Where Did My Time Go?

Image from images.all-free-download.com

Image from images.all-free-download.com

In a previous post I posed the question Where Did My Money Go? and realized a few days later that I could pose the same question about my time.

Time seems to sift through my fingers like the sands of, well, time.   If time is constant, but seems to fly by, and if time flies when you’re having fun, then logic would determine that I am having a lot of fun.  However, at the end of each week, I don’t necessarily find myself reflecting on what a fun week I had.  Most of the time I am trying to figure out:

  1. where the time went,
  2. what did I actually accomplish, and
  3. what did I not do that I ought to have done (like exercise or call my parents)

So what if we budgeted our time like we budget our finances?  We all get 60 secs per minute, 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, or 168 hours a week.

Sleep = 50 hours/wk on avg
Work = 50 hours/wk on avg
Eat     = 15 hours/wk on avg
Commute = 15 hours/wk on avg (including errands, etc.)
Exercise = 10 hours on avg (including travel time)

That’s 140 hours out of 168.  What do you do the other 28 hours?  A quick Google search turned up this news article discussing the 2012 Neilsen survey figures showing that the average adult watches about 34 hours of television per week.  Whoops! That’s more time that we had left…

So, if your typical week looks like this one your time is pretty much spent for the week.  Did you get done what you wanted to accomplish?  If you did, what, if anything did you give up to get it accomplished (lunch, tv, exercise, sleep)?  If you worked more than 50 hours this week, was it worth what you had to sacrifice doing elsewhere (lunch, tv, exercise, sleep)?

There are a lot of theories out there on how to be more productive, but the one I think is most valuable is the practice of setting specific time limits on different activities.  Time limits force you to focus and get things done, where without a specific time, we tend to procrastinate or stretch a task out to fill up the time we have – see this earlier post for a great quote.

I have started scheduling my day with this concept in mind – setting limited times to produce a blog post for instance.  It is my “Ship it” deadline ( a concept I learned from author/blogger Seth Godin).  Speaking of which, my deadline is up, so I hit publish.

 

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

 

Keeping your Attention

Have you ever worked on solving a problem that you just couldn’t seem to let go of, no matter how long it was taking? Or perhaps you have found yourself in a constant struggle to maintain focus on the solving problem, but end up doing anything else instead.  Eventually, exhaustion and time creep up on you and you finally give in, resolved to tackle it anew the next day.

Then it happens – the next day you look at the problem again, and voilà! the solution presents itself so obviously that you literally smack yourself in the head and announce to no one in particular what an imbecile you are.

Of course, you’re not really an imbecile, just perhaps a little unbalanced.  Let me explain. We all need balance in our lives; the right amount of food, the right amount of exercise, the right amount of work (yes, work is a necessary and good thing), and the right amount of leisure, to name a few.  We also need to balance our attention, especially given the extraordinary demands on it in this current information age.

Ultimately, we all have limited attention spans, and although some are more limited than others, the key is not to treat this as a problem for which we need a cure, but simply to understand and accept the limits of our attentions span and structure our life and work in a way that best complement it.

For those who tend to have longer attention spans, this may mean the constructive use of deadlines to rein in our über-attention and force us to “Ship It,” as Seth Godin advocates in his excellent book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

For those with shorter attention spans, it may mean the constructive use of time-chunking, or working in chunks of time attuned to our natural attention span, with micro breaks in between to refresh our attention for the next chunk.

My guess is, most of us fall into both categories depending on the time of day, what we are doing, or the setting we are in.  The point is, when you feel your attention slipping, it may be time to ship it or chunk it, and find something else to keep your attention.

 

 

 

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”