You get 24 hours to spend however you want, but how are you REALLY spending your 24 hours? Is reality different from the story you tell yourself?
I once saw a television show where a character said, “Time was created so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” I love that line.
Time is a dispassionate thing. It doesn’t care about you, your ambitions, or whether you use it or now.
Tracking your time
Many people have yet to learn where their time is going.
All they know is that they spent it. But if you pressed them on how they spent their time today, most people would be unable to list what they did.
A way to discover your truth which will set you free (as painful as it may be), is for you to track your time.
Make this simple. Just use the Notes app on your smartphone and record everything you do throughout the day. Bonus points if you also include:
- How long it took you
- Did it need to be done by you?
- Rate how important the task was
Clients who have gone through this exercise – even those who classified themselves as fairly productive, told me it woke them up.
How to be intentional with your time
What do you want/need to do?
Until you answer this question, I’d argue that there is no point in going further.
I’ve been saying for a long time now that you need to tell your time where to go instead of wondering where it went. You do this by planning.
But, again, if you have NO IDEA what you want to do, what are you planning?
To be on social media? Binge-watch TV? Playing video games for hours on end?
Of course not.
The first step is to create a list.
Don’t overthink this.
Create a new note on your notes app on your smartphone or open a new page in a notebook and begin capturing everything you can think of that you’d like to do.
Use the Notes app on your smartphone because you probably carry it everywhere. When another item pops into your head, you want to capture it immediately.
Your list will be a “living document,” if you will. You will add items to it, and when they are complete, you’ll remove them.
Kick it up a notch
If you want to take your list to another level, consider adding the following:
- an estimate of how long the task will take you
- the priority of the task
- whether or not the task can be broken up
- a deadline
- color coding
Filling in the gaps
When you schedule your time, you want to “fill in the gaps.”
In other words, suppose you plan on working 8 hours tomorrow. You already have 5 hours on your schedule. That leaves 3 hours to fill.
Hmmmmm….what to fill that time with so you don’t go down any rabbit holes?
If only you had a list of things you want/need to do!
Oh, wait. You do because you followed my suggestion.
So, you pull up that list and see what you can place on your schedule.
Does that make sense?
No more wondering. You were proactive, and as a result, you helped yourself out.
Your turn
How are you intentional with your time? Please share in the comments.
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