Take Back your Time

It might seem to be very basic and cliche that time is money, but of course we all know so and we all try to get our priorities checked throughout the day. Most of us have daily and weekly planners, have set their priorities at work and in life, and work accordingly to achieve their oriented results; the question here is, where do 80% of us fail? Why is it that last year’s resolutions are still hanging somewhere either in our minds, or at the best case on a piece of paper in some drawer, we even forget where we put them.

The answer is simple, it was once said: ”in order to get something you never had, you have to do something you never did”; what we fail to do is the not only the objective planning of our time, but also, the execution of those great plans. It’s known that on paper, all plans look great, astonishing and achievable, theory is easy, but practice is what makes it perfect, and this is the hard part.

Poet Carl Sandburg metaphoric description of time as money count said: “Time is the most valuable coin in your life. You and you alone will determine how that coin will be spent. Be careful that you do not let other people spend it for you”.

I read once a quote that said, time is the most valuable gift you can ever give to someone, indeed, it is, add to this, time cannot be bought, cannot be sold, it can only be given; so your decision on how to spend time is really a make it or break it to your life, your daily consumption of minutes and hours will reflect greatly the style and norm of your life, and it definitely makes you the person you are today.

  Some questions would reflect this on the spot, for instance:

How are you spending time at work?

Well again, we revisit that tiny little “comfort zone” of ours when evaluating time, we are what we repeatedly do, and we tend to get indulged in our daily “subconscious” routine of time wasters, and myths about tasks and importance and priorities, this majorly results from our wrong perception of priority setting and delegation.

Vilfredo Pareto’s famous 20-80 rule, is the rule of priorities that I encountered about 15 years ago, and ever since I apply it on basically everything in my life; it said that by focusing your attention on the top 20 percent of all your priorities, you would get an 80 percent return on your efforts, answering the question again “How are you spending time at work?” will reveal now what is going wrong; the amount of time you spend on others priorities, tasks to be routinely done, and of course time wasters that are all around you.

One of the major time wasters, statistically, is social networking; Facebook is the most frequently used social media platform with visitors spending an average of 6.75 hours each month browsing through its pages. Tumbler and Pinterest users spend about 1.5 hours on the media per month, while Twitter, Instagram and Google Plus visitors spend 21, 17 and 3 minutes respectively. Social networking increased from 2.7 hours to 6.9 hours over the period ranging between 2006 and 2012, while watching TV on the Internet increased from 6.3 hours to 23.1 hours. As for phone, email and mail, people used to spend 5.7 hours in 2006 but the numbers have dropped to 4.8 hours. Watching TV offline experienced the biggest drop from 71.1 hours to 59.4. When it comes to socializing in person, the time decreased from 22.8 hours to 21. Taking care of household members also decreased from 15.9 to 15.3 hours.According to surveys, only one third of workers plan their daily schedules, and only 10% of those follow through and complete what they have planned. According to time management expert Alec Mackenzie, surveys show that most executives don’t get to their most important tasks until mid-afternoon. Actually, most of the low-priority tasks get in the middle of their days schedule, and they do them to tend to get a sense of accomplishment about their days.

The above indicates the amount of time an average worker would spend on social media only, not to forget the social activities, office gossip and other interruptions and time wasters.

If you look at it from a higher perspective, we already abuse half, literally half, of our time not only by the above time wasters, but most importantly by the amount of time we spend doing things that are not only non value added, but also activities that limits our evolution.

I refer to taking back time here as to pause, think and decide on what activities you will cut off spending time on, activities that are considered to be in the loop of our daily rituals, the amount of time spent on TV, Video Games, Social Media, etc… and on the other hand, the people we interact with, the friends we surround ourselves with, the environment we indulge in. think of:

• ·        What am I spending time on daily?
• ·        What could be a better alternative for spending the same amount of time?
• ·        Who am I spending time with?
• ·        What’s in it for me? Fun, intellect, emotional satisfaction?
• ·        What and who stimulates me?

After answering the above, you’d realize the time wasted, on activities, people and thoughts, from your daily life, the same time that you can invest in; the most important question here is again:

what’s in it for you?