Time is the most precious commodity that we have. Attention is the second most important. And we need to trade both of these (depleting, non-renewable) with other people and organisations.
This is almost non-negotiable (of course, we can go to the Himalayas for a retreat or become a Buddhist monk, but I am sure people who read my blog have neither of those intentions). That being the case, we don’t have a choice if we want to trade our time and attention but the choice is what do we trade it with.
If you are like any of my average readers, you are either an entrepreneur or someone who is looking to climb up the corporate ladder. In either case, you spend a lot of time at work. At times you feel overwhelmed by your work and at times you really enjoy the high that it gives you. And the former is more often than that the latter.
Also, you are also looking for ways to get better at what you do, which means, you read (like you are reading my blog right now), take courses (my course is here), listen to podcasts (mine is here) and watch good videos on YouTube to become more productive and learn to manage our time better.
If we were to summarise the traditional time management advice, it would sound something like the following:
- Make some sort of a list of everything that you want to do (today/this week/this month/this quarter or this year even).
- Prioritize.
- Delegate stuff that you can to someone else (your boss, peer, customer, partner or hire someone in Manila to do that for you).
- Set deadlines.
- Allocate time to each task and put it on your calendar. Follow your calendar. Diligently.
- Revisit the list often.
- Do not multi-task.
- Take a break. Regularly.
- Take care of yourself.
- It’s okay to have fun.
Now, I am also sure that most of you, just like me, also use the same hints to schedule our leisure time as well.
- We schedule date nights with spouses/partners or kids.
- We schedule vacations and plan the vacations diligently (places we want to go to, things we want to do, so that we don’t miss out on anything important.
- Most of the times, we have a hard stop for these activities as we need to get back to work for some reason or the other.
New Research
Now, research by time-management experts Selin A. Malkoc and Gabriela Tonietto brings very important advice when it comes to our leisure time. They claim that, the way we approach time management, when it comes to truly enjoying and trading our time for fun, is very different from how we manage time at work.
Their recommendations to enjoy our leisure time the most, we need to think of managing time a little differently:
Schedule roughly.
Instead of scheduling dinner at 9:00 with wife or son, schedule “dinner after work”. This gives the flexibility and the ability to not feel bad if we have to work a bit more than what we had anticipated or planned, as long as we go out for that dinner after work.
No Hard Stop for Leisure time
Instead of scheduling work related tasks immediately after our leisure time, it is better to not schedule anything that might take our attention away from having fun. If we have scheduled to plan or prepare for a meeting immediately after a dinner date with our son/daughter, it is but human to start thinking about the meeting and prepare in advance of the scheduled time. It is extremely difficult to avoid that. This clearly is a bad idea as neither you nor your son/daughter are truly connecting or having fun.
Serendipity & Spontaneity
One of the good things about being in the present is that it allows us to be open to serendipity and be spontaneous. Spontaneity and the freedom to do what you feel like doing in your leisure time will add a significant boost to our ability to recoup from stress and make us more happier, in general.
In Conclusion
Though the researchers have made these recommendations based on the research that they have conducted, I know that these are good ideas from my personal experience. I have elsewhere also written about the fact that in order to really be productive, at times we need to slow down our pace. This strategy fits in perfectly with that thought as well.
Try this out and let me know if this helps in becoming and staying Happily Busy!!
PS: Here is Sadguru talking about the same topic with Piyush Pandey.
