Time is a resource. The problem is we don’t typically think of it as a resource. If you were to keep track of the time you spend in your day that has no value, you would probably be surprised.
We are all given the same amount of this resource. We all have 24 hours or 1440 minutes per day. How we spend the daily resource determines how productive our day is. I am not saying your every minute must be busy. Sleep is necessary. Simply resting is necessary. Recreation is necessary. I am saying that in all our daily activities we are using this consumable resource. Every minute we spend we will never have again. The challenge is to use them wisely.
So how do we determine what is wasted time? I believe it centers around purposeful living. Purposeful living, by definition, is living, or spending your resource of time, with a purpose. There is an old saying that says, “If you aim at nothing you will probably hit it”. We must know what we want to do with our time before we can judge if we are wasting it or not.
We all have dreams. Things we want to accomplish. Places we want to go. People we want to spend time with. But too often you hear people say, “I would love to (fill in the blank), but I just don’t have time”. That simply is not true. They have all the time there is. They “spend” their “resource” doing other things. Things they choose to do instead.
There are a few planning “tools” that will help remove wasted time. The first thing is to set goals. Take a few hours of your “resource” and write down the things that are important to you. Things you want to accomplish. Give them a deadline; a year, 5 years, etc. Prioritize them. All goals fall into 3 categories; I must do, I should do and I could do. Let’s call them A, B and C. Make your list of things you want to accomplish in order by date and then by A, B or C. Decide if your list is realistic. Now live it.
A second tool is found in Steven Covey’s book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. It is called the 4 quadrants. Everything we do is “urgent” or not, and “important” or not. So the 4 quadrants are-
1 Urgent and important
2 Not urgent, but important
3 Urgent, but not important
4 Not urgent and not important
If you track your time for a day or two these 4 quadrants become obvious. The goal is to spend the majority of your time in quadrant 2; not urgent, but important. Quadrant 1 is where most people find themselves most of the time. That creates a lot of stress. An example of quadrant 3 is a ringing telephone. The ringing makes it feel urgent, but usually it is not important enough to stop you from completing your current “A” priority.
If you take these two tools and apply them to your everyday, I believe you will begin seeing the wasted time. Once wasted time is obvious we typically eliminate it. Try it for a month. You will be amazed how much more “time” you have to do what you really want to do.
Christian Life Coach 