Where does my time go?

Dear Vibrant Young Mind,

“I wish I had the time.”

“Where is the time to do this?”

“I have too much to do already.”

“ I really want to do this, but just can’t find the time.” And so on…

If these are lines that you find yourself repeating, then pause for a minute. They point to a need to rethink what are we not doing right.

It is time to ask yourself – Everyone has only 24 hours in a day — no more no less. Then where does my time go? If managing time is a struggle, don’t worry you are not alone.

Most of us have been through this phase and some of us are still struggling. But the sooner we figure out “Where my time is going?”, the sooner we can put it to better use.

The key: Identify the wasteful activities. If you feel that everything you do is important, then let’s take help from Stephen Covey.

https://depts.washington.edu/drscoach/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/DRS_time-management-matrix.pdf

Definitions:

Urgent: Tasks and responsibilities requiring immediate action or attention. You can't delay them.

Important: These are the activities or goals that are more likely to impact your long-term success.

What can you do?

1. Analyze your daily activities and assign them in the correct quadrants.

2. Evaluate how much time are you spending on Distractions and waste (Quadrants 3 & 4), try to reduce the time to a minimum here.

3. Plan things based on urgency and finish them at the earliest. This will reduce your stress levels and deadline pressures. It will also give your brain some rest time to think and perform better.

4. Spend as much time as possible in Quality activities like self-development, health, networking, and relationships.

This is what will improve your quality of life, today and in the future. We spend most of our time in activities that we think are Important or Urgent but making a timesheet makes us realise that we have been spending a lot of our time on wasteful things.

There is no harm in spending time doing nothing, but then we need to think of a better excuse because now we know where our time goes.

Hence, understanding how we spend our time is the first step towards maximizing the most of what life has to offer.