One of the constant complaints many of us have is how we don't have enough time on our hands. It is a constant battle to make extra space within the hours we have to do everything that we want to do. There is work, friends, family, personal time, so many things to juggle and manage.
If only we had more hours in a day, we say - then what? What will we do different? Because by the end of that, we will still be the people we are with the same quirks and priorities.
Luckily, we don't have to worry about that because we can't do anything about it. But what we can do is realise a few things that will help us manage our time better and therefore, give us more time to do the things we want to.
First of those things is that most of the things we devote our time and effort to do NOT matter. We put in more stress, time and worry into some things that we have built inside our heads and truly don't need that much space and time.
What we need to learn is to separate the things that actually matter and the things that actually don't need as much effort; for the latter we need to do just what is needed and not more.
Imagine a project that you work on day in day out on, only to realise that your boss only needed to read a few pages of it and not all of it, he needed the bare minimum and not the rest. Effort and time = wasted. The same results could have been achieved by putting in less time on it.
It is the fear of the unknown that keeps us from prioritising better and from obsessing about things that dont need obsessing over, eating into a lot of our time. This problem permeates all areas of life if you think about it.
What can you do about it?
Write down everything you think you need to do.
Write down what possible outcomes you are scared of.
Then jot down what you can do to prevent these.
And finally, what you will do if those bad outcomes come to be anyway.
This way, you have prepared yourself for the future. And now you can decide if something, or some thought actually deserves your time and importance or not. And therefore you have ample amount of time and space freed up to use up in better ways and on better things.
Easy does it.
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