Making time for time - Freeing yourself from the tyranny of 'managing time'.
Ayon Banerjee
APAC P&L leader. Bestselling Author. Board Member. Podcaster. Fortune 50 Executive.B2B specialist. Teambuilder. Change & Turnaround agent ( All Views Personal)
Science tells us that time is relative in nature. Philosophy explains why time is an illusion. And spirituality, of course, defines it as the fourth dimension where all of creation is co-existing in an unmanifested form, awaiting manifestation through the power of human thought & degree of one’s faith.
?Regardless of how you view time, the fact remains that time does play an important role in lending a tangible form to our otherwise impermanent & intangible life experience.
?My relationship with time has evolved as I grew older. In my younger days, time to me meant a means to an end - ?an obstacle to be overcome in the present moment, a regret to be revisited from some past moment or an anticipation or an anxiety about some future moment. Like everyone, I too have had my love-hate relationship with time over the years & have ( hopefully) now accepted it as a neutral commodity that’s neither a friend nor an enemy. It just ‘Is’ & it’s on me what to do with it.
?When I talk to my younger friends, many of them ask me about time-management. Today’s generation is very conscious about optimizing their lives & they often prefer short-circuiting their learning curve & learn from the mistakes from earlier generations so as not to repeat them, and this is great. The problem is, I myself never quite managed to ‘manage time’. So I’m not qualified to advise. Yes, I can list down some practices I follow in my own life which work well for me & for the life I wish for myself. They may not lead to the life that someone else desires or is capable of. So yes, with this disclaimer, let me make that list. Pick any from it if you find it useful. Or make your own list that leads you to the most content version of yourself.
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- Rethink how you allocate hours between work & tasks. Work is what’s for YOU, while tasks are ( mostly) what are someone else’s work or priorities. Most of us schedule for tasks & push work in the leftover gaps. Try to do it the other way round. Each day, plan your own work first & then club your tasks in the empty slots.
- Respect your body clock. We all have a finite quota of daily focus. Plug your most important work where you’re at your sharpest, depending on if you’re an owl or a lark.
- Decline any meeting where you’re not clear about the agenda or the desired outcome. For meetings where discussions happen in series & if the other parts are not relevant to your work, try to get in & out only when your part is slotted.
- If you had a not-so-productive day, try to reconstruct your day backwards as you lie in bed at the end of the day, preferably hour by hour, starting from bedtime to the time you woke up. It’s not easy, but a superpower if you manage to nail it.
- Don’t read the news. Get off social media. Remove yourself from all kinds of ‘groups’ or ‘subscriptions’ that dump irrelevant trash on you. It’s not just the direct hours wasted on them, but also the long tail of noise that stays in you & eats into your precious life minutes that tick by.
- Avoid going for lunch at lunchbreak. Go one hour early or one hour after the usual lunch hour to enjoy a quieter & hassle-free meal, and then utilize the peace of a silent workplace when everyone else is out, to do some quality work.
- That race – The destination you’re headed for on top gear, the one that makes you lose your breath & grace - What will happen when you get there? Ask this question often.
- If you give up every aimless thing in your quest of a 'perfect day', you'll probably end up with an imperfect day. Embrace & love your imperfect moments. They are 'you' too.
- What most people call ‘work’, is actually a hiding place. Live seriously close to your workplace or work from home if permissible. Nothing’s more criminally wasteful than spending 20% of your life in traffic & 20% at the coffee machine catching up on the grapevine.
- Find at least five ‘NO’s to tell yourself each day.
- Your calendar reveals your priorities in life. The good news is that you can edit it. The bad news, however, is that if you always manage to stick to your calendar, you’ve started to stagnate. Have fun with life’s Plan Bs & Plan Cs.
- Do not overexercise in the morning if you have a demanding day ( max – 30 mins cardio, followed by a carb-spiked breakfast). Lift weights in the evening to get your second wind.
- Nostalgia, beyond a particular age, gets terribly life-consuming. If you know me personally, you now know why I do not attend reunions or why I’m not part of that high school WhatsApp group. Yesterday officially ended last night. Keep the lesson & move on.
- At the end of each day, document how you spent it hour by hour, with brutal honesty. Imagine that you need to present your day to an external auditor. Check how many non-compliance ticks you get on a typical day.
- When inspiration strikes, drop everything & pounce on it. Be very alert for those ‘no-mind’ gaps in your day when life whispers to you. That’s the real stuff, rest is noise.
- Find a pocket of time each day where you do nothing. I know this sounds contrarian & counterintuitive, but it’s important to frequently embrace boredom & force yourself to be alone with your thoughts. Go for a leisurely & aimless walk in the afternoon without your smartphone on you. Watch your thoughts as they swim in & out of your mind. Inspect. Accept. Reject. Repeat.
- On a weekend morning, when it’s been raining since before you woke up, go for an aimless drive without your GPS on. Allow yourself the luxury of losing your way. Tread into the unfamiliar – the missed turns, the unseen streets, the unpredictable sights & all that alternative life that exists outside the periphery of your senses & which you don’t notice.
- What in this moment, “ isn’t” ? Ask yourself this question often. That’s meditation for dummies. And probably the only time-alignment tool you’ll ever need.
Life is not to be managed. It’s to be lived. One day at a time. Make each day count as if it were your life in miniature, because, it is ! Live full, finish well.
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?My Sunday post ( 1st October'23). Please feel free to leave comments.
My latest book, ‘Life as unusual – Work as usual’ is available on Amazon in your country and is trending very well in its category on Amazon India. You may check it out at the links below –
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Sales and Commercial | Turbomachinery| Energy Transition| Oil & Gas| Decarbonization||Clear thinker|| Innovative|| Able to simplify strategy into specific actions||IIM Kozhikode
1 年Loved it. Superb Ayon Banerjee
Water specialist
1 年NO, A very important step to reach YES. NO= New Opportunity.
Global Head of Marketing & Sales, Portfolio & Strategy @ Hitachi Energy | Proudly committed to accelerating the energy transition
1 年Love this one: Your calendar reveals your priorities in life. The good news is that you can edit it. The bad news, however, is that if you always manage to stick to your calendar, you’ve started to stagnate. Have fun with life’s Plan Bs & Plan Cs. Or like one of my masters once told me: “Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness”. Marcus Aurelius
We couldn't have said it better. "Life is not to be managed. It’s to be?lived." Time is a priceless commodity that's why we strive to give back time to people through automation wherever we can. Thanks for sharing Ayon Banerjee
Seasoned Management Professional { Property | HR | Admin | Garment Export }
1 年Indeed, it's a pleasure going through the piece, where thoughts met words and resulted in mirror reflection..