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Time Management

Are you suffering from “Not Enough Time”?

“Some people have lots of time in their hands”, “I could have used the time for something more useful”, “Let me check on Facebook/Internet/email quickly before I start doing my own work”, “I don’t have the time”.

Do these thoughts sound familiar to you? Thought so. These are some of the permanent residents in my head. I understand there are really busy days for all of us and you could use some advice from real celebrities. But even those days when I don’t have too many things to do I get these thoughts. I noticed I get these more when

  • I don’t have anything engaging for me that day
  • The work I wanted to do needs lots of creative/deep/hard thinking
  • For the task at hand, no immediate reward/consequence is there or no direct connection with my long term goal is clear to me
  • I am not at all interested in the task/activity or in the domain it belongs to

The bottom line?

  • Having engaging activities is a “need” for us. Even if I have an hour of significant engagement it changes things very positively.
  • Our brain, though is very smart, requires some discipline to do deep thinking (don’t blame the little kids only :)).

One of my clients was wishing to have more time so that he could do things he wanted to do. After some discussion, it came out that the feeling of “not enough time” was actually a cover-up for his lack of idea on what he really wanted to do. Once he realized this it was very liberating for him, It allowed him to be more present to what he already had.

When we get all the requirements/tasks from the boss or others, it is a common tendency to blame them for the lack of time for us. A more effective approach could be to take a pause and force ourselves to be in that uncomfortable place of planning for the day. What is that I want to accomplish with my time today? If this seems impossible, then there is definitely something bigger underneath!

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In this post, I covered a very small but often ignored area under Time management. If you are beyond that and are looking for a more comprehensive article, here is one:

Accomplish More by Doing Less 7 Productivity Strategies of the Superachiever