How to make better use of your time
In a 24 hour day
As we grow older, time becomes very important because for one you realize you are not immortal and secondly you realize you do not have the energy ‘like before’. So how do you fit everything into a 24 hour day when you have to perpetually deal with the distractions of technology and businesses that try very hard to take that time away from you.
It is a constant challenge and the first step in dealing with making better use of your time is to relaize that it is ‘YOURS’ and nobody can take that away from you. You are in charge of the chocies you make, so spend your time wisely.
Listed below are a few steps that should help you utilize your day better. You can customize it as you wish.
Planning a solid routine and keeping to it as much as you possibly can is the key to successfuly completing or dealing with tasks you are ‘supposed’ to on a daily basis. This can include a morning walk, eating your meals at a designated time, sorting emails, right until you get back home and call it a day. It is essential you create a time slot for each activity because if followed on a daily basis you will realize how organized you have become and after a while simple activities like walking and eating meals at the right time will become very easy to follow. It is ok to deviate from your routine on holidays/weekends. As long as you follow this for 5 out of 7 days, I think you are doing great!
How can you manage your time better? There are several books written that tell you how to do it, and I have read something here and there but simply cannot remember anything.
The answer that I came up with after thinking about it was that ‘You’ already know how to manage time because you know what activities are important in your life to fix/deal with and which ones you can put away for the weekend.
For example bankwork, and paying your bills. Can you decide whether you want to constantly want to remind yourself about it all week only to forget all over again or or do you want to set aside a particular date in the month to pay your bills and completing your bank-work?
A great part of time management is to ward off distractions like, checking facebook twice a day, or random surfing, or talking on the phone for the ‘heck’ of it. Maybe you can start with logging off facebook each time you are done checking it as opposed to keeping it ‘on’ all the time.
And the list of distractions are endless but what we should understand is that you do not need to get rid of them completely, just learn to let it not eat into your entire day.
People are interacting and talking to each other way less than they used to before because they are virtually connected through so many apps and all the time. It is important as a human being to spend your time talking/chatting with people around you even if for a few minutes. Begin with your family, then maybe a quick ‘hello’ to your neighbor and finally those that you work with. Human beings were not designed to be alone. If we stop talking to each other we are going against nature, and really you don’t want to get on the wrong side of nature.
Making time for ‘people’ around you even if for a few minutes is healthy for you and a very loving way to associate with family and friends. It is a valuable activity, so find the time to do a little of it everyday.
You are what you eat! Be consicous of what you put into your mouth. Make time to include healthy foods like sprouts, yougurt, dry fruits and lot of water in your daily diet. It is not an easy thing to eat healhy everyday, but since you are anyway going to eat unhealhy you may as well ensure that you put in a little goodness ‘EVERYDAY’.
4. Develop your Talent or nurture a Hobby
Nothing feels worse than the ‘I could have’ and all of us have those moments.
Everybody has a talent and if you don’t think you have any spend time thinking about it and you will come up with something!
It would be a great investment of time if you developed the talent you naturally have or nurtured a hobby that you enjoy. This benefits you in so many ways and because its an enjoyable activity it keeps you ‘naturally’ happy.
5. Do one thing for someone else each day
What is life if we can’t find the time to return a smile, a phone call, pay a compliment or help someone in need.
Make the time to do something without expecting anything back for someone each day. It could be as simple and mundane like helping someone cross a road, or sending a nice email to a friend, or helping a colleague at work. I’m sure you can come up with something or the other because this one bit of investment of your time is definately worth it. The best part is that you are going to feel so good about it! See..happiness does not need money ☺
PS: The images are taken from google images, please do not sue me!
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