Actually off late I’ve been pretty much stuck with being in a perpetually “no time for anything” situation. Moving to a new project next week (1st of August) so must wrap up my current one before that – but its turning out to be pretty hard. I have a rough theorotical idea from what I’d read about time management but having had the same habit pattern all my life* – though I’ve managed to change various other habits, this is one particular habit thats turned out to be pretty hard to change. Its also not very easy to live live with too, since it not only makes me miss a lot of good opportunities, it also affects other people associated with me/depending directly or indirectly on me as well – colleagues/family!
[* Even in school days, I used to cram up for exams in the last minute and be late to class and so on… very long list here which my mom would be glad to lucidly enumerate to anyone who cares 😉 ]
Those who face this problem, where time seems to be a perpetual hassle, generally take to becoming self-employed which affords them a lot more freedom. In my case, my own employer is kind enough to gives me plenty of flexibility, as long as work gets done, which I feel I’ve unfortunately more misused than used 🙁 …and I end up staying much longer in office than I’d really care to. But I believe its indeed possible to live a normal corporate life and still have plenty of time, so its a possibility I’m currently trying to experiment with.
Of course a comprehensive solution to this is awareness, but until that gets established strongly enough, here are some things I’ve observed so far:
- at times when I’m really being highly focussed, consequently very efficient & effective, time seems to slow down. If I expect one hour must have gone, I look at my watch and see only one half an hour has passed 🙂 But then there’s the grave risk of celebrating this temporary success too much! 😉
- in the times when my mind is floating around here and there, a lot of time just flies by. I look at my watch and think “I can’t believe its 3 PM already!!” One of the marks of highly skilled procrastinator is that he’s always [inadvertently] looking for distractions!
- one thing leads to another – often a distraction can be highly self-deceptive! Somethings look like it will take only 2 minutes to handle it, but it leads one into a train of events that can take a lot longer than anticipated.
- I’ve also found the 4-quadrant categorisation given in “Seven Habits of Effective People” helpful, where we categorize things into one of the four possible combinations of “Urgent” and “Important”.
Hmm… now I recall some more ideas about time long ago…
So anyway there probably won’t be too many blog updates till next month!
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