Why You Don’t Need More Time To Get Everything Done

Nothing bothers me more than to hear people say “well if just had more time” or “I’ll get around to it when I have more time”. Such phrases bother me so much because one, they are not true and two if they would just apply some basic principles of productivity and focus, they wouldn’t need to worry about time.

Energy and Focus Are King in Productivity

For years, people have been trying to manage their time more effectively. And many have reaped great benefits from the structuring calendars and to-do lists well. But as I have said in my last post, we live in an information economy. We are not paid for our time, we are paid for our information or product. Time management will only get us so far.

When Chris Bailey conducted his productivity experiment and later wrote about in his book The Productivity Project, he found that effective time management wasn’t enough, you have to learn to manage your energy and attention. The quote about from Cal Newport demonstrates this.

“Quality of Work = (Time Spent) x (intensity of focus)” — Cal Newport

We all recognize that there is limited time in a day. So, trying to force more time into this equation will only go so far. However, there is almost unlimited potential for the intensity of focus we can bring.

We do this first by managing our attention. We block out all distractions. We define a purpose or goal. Then we remove obstacles from achieving that goal.

We then have to be conscious of our energy. This will magnify our focus, only if we have gotten enough sleep, eaten good food and pay attention to our peak times.

You Need to Do More Than Work to Get Things Done

Managing attention and energy, means spending time on activities that don’t directly affect our goal. However, the more time we spend on these activities, the more we energy and focus we have to get things done.

Steven R. Covey, in his book Seven Habits for Highly Effective People coined the term P/PC balance. He explains his idea with the story of the goose and the golden egg. A man awakes one day to find that his goose has laid a golden egg. This happens day after day and the man become rich. However, the man’s impatience causes him to think that if he cut open the goose, he’ll get all the golden eggs. When he slices the goose, no golden eggs and no longer has the source that produced the golden eggs.

He uses this story to illustrate that there is a product (P, our golden eggs) and the product creator (PC, the goose). We are the goose in this story and just as how this man would have more golden eggs longer by taking care of the goose, we will produce more when we take care of ourselves.

Such things like sleep, exercise, eating good food, reading, meditating, planning and rest, easily get pushed off to the side because they are often not pressing enough. They just don’t have our attention. But by the time you crash because you are overworked or stressed, experience marriage problems, have a wayward child or get diabetes, you wished you would have spent more time taking care of those things.

Another way of looking at this is thinking of trying to cut down a tree with a dull saw. You can put in more effort and power through it. Or you can take time to sharpen the saw and after cutting down your first tree feel capable of cutting more. You may have spent a long time sharpening that saw, but you are more productive because your speed improved and you have energy to do more.

More Time Just Means More Time to Waste

If you think you don’t have enough time to take care of yourself, think again. You don’t have enough time not to. Eventually all of those things will catch up to you, and you’ll slow down. In addition, when you spend the time in your P/PC activities, you actually force yourself to get things done faster.

Parkinson’s law states that “the amount of work fills the amount of time available for completion”. This sounds cool, but does it always work? The answer is, it depends, but most of the time yes. Not everything can be completed faster and that is okay to recognize, but many have found this to be the case when invested in P/PC activities.

Going back to Chris Baily and the Productivity Project, one of his most impactful experiments was when he decided to meditate for almost six hours per day! What he experienced was on those days, he got more done that he had on when he didn’t meditate so long.

Benjamin P. Hardy, #1 writer on medium and author of Willpower Doesn’t Work (if you want to dramatically change your life check out this book) has focused his entire study and writing to know the difference between entrepreneurs and wanna-be-entrepreneurs. One of things he has discovered in his research is how much our environment shapes our behavior. To the point that the he believes that by shaping our environment we can make willpower irrelevant.

I bring this up because limiting our time is an “environment” that forces us to focus. You shut off all distractions and get ourselves in a peak state to do more. It demands more of us. You have to be better to meet the demand.

On the other hand, having more time doesn’t require much more of us. It is reasonable to spend more time messing with the things that don’t matter, like colors or fonts on a document. It is easy to reason putting things off or getting distracted. Having extra time, simply makes us lazier and less focused.

For this reason, we must learn to set our own boundaries of time. By setting that boundary you force yourself to do more work in a less time, something most people only hope for.

I found this the case when I started going back to school. The work overwhelmed me and I was bothered because I wasn’t doing as well as I should. Every week I would feel more and more frustrated with my classes. I then decide to try something. I was no longer going to do homework on weekends. Interestingly enough, that commitment helped me to get all my work done by 2 or 3 every day. Not only that, but I found my head was clearer, things were better planned out and my grades were improving.

If Something is Important to You, You’ll Do It

You will not be justified putting things off till you have more time. This can seem kind of harsh, especially to those who are really busy with work or school and just don’t have enough time to fit things into their schedule. But let’s look at this from a different perspective. If I am really busy, do you think that it would be reasonable to say that I will spend time with my son or my wife when I have more time?

I hope that you would say no. You cannot postpone establishing a relationship with a child until you have more time. Because eventually there will be no more time left. Can you really postpone that?

People who put family at the forefront of their lives, make time for their family, regardless of how “busy” they are. This isn’t just because they just say they love their family. It is because they have committed themselves to them. And it is commitment turns our desires into strong actions.

A strong commitment to something, is another self-simulated environment, that forces us to do more and become more. Commitment also means dropping things that are not essential. We too often spend time on things that either have no value or we spread ourselves across so many different important things that we have no real direction.

Greg McKeown talks about this in his book Essentialism: The Discipline Pursuit of Less. He repeats throughout his book “There are many important things, but there are few essential things”. Our commitment should be to the essential. What is essential in your life? That is what you spend your time doing. In other words, if something is important to you, you’ll do it.

Limited Time is a Blessing

I am grateful for the limited time I have. I think if we had an unlimited time, it would be easy to waste it on unimportant things.

Less time in the day makes me reflect on what I really want in my life. Who do I want to become? What do I want to have done? How do I want people to remember me?

Limited time is a blessing to me because it reminds of what is important. Time humbles me to see that I am insignificant in many ways. We all have limited time to live on earth, but I believe that should give us more the reason to learn… to work… to play…to experience.

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