Optimizing The Way We Spend Our Time

A few months ago I was desperate to improve my work output. I had outlined my goals and set timescales, but could tell that I wouldn't reach them with my typical daily routine. At the end of each day it was becoming more and more excruciating to find that I was no closer to doing what was needed in order to reach those goals. I just had to figure out if there was any practical way to reach them.

I started by analyzing all the ways in which my time was being spent and in what amounts. This was a crucial and extremely revealing step in understanding where my time was disappearing.

Some areas of our lives may be less under our control than we would like. There might be aspects of our lives that we're not aware of taking significant amounts of our time. If we have a situation that we hope someday might change, we might unwittingly plan for the future without taking into account that circumstance's full impact on our present activities. Understanding all the demands on our time gives us the chance to assess the realistic timescale for achieving our goals. This in itself can remove an incredible amount of frustration and pressure.

But even with circumstances that we may not be able to directly change, it may be possible to find ways to more effectively work with or around them. And once we know where our time goes, we have the opportunity to prioritize all our activities, and even eliminate those that aren't essential and don't give us the return we're looking for.

Around this time, I came across a book called: "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. It covers all aspects of setting up a personal system to organize ourselves so that we can become more efficient and productive. It was very helpful and got me moving forward in a way that has really made a huge difference.

Following David Allen's recommendations in this book, I did a few basic things. David Allen points out that a tremendous amount of energy is wasted by trying to remember tasks that need to be completed. If we write them down in a place we know we can rely on to find them, then we don't have to pointlessly keep mulling them around. We can free up our minds to think of more creative things instead.

I also understood from the book that it's important to break up tasks into one-step actions. Once we know what to do it becomes easy to do it. For example, if we write down 'organize party', it's not clear what action is needed first in order to accomplish this. Once it's broken down into a list of actions to complete, we can just do them and tick them off as we go.

David Allen also suggests, in the office framework, to delegate, or in a more personal framework, to ask others for help. This may not be an obvious option for someone to consider. If we're not used to asking for help, this can be difficult. But it's well worth considering, because this can lead to many unforeseen benefits and possibilities.

I don't think I followed strictly everything David Allen said, but this is what I did as a result of reading his ideas:

• Wrote down absolutely everything that needed doing, small and large tasks alike.

• Created categorized lists of tasks.

• Created categorized lists of projects (a project being anything that required two or more steps in order to be completed).

• Created a list of tasks that could be completed either by me or by someone else, and then asked for help.

• Put recurring tasks in the calendar on my computer so that each day a list pops up of things that need to be done that day. This is a tremendous help. For example, I no longer have to think, keep track, or rummage through random bits of receipts to find out how long it has been since the water filter was changed and when it's necessary to buy replacement filters for it. Or when the kitchen needs its next deep clean.
  

Defining all the tasks that need to be completed, both routine and one-offs, enabled me to really address how those things are accomplished and when. It also allowed me to ask others for advice on how to tackle some of the things I didn't directly have control over. This has resulted in some dramatic changes that I would never have been able to make on my own.

I keep looking for ways to change and improve and, with the passing weeks, have been able to add more to the schedule than I had previously thought possible, but that were in fact in my original set of goals for the future. Now, each day generally provides me with more accomplishment in a way that's directed towards those goals. And that's a great feeling.

I thought I'd mention this process in case you might find it helpful too. Life is a lot more fun when we can play the game with a better hand to win more victories.

I didn't realize until after this photo was on the computer that there looks to be an 8 card behind the 10... well, there's even more there than first meets the eye! :)

How To Discover Our Passions

If you want to know more about someone and what they think about different things, a good way to find out is to ask them. This can also work extremely well for ourselves!

That might sound like a funny idea, but there are times when we don't know what we're thinking or feeling about a situation, a person, or even our life. There may be some niggling sensation that tells us we do have thoughts and feelings about something, but we may not have the time, or take the time, to stop and listen to what they are. They can become buried, difficult to isolate. A good approach to find out what's really going on is to ask ourselves.

A particularly important facet of our lives that can be very fulfilling is doing something we really enjoy. Becoming completely engrossed in an activity can lead to a sense of satisfaction, contentment and accomplishment.

Some people know what they like to do and they do it. They can become so involved in their passion for it that they become experts and they naturally develop strengths that cause them to excel in it. They eagerly put hours into cultivating their interest, and while it might be hard work some of the time, they have the motivation required to persevere until they achieve what they want. It can frequently follow as a simple progression that a person like this ends up pursuing their genuine interest in some form of career or employment.

For others it may not be so easy. Some of us may not even have fully figured out what exactly it is we like to do. There can be many reasons for this, but it happens all too frequently that we don't have time to investigate what we like simply for the pleasure of it. Or maybe we have the notion that it wouldn't be an acceptable way to spend time, perhaps it doesn't seem useful enough.


It is amazing though, the variety of extreme and bizarre activities people have managed to turn into a hobby and then, eventually, a means of income.


Whether it's to find a new career that is more directly related to things we love to do, or whether it's to find out more definitively how we would most enjoy spending our spare time: there's a simple set of questions we can answer for ourselves in order to begin to discover more concretely what it is that we like especially.

List three, four or more of your most favorite:

1. magazines
2. books
3. known hobbies or fun things you like to do
   
4. topics of study or reading
   
5. historical periods or events
6. people
7. legends or interesting topics
8. films

Give as many short (one or two-word phrases) of explanation that you can think of for liking each of your choices. For sure there are more questions that can be added to that list to reveal us to ourselves; answer as many questions as you can think of to get your answers.

