Time is our biggest resource, but we seem to feel time poor more than we feel time rich.
I’ve noticed that whenever anyone asks how I’m doing, it seems to be an automatic response to say “Busy”. But I’ve begun to realise that it’s less that I’m time poor, and more about being time inefficient.
Before we begin to over analyse our own lives, it’s best to get a solid understanding of how our time can be distributed.
Time Efficiency – being able to achieve maximum productivity, in the allocated timeframe, and to a standard that we’re happy with.
Time Inefficiency – the inability to achieve maximum productivity, in the allocated timeframe.
Time Poor – the inability to allocate ‘free time’ in our current routine and schedule.
Time Rich – the ability to allocate ‘free time’ in our current routine and schedule.
We can live in many states, this could be Inefficient/Poor, Inefficient/Rich, Efficient/Poor, and (you guessed it) Efficient/Rich.
Inefficient/Rich is a state that I feel is the least likely to live in. This occurs when there’s no strategy behind how we divide and distribute our time, but we seem to have a lot spare. Not the worst set up, but I don’t feel like a lot would get done in this state.
Inefficient/Poor is a state that looks the least desirable, but it’s one that a lot of people sit in. The sensation that we have no spare time to do anything that we really want to do, because we’re constantly tending to the urgent tasks. It gets stressful in this state, and burnout is most likely to happen here.
Being Efficient/Poor would likely look like a genuinely busy person. They likely have an important job or a big family and have to manage their time very strategically and carefully. But their lives are optimised and they’re abled to complete all their tasks for themselves and the people around them. Burnout doesn’t occur here, because rest and relaxation have been factored in, but there’s no room for spontaneity.
Efficient/Rich is the category we’d all love to live in, it sounds great. We’re able to organise ourselves, our families, our jobs, our social lives, our relaxation and our hobbies into the week AND we’re still able to have free time to pursue creativity, passion and originality in any area of our life.
Being Efficient/Rich is not far fetched. It’s not unrealistic, it just takes time to refine our lives, habits and decisions to suit the Efficient/Rich lifestyle and mentality.
To make any change going forward, it’s crucial that we recognise what state we are currently in, and then look for opportunities to move into the next state, a more preferable state.
For most of us, we feel time poor and we’re likely being inefficient. This can very easily shift to being efficient and time rich. Purely by adjusting our days and seeing what opportunities we can take to achieve more in our days.
For example, while we sit eating a meal, we could be listening to a podcast or reading a work document. While we’re playing with the kids in the afternoon, we could be actively getting into positions that would improve our mobility. While we’re in an important/dull meeting, we could target to finish 3 glasses of water, to meet our hydration target for the day.
All of these tasks, could be done in isolation, but instead we’re hitting two birds with one stone and becoming more accomplished in our days. Don’t think that this is multi-tasking, because we’re not removing our attention from the primary task, we’re simply achieving two tasks in parallel.
By taking advantage of our time can make us feel more accomplished, confident and energised to take on the next challenge and live without limit.