‘Time flies.
It’s up to you to be the navigator.’
Robert Orben (Entertainer)
Time is a fascinating
subject. It is a finite resource in the sense that we all only have a set
amount of time available between our birth and death, and that there are a certain
number of minutes in an hour, hours in a day, days in a year and so on. Yet, time
perception can be very variable and may depend on our situation. As Albert
Einstein famously noted: ‘Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it
seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a
minute. That’s relativity.’
This post has been
co-authored by my good friend Alison Hall, who has also a great interest in
this (thank you for your help, Alison!). The post is not intended to show how
we can cram even more stuff into our already overflowing schedules. Instead, we
are aiming to demonstrate how we can become time-wise, reclaiming our time and
become its navigator again just as Robert Orben urged us to do.
Some facts on time perception, time-perspective and focus of
attention
Time has not only been of
great interest to physicist like Albert Einstein, but also to philosophers,
psychologists and neuroscientists. With regards to well-being, the following
facts about time are important to bear in mind:
- Although our bodies have an inherent ‘internal clock’ and adjust rhythmically to the 24hour cycle of the day (circadian cycle), we do not have a single central sense organ dedicated to time measurement. Therefore, our subjective judgment of time (‘psychological time’) is very much an abstract construct of our mind, explaining why time perception is so situation dependent.1 Time is best described as a continuous flow, and time perception allows us to determine the coherence or consecutive order of events to make sense of the world around us.
- Broadly, time can be divided into the past, the present and the future. Each category has its importance for our psychological wellbeing. For example, paying attention to our past allows us to form a coherent narrative and personal identity, focusing on the future may give us hope and enables us to work towards goals, and paying attention to the present moment is important to savour our current experiences. For optimal well-being it is very important to have a ‘balanced’ time-perspective.2 Our human mind tends to over-emphasize the past and the future, and while they are important for a well-adjusted and stable life, it has been demonstrated that it is particularly the ability to focus on the present moment experiences, which is associated with a high level of well-being.3,4,6
- Having a general sense of time urgency and time pressure is an unhealthy habit. Particularly if time urgency is combined with competitiveness, hostility and cynicism, it is highly associated with cardiovascular disease and lower level of well-being.4
What is time stress?
The flow of time itself
is of course not the problem; it is just a simple fact of life. The problem is
when time flows faster or more slowly than we want it to go, when we either
have too much or too little of it. As we have previously learnt, stress arises
in situations where there is an imbalance between the demands put on us, and
our resources,5 which is exactly what time stress is about.
Most of us feel that we
have too little time- we are constantly rushing and try to squeeze in as much
as possible into our already too busy days. We live in a 24/7 culture with the
expectation that everything is available all (or at least most) of the time.
Modern technology of course plays its part in this ‘availability around the
clock’ allowing us to stay connected all the time. This technology, which is
supposed to help us to be more efficient and in control is actually often
achieving the right opposite: everything is just happening faster and faster;
the borders between work and leisure time are becoming increasingly blurred as
our availability has also increased; and it is easy to get lost online,
spending many idle hours ‘just browsing’.
Some
of us though may have the opposite problem- illness, loneliness or other
difficult life situations may cause time to appear like a sticky ocean of
desolation and boredom.
So time can create a huge
amount of stress and misery, whether it is passing too fast or too slowly.4-6
Stepping out of the hamster wheel
Ironically, time stress can lead to us running out of time even more
quickly. This is because stress decreases our cognitive function.6
In other words, we think less clearly when we are under a lot of pressure so
that we may not make the best use of our resources, and we are more likely to
make mistakes and errors of judgement. As a consequence, we may actually end up
achieving less by trying to do it all, or to put it another way: the faster we
try to run, the faster we run out of time.
The secret
to wise time-management is to step out of the hamster wheel from time to time.
This means making room in your busy schedule to stop for a moment. As
counter-intuitive as it initially sounds, it will actually gain you extra time
in the long run. Following measures will either help you to directly identify
ways to save time, or save time indirectly by becoming more productive
(=achieving tasks in a shorter time period) while additionally allowing you to
achieve your tasks more effortlessly and giving you a greater sense of control:
- Intermittently assess your situation and your plans:4,7 This means gaining a clear idea of your tasks, which include obligations and commitments, as well as your expectations, goals, aims and aspirations. What do you have to do and what do you want to do? Where do you want to be tomorrow, next week, next months, or in 1, 5 or 10 years? Assessing the situation also includes working out how to achieve tasks, including a realistic time frame for their completion. This requires that we prioritise our tasks appropriately. Is everything you are trying to accomplish really worth it and are all your projects still relevant and meaningful to you? Do you really have enough time available to achieve everything you have on your list? Are there any ‘time-eating’ activities that you engage in which are unnecessary or unhelpful, such as procrastination, spending too much time passively watching telly or being online? And/or do you need to step back a bit and say no to some upcoming tasks and projects?