Patterns begin to emerge in the answers and this enables us to see more clearly what is most important and appealing to us. The answers can be a real surprise and it's lots of fun to find out what we may not consciously know about ourselves. This secret life can hold some gems that might dramatically change our outlook.



Do you have unknown passions waiting for you to discover? Try it and see!

Thinking Our Way to Success

One of the most precious commodities we have in life is the ability to think. Our thoughts alone can give us tremendous freedom, regardless of our outer circumstances. They determine how we approach situations, how we make decisions; and this in turn directs and forms many of the circumstances we find ourselves in.

Habitually following certain thought patterns can continually regenerate the same, or similar, unwanted results in our lives. If the thoughts are habitual it's unlikely that we'll recognize how they are affecting our outlook and responses. They can be so familiar to us that we consider them to be part of who we are, or how life is, and we can perceive them to be inherently unchangeable.

We may rely on other people's conclusions and experiences in forming our own. There are times when it's important, even necessary for survival, to follow someone's ideas and to do what they say.




Social obligations demand that we follow a set of general predefined rules. But ideally these should be as limited as possible to maintain a positive social structure without greatly compromising the individual's personal liberty, especially freedom of thought.
It takes practice to identify and understand which thoughts are our own, and which ones have actually been formulated by our culture and social environment. Even when we are very young it is important to be encouraged to think for ourselves and experiment with finding out what happens when we make our own choices. It is possible to allow babies certain freedoms in which they gradually find their own strength.


It's unfair to dictate to or carry the young for any great length of time, because in doing so they are not being encouraged to trust in themselves and act on their own accord.

Taking into consideration other people's views allows us to add many new ideas to our own. The ability to weigh these in their relevance to our lives can accelerate the process of learning and identifying positive and helpful outlooks.

Swimming with the crowd is a great time saver on some occasions.




But, for a satisfying, fulfilling life we need to know when and how to be our own agents.Each person is unique, with their own particular set of interests and passions. In order to discover these fully we need to know our own thoughts and feelings. Once we know who we are by what we think and feel, we can find a way to express this in our lives. This is the first and most important step to real success.

Tackling a Difficult Task

Have you ever stalled when you’ve had lots of things to do, knowing that one of these tasks needs to be done before the others? This can be more of a problem if that particular task is more difficult to accomplish than many of the others on the list. The temptation is to get on with all the other things that need doing, hoping that something will occur to you about how to make a start on the first one. Sometimes this is helpful, but very often it simply puts off the moment of attack to accomplish the deed.

Before long it is no longer even possible to do the other things that are on the list because it is clear that something ought to be done about the first. This dilemma can feel a bit like being frozen in the headlights of some big truck, time ticking away, pressure building up, and the mind a complete void of thought about how to go about starting. Enough of this and fog builds up in the brain and soon nothing gets done.It is, of course, much easier to just get on and do the thing! But that’s often the real problem: waiting for inspiration about where to start. A good way to jump start the mind is to brainstorm. If it is a one-person task this can be done very effectively by writing down ideas.

The action of actually writing something, no matter how ridiculous it might seem, triggers more ideas and starts the creative juices flowing. Once that happens, it is much more likely that a solution will present itself, and much more quickly than simply waiting for an idea to pop out of the blue, or the truck headlights.

An effective way to trigger some thoughts is to ask some questions and write down the answers: What exactly needs to be done? Why? What is important about the way it gets done? What is the long-term and/or short-term goal of doing it? Why is it important to you to do it?

Before long, ideas will be flowing. After the main flurry of questions and answers, it is then possible to arrange and order them according to task flow and relevance. This can be done by creating a list of activities based on the brainstorming results, or, if the task is more complicated, it can be beneficial to create a diagram showing visually the relation of items to one another.

Often the hardest part of doing anything is starting it, jumping into the seemingly unknown and trying to move forward. Pushing a pen or pressing the keys on a keyboard to get those thoughts going, often clears the path and shows we really do know how. When I remember it, approaching things this way can save me a tremendous amount of time and hassle.

Choices

It sometimes happens that just when you think you have a plan, something gets in the way.
It's like walking round the corner of your house and discovering that the road and view you are used to, have been completely replaced by something startlingly different and unknown.

At first it might seem scary, with everything familiar having been wiped away unexpectedly. Then it could become very frustrating when you realise that what you wanted to do, or where you wanted to go, no longer appears in front of you. No matter that there is now expanse, beauty and freedom instead; that may not seem relevant in the circumstances. You might freeze, unsure what to do next. You might start running, in panic about what has happened. And if you don't understand it and think you can't, you might become disheartened and give up, sitting down right where you are, hoping that someone will either wake you from a bad dream or come to tell you what is going on. But what if they don't?

Sitting there, you might close your eyes and start imagining that you are hemmed in, and are too frightened to pass through the darkness of it; or you might even start thinking that there is no road left to you at all and that you are in imminent danger with no future left to you.

But most of the time it is simply an opportunity to look at things in a novel way. Whether the change is inherently beneficial or not, it is a good time to check out the initial goal again, the original path being followed to get to it, and assess the choices available at this point. Very often, on closer inspection, there is another way to get to the goal, and sometimes it turns out to be a stepping stone to an even better solution than the old one.
Once a decision is made and a path forward chosen, the situation is often resolved. The familiar road may even reappear and, on closer inspection, may contain greater advantages than it did before.