There are a ton of websites that are dedicated to the hack, the short cut, the magical cure to "not having enough time. SPOILER ALERT, there is no such thing. Unless you are into some deep physics or you believe in a different universe than time is the same for all of us. So how do leaders, or anyone for that matter "make time" for anything new? Well we have talked about routine before and we have touched on habits as well but one thing that we have not looked at is what are those leaders doing with their time. If you google habits of leaders you will get a ton of sources that talk about pretty much all of the same things:
While you will eventually learn that multi tasking is not possible there is a way for you to combine two activities, one that is on auto pilot... like walking, taking the bus, sitting in the back seat of your chauffeured car (thanks mom and dad) and one that is beneficial like either reading the good old fashioned way or what I do to "make time" for reading. Right now while you are reading this, take out your phone, open your app store and download Blinkist and Headway. These two apps summarize a book a day for free. Usually under 15 minutes, you will get a totally random choosing from these companies. If you like the apps you can upgrade obviously, but 15 minutes of free learning giving you someone else's thoughts to add to your own is an easy way to adopting a habit that all great leaders have. "Never stop learning." How's that for "making time" Richard Hortness
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There are 24 hours, 1440 minutes, or 86400 seconds in a day. It seems like a lot; in reality, it is not. Every morning, I wake up with a to-do list swarming through my head. “I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that.” It is one thing to say something, but another actually doing it. So, you get the motivation, free up your schedule, and get your hands dirty. 9am, you have a set, well thought out, minute by minute schedule that you have packed as many tasks and jobs into as you possible. You finish your first task and decide to take a little break. So you sit down, do some savasana, listen to some music, and breathe. Before you know it, an hour has passed, and you are way behind schedule. You try your best to finish all of your remaining tasks, but you only end up getting through the first few. That super fun task that was your motivation to get moving is missed. By the end of the day, you are exhausted as it has taken a toll on you. The next morning, you get up and form a schedule in your head, similar to the previous day, though, there is a slight downfall. When you are forming your schedule, you must add what you missed the previous day, as you do not want to put off an important task. So you prioritize and work in order of due dates, therefore, you do not finish a task too early, or leave it to the last minute. The day has passed, and you have finished all the tasks that needed to be completed from the previous day, as well as tasks from the present day. Though, you are back to square one as you will need to use the next day to complete the remaining tasks from the present day. When you look at this on the grand scheme of things, it is never ending, and that is life. Yes, in order to be successful you must put in the time and effort, and that is most prominently evident through work; though, I personally feel that I am not paying attention to my life in the present. I am simply flashing forward to the future, and focusing my efforts towards building a strong future for myself. Sure, it is important to work hard right now, because your younger years will dictate your life as an adult (or at least that is what I am told). One question that constantly swarms my head has finally made sense to me: “What is the point of focusing all my efforts towards my future, and burning myself out so much that that future never comes to be?” I have come to draw out this thought and have realized that yes, building your future is important, but if you don’t live in the moment, what is your future really worth? After reading 11 easy ways to you can fit mindfulness into your busy life by Leo Babauta, I developed a strategy that is sure to benefit everyone and their busy lives: slowing ourselves down, even if the clock keeps ticking. If you sit still and do nothing for a few moments, simply breathing, you will be less stressed and anxious when completing your daily tasks. If you keep a less packed, flexible daily schedule, you will have room to add in other things as the day goes on. Lastly, do not think about too many things at once; this causes unnecessary stress and anxiety that will affect you and your cognitive and physical performance. If you focus all of your attention to one single thing, you will be able to complete that task to the highest quality in half the time it would have taken if you tried multitasking. Mentioned below are some early signs of burnout and how to prevent and avoid it.
Out of the twenty four hours in a day, we spend one third sleeping. We spend another third working or studying away, whatever our occupation may be. That leaves us with the last third of the day. This chunk of time ends up being used as preparation and commute time before and after our occupations, and then household chores and other commitments in the evening. That leaves us with little to no time for OURSELVES. Self care is the most important thing and should be people’s number one priority. We were born with one head, two arms, two legs, one heart, one body. We are to take care of our bodies as they are the only ones we get. We must honour this duty and take care of our ourselves, because our futures will be worthless without our bodies get us through it.
Janeva S I have not touched my planification online course since before Christmas break and it is now the end of April. Just think of all that wasted time. I probably could have done that course twice in that time. I even have a study block to use. Time we take for granted and do not often appreciate, until it's gone. Or there is wasted time well wasted, like relaxing. If you think about it “relaxing” is wasting time, because there is not a very large outcome of this time and you could probably do something more productful. Even though everyone loves to have time to relax and do nothing. When I go home and sit on the couch after school my mother often says that I am wasting time and should go do school work or go for a run etc. I see this time as a time to relax and not do work when my mother sees it as time that could be used differently and maybe even productively. So, ‘‘wasting time’’ is a little different for everyone because we see time well spent differently. Say one person was looking up the states of some professional sportsperson, for this person they are learning and this is probably not considered waste time for them but to someone who doesn't care about that sport might see that research as wasted time. We often waste time because we are trying to put off doing something or get caught up doing something that really doesn't matter. Im sure if everyone valued school/work above most other things and we did not waste time with friends and playing sports and social mediaing we could all have amazing grades/be successful. But that sounds really boring and unpleasant so I might just keep enjoying my wasted time and enjoying what I enjoy. Wait… so is wasting time good‽‽ Hear is an amazingly worded blog on the psychological importance of wasting time. (fun fact- ‽←- this is an interobang and is great cuz it's basically a question mark and an exclamation mark! Use it well!) You now know two side to wasting time, the bad-because well you probably already have it drilled in your mind that wasting time is bad and now because you just looked at that link up there in the last paragraph….. you know the positive side.
I'm assuming you have always had people yelling at you and annoying you to stop wasting time and to actually do something useful for yourself or others. That's why we see wasting time as negative thing. But also cuz the word ‘‘waste’’ is pretty negative. When wasting time stop and think, are you wasting time, or is there actually value in what you are doing? Is talking with a friend a waste of time or are you investing in the relationship. I believe it depends on you perspective and what other stuff you might should have probably be doing. So waste your time wisely. Matthew F So you dont have alot of time? well there are some interesting ways to free up some time if you are overcrowded with plans,if you need some time to fit in study time, or just need some me time, to your already very busy schedule. There are a few different ways and steps to get to this goal, if one doesn't work for you than there are some choices to choose from. The first step in the first way is to make a calendar and to put all the things you have on the go in the organized calendar to first see what the problem with all the time is. The second step is to find the gaps you have in your schedule, however small they are and see if you can move them around your schedule. The next step if you can't move the few minute gaps of me time around than you can check if your things on the go are flexible and can be adjusted around the month(or week) you have chosen to organize. Step four, If some things can only move by a minute or so then maybe you need to see what your night schedule is like. If you sleep a solid twelve hours a day than maybe if you change your sleep pattern to ten hours than you can increase the amount of flexibility of your whole month(or week) to give you a good two hours of me time, or homework you need to get done. Prioritize(what is a necessity) While making a daily schedule, choose tasks from highest priority, not difficulty or your own leisure. After your work hours or study hours, your home assignments should be prioritized and fit in your schedule on the prime hours. Set your family/social life in your leisure hours, put in a decent amount of sleeping hours (if you don’t sleep well enough, this whole system falls apart to becomes trash) and set your targets in their time limitations for the day. Jacob E
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