Not Having Enough Time: We are always busy – too many things clamouring for attention. This makes managing time and stress very difficult. However, it is a pertinent problem – big enough to ensure that we must do something about it. Or else we constantly run a risk of being overwhelmed, stressed and not having enough time for the things that we want to do.
How to deal with Not Having Enough Time
By design and nature of our lives, we will never have enough time for all the things that we need to do. The first problem is that we have too many things to do. The second problem is that each of these problems seems equally important and urgent. If it is not important or urgent to you, someone else will add pressure saying that it is important for them. The main problem we have to solve is to manage these expectations without compromising the things that are most important to you. The reason for this is that unless you do things that are important to you, you’ll never get the satisfaction or enjoy the pleasure of doing the things.
Prioritise
This is the main part of managing time during your day. Start with prioritisation – unless you do this, everything will feel important and suddenly you’ll be overwhelmed by demands and in response mode. In such a stage, you’re so focused on efficiency that you can’t stop to think whether it is as important as it is made to seem. So, take time and build the priority list. Find a way to make it objective so that something else doesn’t take over this without proper due diligence. The Eisenhower Matrix is a great way to start prioritising things based on their importance or urgency.
Delegate, Defer
This is an important tactic to ensure that you have more time during the day. You must accept the fact that you can’t do everything yourself. But with the help of a team, you’ll be able to achieve the wider goals more effectively. The 4D’s framework helps create a strategic approach to finding more time for yourself. The goal of this process is to ensure that we don’t do everything. If you’re new to this, I’d encourage you to do as little as possible so that you get a hang of tuning the framework to suit your needs.
Delete – Don’t do some things
The way to defeat the feeling of not having enough time is by not doing some things. We all find it hard to say no – either because we don’t want to make others feel bad or because it goes against our principles of being helpful to people. But time management is about being fair to yourself and protecting your time for the things that you ignore but are important. Practice the art of saying no – remember the Pareto rule that tells us that 80% of our results come from 20% of the effort. Don’t waste your time on low-value outcomes.
You will never have time for anything. If you want time, you must make it! – Charles Buxton (Source)
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Time can slip away so easily unless we watch how we spend it.
Agreed, consciousness itself makes a tremendous difference in identifying the mechanical activities which can start eating into our time.
I feel as though I constantly need more time, but you’re right in that we make time for the important things in our lives. We already do that for the things we love anyway. We just need to learn how to apply that to our other priorities that we don’t ‘love’ so much. Anyway, thanks for this post!
Thanks Stuart, nice to hear from you. Agree – it is either a question of motivation or having too many things on the plate isn’t it? I find myself between these two extremes at times. Perhaps at this stage it is a phase where I’m trying to find more things I can be passionate about and be busier than I currently am. At the other end, there have been times where I wish I could get some things off my plate just so that I can breathe :D.
You are absolutely right, making time for the things we don’t love is often the hardest thing and the one that gets unnoticed..