- Refuel your batteries:
- Get the basics right and make sufficient sleep, exercise, relaxation and eating healthy food your priority. All these factors have been shown to be essential for good intellectual and physical performance.6
- Learn to calm your mind:4,6 Calmness allows us to respond to high-pressure situations with more oversight, to identify different options available to us and to choose wisely between them. Although there are many ways to calm the mind including music, artistic hobbies and some forms of exercise/sport activities, meditation has been consistently shown to be a very effective way of lowering stress and anxiety, and reducing emotional reactivity. The effect of meditation is cumulative and is not only restricted to the actual time of meditation but also extends into our daily lives, if practiced regularly.
- Practice to focus and defocus your mind:
- We can practice focusing our attention in many different ways, but there is strong evidence that meditation and mindfulness practices are particularly helpful to increase our ability to focus.4,6 Focusing our attention is helpful for two reasons:
- It increases our ability to complete a task, which requires concentration, skill and/or intellectual effort in a shorter time period.
- As mentioned above, being able to focus our mind onto the present moment is associated with a higher degree of well-being.3,4,6
- While focusing our attention is important for many tasks, defocusing is very important for some other activities. If you ever had a brilliant idea while out on a walk you will know what we mean. Defocusing allows more holistic and creative thinking by connecting ideas, sensations and memories in novel ways.8 Particularly if some of our work depends on creativity and outside-the-box-thinking, we may get to our goal faster by defocusing with unstructured activities, such as day-dreaming, spending time in nature or certain types of sports, which give us some mental breathing space.6 Defocusing may also be achieved by diversifying and broadening our horizon. More on broadening our intellectual and experiential horizon will follow in a couple of weeks.
- Establishing an effective system of personal self-organisation: This allows us to keep track of all our projects and tasks with greater ease. Having an effective and reliable system means that you do not need to hold everything in your head and keep thinking about your plans and obligations all the time. You essentially establish an ‘external hard drive’, which you consult whenever necessary, freeing your mental capacity.6 Some specific time-management and self-organisation tips, which we have found helpful, are listed below.
Little tips and tricks for (wise) time-management and self-organisation
Here are a few ‘real
world tested’ suggestions, which we have found greatly helpful to get organized:
A simple 5 step self-organisation system:7
1) Capture any relevant
incoming information: The first step is to capture everything you have to do,
all things you want to do, or others may want you to do. This requires a
reliable system and may include a physical in-tray, putting notes on paper, making
digital or audio notes, writing e-mails or text messages. The capturing process
allows you to keep information out of your head, which frees your brain to get
on with more important tasks. However, you need to make sure that you do not
have too many in-trays and that you empty them regularly.
2) Clarify what the
information means to you and what to do about it: With each item, ask yourself the
simple question: Does this require immediate action or not?
- No action items can be further divided into completely irrelevant information (trash), items which may need some action at a later date (deferred action), or if it is information which may be potentially helpful for future reference (information only). If the information falls into the latter two categories, then it needs to be filed accordingly (see below).
- With actionable items items, you need to determine what the item is and what the required action is. Such items generally fall into two categories (1) single-step simple tasks (e.g. an email to somebody) (2) more complex, multistep ‘projects’ (e.g. planning your next holiday). Once you have determined what the next step is, there are three further options:
- Doing the task immediately: A golden rule is to complete any task requiring less than 2 minutes immediately. Just get it out the way.
- Delegate it: If you are not the best person to do the task, then delegate it to a more suitable person.
- Defer it: If the task will take you longer than 2 minutes and you need to complete it yourself then put it on an action list.
- A consistent reference filing system for storage of files for projects, information and any other related materials.
