#34 - Time Management
You’ve probably heard someone say that time is your most valuable resource because it’s limited; you can’t get more of it. For being the most valuable resource it amazes me how much trouble people have managing it. I was recently talking to someone who said they really wish they could read one article per day in their field of expertise but they just couldn’t find the time. How long would it take to read one per day? Less than 5 minutes! From an outsider’s perspective it’s easy to see that it shouldn’t be hard to fit in—I don’t think I know anyone that couldn’t find 5 minutes per day! Clearly there’s another problem; either the articles actually aren’t a priority, or there is some block in the daily routine leading up to the time where the article would be read.
Every person has the same 24 hours in the day. Why then, is there such a huge disparity in how much people get done? Some people are able to run five companies, have a family, record videos, and find time to tweet a dozen times per day. Other people are so convinced they’re 100% booked that they skip meals. Today we’ll focus on two factors in why people struggle with managing time.
Priority
We’ve all heard the excuse, “I don’t have time.” This is seldom, if ever accurate—almost always the commitment is just a low priority for them. Does anyone really believe the time excuse? The fact is that if we were to consciously use this kind of thinking in our day, our time management would be very easy. Is checking Facebook again right now really a priority? I can understand the desire to have more hours in the day, but that will not change, instead I should focus on maximizing what I can get out of every day by spending my time on high priority things. In a management class, I had an assignment to log what I was doing every 15 minutes for an entire week. This also happened to be right in the midst of finals and a high volume training week—clearly I was going to be very booked with almost no free time. I was shocked at the end of the week when I looked at my time use; I had enough free time to learn a new language, write a book, or make five-course meals for myself!
Understand that I don’t advocate having zero free minutes from dawn till dusk but the takeaway is this: you don’t have the excuse of not having enough time. If you don’t do something, it’s because you don’t want to—it’s not a priority. For an athlete training and sleep are key for this. I hear a lot of athletes that are struggling say they don’t have time to get enough sleep. This is a time management problem—they aren’t making sleep a priority.
Routine Problems
Another major problem that people have with managing time is how their routine is set up. If you wait till after work, training, family and social time to get to the articles you want to read, should you really be surprised that it often doesn’t happen? In addition to simply running out of time, the ego power is usually running low by late in the day. So, change the routine! Maybe you can squeeze the five minutes in at breakfast or lunch time, or during a break in the day.
A major routine problem I see among students is not starting the day with a smart priority. If you wake up and start watching Netflix, you aren’t allowed to complain about staying up late to study!
How could you change your time management to ensure that the things you actually care about get done every day?