isn't used for anything much - so start using it.

There are plenty of things that can be done during this time. Listen to a recording you made of some information you need to memorize. Practice a speech or pitch you're working on. Look over some flash cards. Do some reading. Watch a video on your phone (hopefully something that actually advances your current life goal - not just funny cute cat videos). This is time that you can use to get ahead. If you do 20 minutes of work on the bus on the way home then that's 20 minutes less you have to do when you get home. If you do that every day for five days a week that will be 100 minutes ahead each week. If you do that every week you will be 5200 minutes ahead (which is 86.67 hours in case you were wondering).

It's time to start valuing your time more than you ever have before. Remember, your time is always coming to an end. You just don't know when that end point is. I hope for you that it's still 100 years away. But there's a good chance it's less than that. Much less! So make every minute count. Save as much time as you can and spend your life doing something meaningful to you. Good luck.




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