How to steal time
"Time" the thing that we want the most but we use it the worst. The things which we have the most we value them the least. In a day their are 24 hours which is nearly around having 86400 seconds. Feels enough to do all your tasks on your task-list. But the NHT [Natural Human Tendency] takes over and we tend to procrastinate. Wasting even seconds compounds and turns into a huge number at the end of week or even a day. So how to deal with it to get things done in the most possible ways and also to save the most of your time to enjoy your life without making it a mess.
Tagging yourself
This is a real broad concept on how the terms take over your mentality. Let's take an example if you tag yourself that you are not the type of person who is certainly healthy. You will eat unhealthy food, will not exercise and also you might struggle with your health. This is the worst case scenario of what can happen if you tag yourself as a person who eats junk food. You have made a badge of honour for yourself that I cannot eat healthy and instead I am not that healthy. It's not what we struggle with the craving of eating junk food we are struggling with the words we are using. If you imbibe some negative words on you mind that you cannot live healthy even if you want to get healthy with your diet you would avoid the thinking and eat another slice of that cheese pizza. The trick is you have to tag yourself that I want to be healthy and that will set another level of advancement in your goals of being a healthy person. After tagging yourself that you are a healthy person ask yourself that what a healthy person does, he goes for a jog, he eats healthy, burn some calories by going to the gym. This is what James Clear explains in his book 'Atomic Habits'. So coming back to the concept of saving time. If you want to save time you should tag yourself that "I am the person who doesn't waste any time" or "I am a productive guy" and then ask yourself that what a productive person does he probably completes his tasks, doesn't wastes any time on the phone, invests his/her time in learning new things. Words play an important role on your behaviour so use them carefully. Always keep a positive attitude even if you are at your worst stage.
Plan everything you can do The first main concept on managing your time is by having a proper schedule. Having a proper schedule makes your work smooth and efficient. So when you plan your task the night before executing your tasks then it makes more easier for you to focus on the task which needs to be get done in the first go. Planning your daily task-list might take some time but if you invest in it it will be fruitful because you would not waste time thinking which task I need to perform first. Try to organize every second of your life because every second counts and most importantly you won't see the effect at the spur of the moment but once your tasks gets piled up you might think how much time you wasted throughout your day or week.
"Stop saying I don't have time"
Whenever I ask someone to do a particular task they have two answers for it either "yes" or "I don't have time to do that thing". I genuinely can't believe the second option like how can a person be so busy throughout the 24hrs of the day that he doesn't even have a second for it. The answer "I don't have time" is always a myth because you are not actively choosing to do the task. When someone tells you to perform a particular task and when you just say I don't have time for it, first it looks rude and second it shows that you have some time management issues 😆. The phrase I don't have time actually means that the task you are asked to perform is not on you priority list or you are actively choosing not to perform that task. Your time is always in your control. You can either choose to scroll Facebook and watch videos of Big Bang Theory or you can instead read a book. It depends on you what you want to choose. Instead use a different phrase like "I would not be able to squeeze that much time" or "I already have a lot on my plate". This makes the conversation really worthy and as I said words impact a lot on your mind. I suggest you to take Ali Abdaal's productivity Skillshare class to understand it much better. Elon Musk runs companies like SpaceX, Tesla, Solarcity, The Boring company and Neuralink and still gets time to hangout with his kids. Also Prime Minister Modi only sleeps 4hrs a day but still finds time to practice yoga. These people use their whole 24hrs, they are really busy and use their time productively. You are absolutely not busier than these people so, stop using the phrase "I don't have time". This will bring a lot of change in your character because you will not probably waste most of your time binging some Netflix show and instead would focus on cleaning your house, the reason which you are giving your mom every single time of not having enough time.
Track your time Tracking your time will let you know where you are spending most of your time. Maintain a kind of a diary thing so you can keep up with the records. Enter the time span spent on a particular thing. Eg watched TV from 9-9.30am. At the end of the day calculate the time you spent loitering around and the time you spent on silly things like scrolling through social media or going through your news feed for a longer duration. These minutes might look very little but when it compounds at the end of the week you would have almost lost a day doing something unproductive. I was wasting 3hrs on an average on Instagram and that made me feel full of grit so I got rid of social media or even I use it once in a week just like a weekly login or something. Also you can track your phone's screen time. If you are spending a lot of your time on your phone get rid of it once again everything is in your control you can decide whether to shut your phone and do some productive work or scroll through your Instagram or Facebook feed.
Change is always possible you need to make a decision between right and wrong. Time will always be in your control if you want to.
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