“How we spend our days is of course, how we spend our lives.” Annie Dillard
Are you managing or leading your time? In her book, Radio Heaven, Dr Sam Collins, suggests: “Don’t take a time-management approach but a time-leadership approach: design your life first, and then allocate your work time around it.”
It’s a continual battle for everyone – how to do more with less time and still maintain a balance.
The first step is reframe how you approach time. How we tend to manage our time is often entrenched in deep-rooted habits. If we can change our approach, we can change our perspective on time.
By bringing in conscious thought and feelings around how we conduct our day, as well as some new habits, you can extend the time you have by playing around with just an hour.
Firstly, to gain an hour, get up 30 minutes earlier than normal, shave 15 minutes off a meeting or two in the day and avoid the coffee queues. Too easy.
Increase your time perspective
Secondly, to increase your perspective in time by using an hour, do the following:
Get in the right mindset. Ask yourself: “What will be the best use of my time today?” as opposed to “What do I need to do today?”
Change your language around time – ban the word ‘busy’ and tell yourself how you have ‘a whole hour’ (add delighted grin) as opposed to ‘only one hour.’ (with gritted teeth)
Create habits that will ‘give’ you more time:
- Gratitude habit – when you wake up, spend 5 minutes on intentional thought and gratitude
- Breathing habits – before you go into work, half way through the day and at the point of day where your energy sinks in the afternoon, do some breathing and mindfulness exercises. This will help you slow your pace and be more present, therefore getting more out of the critical moments of the day. Spend 10 minutes each time
- Reality transition habit – when you leave work to go and pick the kids up or get dinner, spend 5 minutes writing down what you achieved today and shift into non work mode
- Do what you value habit – at some point before you go to bed, spend 20 minutes on you. Read something that isn’t the news or social media. Go and watch your kids sleeping. Talk to your partner. Do some yoga. Whatever it is, make sure it’s not something that’s on your ‘to do’ list and is just for you and links to your life values
When you consider what some people do actually achieve in a day, time could be viewed as an illusion. Illude yourself that you have all the time in the world that you need. It’s a choice – we don’t have to be headless chooks living off increasing cortisol levels.
People who lead their time lead it with poise and purpose.
We can all do this, we just have to make a conscious choice to break some unconscious habits.