Make a day more than 24 hours
September 8, 2007
It’s impossible to add an hour even a second to your day, but the idea is evaluating our activities in a day then optimalizing them.
The first step to reclaiming more time from our day is to get hold of the big chunks that aren’t being put to good use.
“Good use” is a subjective term, your Good use is different to mine based on your priority, but it could mean both work that doesn’t get much done or leisure time that isn’t enjoyable.
Here are some places to start looking:
- Television – Relatively, this point often reduce million hours of your life. Choose your only one or two fave programs to watch even a news program because sometimes it’s played repeatedly,
- Internet – Next problem of your time is browsing internet. Always create your to do list in a notepad what to do in internet, if it’s done then you’ve done with internet,
- Games – Warcraft DOTA and CS is a disease in your life, they’re ruining your life as you kill heroes or terrories. It takes much your lifetime again again,
- E-mail – Always filter your emails, then you’ll know what email you should open first and you don’t need to,
- Work – Cutting time from work isn’t easy.
- Schoolwork – For students, the classroom offers a lot of opportunities to save time without ruining your GPA.
Step Two: Reclaim Gap Time
Anytime anywhere “gap time” take your precious time much while doing something. Gap times are those between meaningful activities but aren’t normally long enough to get more done. Commuting to work, waiting in line, time spent cooking foods, commercial breaks in television programs and small breaks in your schedule all count. Here are seven ways you can fill those gaps:
- Books - Bring a book with you at all times and get a few minutes of reading in.
- Listen - Put some audio books in your iPod and listen while you drive or walk.
- Problems – Solve problems in advance during gap periods so you won’t waste as much time on them later.
- Articles - Print off longer articles and read them while waiting for food to cook or in lines.
- Creativity – I use gap time to come up with new article ideas. You can use it to come up with new ideas for work or life.
- Rehearsal – Use gap minutes to visualize important parts of your day you want to perform well in.
- Engage – Make your gap minutes more enjoyable by focusing on what you are doing. Focus completely on the drive to work or observe everything when waiting in line.
Step Three: Triage
The final step is to use the principle of triage to focus on what’s important and ignore what isn’t. The easiest way to waste hours of your day is to do “work” that isn’t getting much done. Here are some things to think about when using triage:
- E-mail - Consider an autoresponder for common messages. Use concise yes or no answers for questions that don’t need a length explanation.
- Reading – If your purpose for reading is information, learn to change your pace from a knowledge absorbing crawl up to a fast skim over unimportant details. Ignore whole chapters and focus first on the ideas that are crucial to understand.
- Television – If you still watch TV, tape in advance and cut the commercials. You can save fifteen minutes from an hour program by doing this.
- Exercise – Plan workouts in advance so you can get the most exercising done without time spent flipping though fitness magazines or too much rest.
- Meetings – A good management trick is to conduct all meetings standing to speed them up.
- Relationships - I hesitate to say this, since relationships aren’t the normal domain of productivity time-cutting. But there are people in your life who use up much of your time without adding to the relationship. Not entirely caustic, these relationships drain your energy without providing much benefit. Navigate away from those people and focus on friends where the investment is worthwhile.
Final Tip: Prioritize Work
The final question isn’t just of doing things faster, but of doing the right things. Constantly measure and be aware of the actual value each of your work activities brings. Those that don’t add much should be simplified or eliminated entirely to focus on those that do.
Entry Filed under: Life Story. .
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1.
bobby | September 14, 2007 at 7:17 am
wah emang dota bikin waktu-ku tercuri uey..
yosh… mulai mengefektifkan waktu deh
2.
Myg | September 18, 2007 at 12:33 pm
wew,, two thumbs up!!! Thanks GOD.. finally u’ve realize that dota n friends.. just wasting time. Thats d’point! Haha.
Btw,, did y makE it on ur own or just copy paste froM soMewhere??? Im nOT sure u madE it up haha.. Hardly believe it.
3.
Riza Dwi Arifiyanto | September 18, 2007 at 2:03 pm
@Myg
I’ve recreated the article, but the reference’s included too