Haircuts and Time

It started when I was having a haircut, the hairstylist asked me about my work. Eventually he talked about how everyone has 24 hours, yet some people get more done within a day then some an entire week. He went on to ask this question that sat in my mind until everything clicked recently.

“How can you earn your time back?”

I thought for a while… he didn’t ask how to make the most of your time, nor did he ask how to manage your time best. We all know that time cannot be ‘earned’, once time has passed, it has past. So how does one earn it back? If you must know, he didn’t answer his own question, so I left the salon still puzzling over how it can be done.

In these recent months I’ve come to realize how little time we have, to do the things we want to do, be with who we want to be, and still make sure we remain all rounded and happy in all areas of life. By all areas I mean relationships (friends and loved ones), health, career, money and personal development.

The past 2 years I’ve been able to ‘muddle through’ life without much thought, focusing on areas only when they were starting to lack. And now I realize, I can’t put 100% in a particular area like how I’ve done the last time. For instance working day and night on career, skills, freelance, and because of this imbalance everything else suffers. Love ones start to feel neglected, health starts to go down.

Everything started to click recently around the question that the hairstylist asked me. All the books and articles that I’ve read on productivity, managing time, procrastination, treating time as a resource, etc. Only now, at this stage in my life can I see how everything is connected. Only now when working with professionals, can I see how they act, behave, spend their time, to achieve the goals they want to achieve. The discipline is takes to do what needs to be done, day in day out, I have great respect for.

I can only think of some things that will help me ‘earn my time back’.

1. Choosing to spend my time only on things that bring me closer to my goals.
That would bring me to the biggest time wasters including facebook, youtube, games or silly things that don’t affect any of my areas in life. I don’t spend a lot of time on facebook anymore, I find it a waste of time to look at posts with no context from random people. I only use facebook to subscribe to photographers & industry related news.

2. Procrastination
One thing I’ve come to learn in my past 2 bosses, if something needs to be done, get the next course of action and do it. If it’s waiting on someone, chase him. If it’s waiting on you, DO IT! lol. If it’s a mountain of a task to do, taking the first step is half the battle won. Making it into a habit is the other half.

3. Multitask
Watch a tutorial when exercising, listen to an audio book when running or traveling. You get the point. As long as you can set 2 things in motion at the same time, and get things done, why not? Please, however, if you are at a meeting don’t multitask. Get it over and done as soon as possible so everyone can go back to doing their jobs.

4. Pre planning
I don’t know how many of you actually do this, but before you leave work, plan for what you’re going to do the next day, in a nice list, then leave work knowing you have everything sorted. So you don’t have to worry about work at night or in the evening. And when you get to work in the morning, just go through the list and you’re off to a flying start. No need to waste another 30 mins going through projects and sorting your day again.

5. Week, not day
Some of you plan in days, down to the hour. But with all the things coming in and out, random requests and ad hoc jobs, I find it more efficient to plan projects according to weeks so you have the flexibility to move things around when new priorities come up within the week.

6. Solo lunch
I find it useful sometimes to have lunch alone, without any distraction. Gives me time to turn off and take stock of everything. Most of the day we’re bombarded with information in an ‘always on’ mode. It’s good to have some time off to think about your position in life to make sure you’re on track. Some people schedule time in a week specifically for this purpose, but I like to do it during lunch.

I think it all boils down to schedules. Creating one that fits your goals in life. Having a bad schedule or not at all, will lead you nowhere.