The digital age has made everyone’s life hectic and at some point in our life, we might be complaining that we aren’t getting much time. We surf through the internet and sooner or later youtube hits us with 10 great tips and they seem to work fine. However, we cannot stick it to longer than a week or two. And, we already have people around us who would present cliche like, even Albert Einstein had 24 hours, one of the greatest minds in the world.
What if I tell you that you indeed can expand your 24 hours?
Buckle up your seatbelts, cause I am going to share my secret of super time-saving
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1. Keep track of — Have you noticed, the doctors first examine your symptoms and then advise you precautions and treatments. So, let’s do the same, for a day, before going to bed lets try to jolt it down, all things we did and estimated time we spent. It could be something like usual chores like shower, breakfast-1 hour, surfing youtube-1hr, office- 8hrs, and continue. This way you will know where exactly are your hours being invested?.
2. Prioritize, Prioritize and Prioritize-Lets learn to prioritize, you can get a simple todo-list app on your phone, well I use the color note in android. Not a big fan of fancy apps? Then switch to the papers, get a small A6 or A7 sized diary and write all the things you will be doing today.
Then give numbers to the tasks, 1 being the most important. Like you can give 1 to paying your bills and 2 to go to a fair.
Quadrant Method
3. The quadrant method- The quadrant method is another great way to prioritize things, it begins with 4 quadrants, with important not important urgent and not urgent. You should go for the important and urgent things and then only important but not urgent things, this way we can leave the unimportant things even if they are urgent like going to a concert or something.
4. Parkinson’s law- It says, work expands so as to fill the time available. Apparently, you will take a week to mow your backyard, if you’ve got a week. But if you manage to squeeze the time to just 2 days, it can be done under that time too. So the important thing here is the deadline. Make deadlines for everything but be realistic. One cannot mow a backyard, in an hour. Setting an unrealistic deadline would put you into more trouble.
5. No multitasking, especially for men- getting two things done at a time might seem amazing but it would harm you more than doing good. There’s a book called, why men lie and women cry by… Which describes how a male brain and female brain work. Our forefathers evolved as hunters. They had to search, for prey and while hunting they had to be focused at one prey at a time. Killing two deers at once is barely possible.
6. Take gaps- At last, who don't need a relaxing gap. Sharpening the ax before cutting the wood is more productive than without sharpening. Pomodoro is a great technique, which helps you take a short gap of 5 minutes or so every 25 minutes.
