I’m not sure about you, but I find myself to be busier and busier as life goes on. Do you have that problem?
The interesting thing is that we have control of just about everything these days.
We have compact discs that we can play skip to play whatever song we want. We have phones/mp3 players that we can pull up any bit of data we want to know or see. Our television now plays exactly what we want because we were too busy to sit down and watch it the day before.
We have control of everything. This is the first time in history where almost everything we have is controllable to some degree.
Here’s a list of some:
- Television
- Read It Later Apps
- Text Messaging
- Phone calls
And yet, we claim to have less time than we need to get it all done. Why is that?
Because we often make ourselves busy instead of productive.
Here’s How I Know This
I’ve been in a bit of a busy slump recently. Yes, I’ve been working a lot, but haven’t gotten as much done as I should be able to for the hours I’m putting in.
So I started thinking, what is it that’s making me less productive? But more importantly, what can I do to change that?
I’m not sure about you, but my time is limited. And while I love reading blogs and listening podcasts, it can be a time suck that completely burns my day. I may have gained information in the process, but how will I ever make the time to use it and put it into action?
Oh the dilemma.
Thinking back over the list we have above, I realize these things were intended to allow us to do things on our own time. To actually give us more time.
The problem isn’t the technology itself, it’s all great! The problem is that we push things off because we are too busy at the moment or have something more important to do. But we can easily get overwhelmed when “later” comes along and there’s 42 blog posts, 5 TV shows and 98 emails to catch up on.
So really, what can we do to change this?
Be intentional. That’s really the key. We have to be intentional about the time we set aside to read. To watch TV. To check email. And everything else. We can very quickly fill our time with stuff if we’re not intentional about what we do.
Many will say there’s other things we need to do, like be selective. Or have discretion on what we put our time into. But even those come down to being intentional about what we select or choose to do during a specific time period.
Lastly, I would suggest this. The more intentional we are about what we do with our time and resources, the better off we’ll be next week, next month, next year. Being busy is just an excuse. We make time for the things we truly care about so let’s strive to make all of our time intentionally spent.
Featured photo credit: Exhausted businessman has had too much of his paperwork via Shutterstock and inline photo by Jayel Aheram via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
You put it very nicely in this article. A lot of people spend too much time “getting things done” rather than “getting the right things done”.
One strategy I’ve used to increase my productivity was to actually reduce the amount of time I spent working each day (I’m self employed, so it might apply a little differently for some people). I know it sounds far fetched but the reason I did this was to eliminate the fluff. I split my daily to-do list into two categories, a “must-do” and a “to-do”. I limit the amount of hours I’m *allowed* for each list and when I plan my schedule for the next day, I’m forced to be very selective about which tasks are actually things that must get done. The rule is, I’m not allowed to touch my to-do list until my must-do list is complete first. This forces the brain to create an artificial sense of urgency and as a result, you will typically get all the most important tasks complete first, which also boosts your confidence when you finally arrive at your to-do list.
The trick behind this is as you cut back on how much work your “allowed” to do, you’ll usually realize how much of what you were doing before was just “fluff”. Things that you were doing just to keep yourself busy, not productive as you would say.
Thanks for a great post!
Great idea. I do similar with my work and writing. Being self-employed as well, I have to do my client work…then I get to do my fun work. It’s all fun I guess…some more so than others.
Thank you for the nice post. I guess Being Intentional can also be translated into Being Purposeful.
Certainly can!
What I like to do is come from the heart rather than the brain. The brain loves to overload you. It loves to notice everything, get involved with everything, and otherwise bury you in duties and events and entertainment. The heart, on the other hand, is nature herself. Nature isn’t rushed. Things get done that need to get done when they need to get done. That’s the beauty of nature … that’s the beauty of our heart.
Interesting perspective and well put.
Thanks for the tips.