How to Reclaim Time

Project 2012: Day 6

Ever noticed how you just don’t have the time to get important things done. Yet you can spend hours on trivial, tedious activities or (ahem) Facebook?

Remember your younger self, no time to study, but no matter how busy you were, once you fell in love, you could spend hours with your girlfriend/boyfriend.

That’s because of Parkinson’s Law. Often stated as:

“The amount of time which one has to perform a task is the amount of time it will take to complete the task.”

or

“Whatever you don’t spend (time and resources) on a high priority will be consumed by a low priority.”

In other words, time is not elastic. Time passes. The sun rises, it sets, and another day is gone forever. The important tasks: Bedtime stories, walking the dog, calling your mum you neglect in preference for urgent activities.

Also, we perceive some tasks as just needing more time. Like, I’m writing a book at the moment and know that once I’m writing I’ll get into Flow and spend a couple of hours on the keyboard. So without those hours “free” in the evenings, I just never start.

Once we’re conscious of this of course, we can reprioritise.

The famous Covey analogy is: The Philosophy Professor and the Jar.

A philosophy professor fills the jar with large rocks and asks her class if the jar is full. Most students agree that yes, the jar is full. Then she takes pebbles and giving the jar a couple of shakes, pours them in to fill the empty spaces between the rocks. The prof then repeats her question: “Is the jar full now?” Again a portion of the class agree. The jar is full. However, the more astute ones realise there’s a lesson here, and still some space between the stones.

So the professor then takes a beaker of fine beach sand and pours it into the jar, asking one more time: “Do we all agree that the jar is indeed full.” Now even the most cynical students agree that there is no room left in the jar.

Finally, she takes a jug of beer and proceeds to pour over half it into the jar, filling it to the brim.

The lesson of course, and the answer to today’s question, is that because time is inelastic, if you’re only doing the sand tasks, you’ll have no room in your day for the rocks.

So focus on important tasks first. Also, focus on just starting an important task even if you don’t have enough time to spend on it. A great way to do this is to begin with your priorities first thing in the morning, before you read your email, check Facebook, or read the news. A common writer technique, if you can do this, is to allocate up to 2 hours for committed priorities. These are priorities you committed for this week, before you read your email and have your day reprioritised by someone else.

Also…

…there’s always time for Beer

Tagged as: Parkinsons, Principle, Time