“Make time for it.”
Words of wisdom, but if a minute is a minute, how can it be possible to make time? Is time stagnant, or can you create time out of thin air?
The truth is both. Making time is not a way of adding more hours into the day. Twenty-four hours remain twenty-four hours. Yet, the experience of time is far different from the reality of a ticking clock. Making time is about using your time in a way that serves you.
Spending time is much the same as spending money. You make choices on what to buy based on their value to you. When you choose wisely, you will find yourself with extra time on your hands. Filling this time with priorities brings you closer to your goals. As a result, your experience of time leaves you with less stress, more forward motion, and time currency to spend.
Last week, you learned how to eliminate time wasters. Now the next first step is to:
- Plan – Each day you make hundreds of decisions from what to eat to how to handle a difficult work situation. Deciding is exhausting and eventually you run out of energy to do so. To tackle decision fatigue, end your day with a list of priorities for the next day. By planning, you free yourself from deciding when fatigue will lead to reactive versus proactive decision making. Being proactive creates time.
- Have Your Own Back – Support yourself and your decisions. When you decide in advance and you honor those decisions, you save energy and time you might otherwise spend weighing what to do next or fighting the desire to avoid the hard work. Acting instead of thinking creates time.
- Be Willing to Decide – You cannot predict if a decision will go right or wrong. No amount of analyzing will guarantee the outcome. Some research and critical thinking is necessary, but when you endlessly weigh pros and cons, ask everyone around you what to do, and indulge in confusion, you have moved beyond critical thinking into indecision. Instead, be willing to decide, take action, and accept the outcomes, whatever they may be. You make time by eliminating the continuous cycle of indecision and worry and you create a learning opportunity for what worked or didn’t.
- Get Organized -Develop a system for yourself and stick with it. Identifying a home for everything in your life creates access to information, tools, or belongings you need when you need them. Quickly locating what you need makes time.
- Prioritize – Identify what is important and compare that list against your actions. If it isn’t a priority, delay it for another time when it is or eliminate it. Setting priorities and honoring them makes time.
Each action that makes time happens by moving from you from inaction to action. The tasks required to do your job, raise your family, and live your life all require action. If it isn’t moving you forward, then you are sitting with inaction, spinning in circles and losing precious time. Taking the steps to take action creates time in surprising ways.
The next first step is to practice the items above, one at a time, and magically, time will appear.