- A central calendar
- Keep track of all your actionable items in lists. Rather than having one ‘To Do List’ it is more helpful to have lists for different categories:
- List of ‘projects’: All your multi-step more complex tasks
- List of reminders for next actions including the single-step actions required as the next step for your projects (e.g. if you are planning your next holiday the first step may be to discuss with your partner/family where you want to go).
- A list of things you are waiting for (e.g. email replies).
- A list of items which are not time-sensitive and can be done whenever you have any time to spare
4) Reflect and re-assess intermittently: Review and update your system, clearing your in-trays, re-assessing your projects and lists, and updating your calendar regularly to ensure that everything is on target and still relevant. It is helpful to schedule an appropriate amount of time for this, e.g. 10 minutes a week but more if needed. Additional time should be scheduled for a more strategic long-term assessment of your aspirations, life goals and bigger projects.
5) Engage with the actionable items: As we all know, life is messy and it may not always be possible to stick to our action list, as other things are constantly coming up. When carrying out our tasks from the action list, try to focus, be mindful of your energy levels and time that you have available in any given situation. It can also be helpful to give yourself time limits for some tasks and put them in the calendar particularly if they are time-sensitive. When unexpected other items come up, remember the 2-minute rule.
Other helpful key principles of time-management:
- The prioritization rule used by former US president Eisenhower (so called Eisenhower Principle) divides tasks into 4 categories. These are in descending order of priority:9 urgent important, non-urgent important, urgent unimportant, non-urgent unimportant. Try and avoid engaging in urgent and unimportant tasks (which are often activities other people want you to do), and the non-urgent unimportant tasks (which are often just simple time wasters).
- The Pareto Analysis:10 Named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, the Pareto Principle is a commonly used rule of thumb that 20% of available resources often produce 80% of the results (also called 80/20 rule). When trying to prioritize, we should focus our effort on the 20% of actions, which bring us the highest return and try not to get lost in too much detail unless it is absolutely essential. This approach may be difficult for the perfectionists among us, which will be the topic of the next post!
- Crack down on procrastination: Avoiding doing unpleasant tasks and instead busying ourselves with small, but meaningless and unimportant jobs is a common pitfall. The only way out is to tackle this unhelpful habit. Mark Twain has probably given the best advice ever on the topic of procrastination: ‘If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.’ In other words, always get the big and unpleasant jobs out of the way first.
- Give yourself a pat on the back from time to time for all the jobs that you have achieved!
Helpful resources time-management
- Cloud-based file storage such as https://www.dropbox.com, https://drive.google.com and https://evernote.com are an easy and convenient way to store and sync all your files. It allows you to keep everything in one place and yet accessible whenever you need it.
- https://www.wunderlist.com is brilliant software for keeping lists, where you can tick off items one by one. It is really versatile, allows you to use alerts and collaborate with other people, and it can be used across a large number of operating systems syncing on all your devices.
- https://trello.com is a free project management application, which allows you to collaborate with other people.
- https://www.mindtools.com is a company offering a wide range of resources around the topic of time-management, personal skills and leadership.
- A really excellent book on the topic is Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity by David Allen. You can also find more information on the website http://gettingthingsdone.com.
Preview: Learning to use our
time wisely also means not falling into the traps of perfectionism- apart from
the fact that it can actually a big time waster, striving for absolute
perfection can also be stressful and surprisingly counterproductive. The pros
and cons of perfectionism and how to deal with them will be the topic of the
next post.
References and further reading:
1. Matthews
WJ, Meck WH. Temporal cognition: Connecting subjective time to perception,
attention and memory. Psychological Bulletin. 2016;142(8):865-907.
2. Zimbardo PG, Boyd JN. Putting time in
perspective: A valid, reliable and individual-difference metric. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology. 1999;77(6):1271-1288.
3. Killingsworth
MA, Gilbert D. A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science. 2010;330:932.
4. Kabat-Zinn J:
Full Catastrophe Living: How To Cope With Stress, Pain and Illness Using
Mindfulness Meditation. Piatkus. 2013.
5.
Wiens KJ. Leading Through Burnout: The Influence Of Emotional Intelligence
On The Ability Of Executive Level Physician Leaders To Cope With Occupational
Stress And Burnout [Dissertation]. University of Pennsylvania. 2016.
6.
Seppälä E. The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to
Accelerate Your Success. Piatkus; London, UK. 2016.
7.
Allen D. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity. Piatkus;
London. 2015.
8.
Graham L. Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and
Well-Being. New World Library; Novato. 2013.
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