6 ways to make the most of your time

As a rule, the environment that surrounds us is very demanding. What’s more, there are so many demands that despite the fact that countless tasks are carried out every day, it seems that taking advantage of time is a luxury for the most organized people.

However, this does not have to be entirely true. On many occasions we try to carry out an unlimited number of tasks that require a lot of time, Not to mention those that can take up much of the day. In this article we invite you to analyze how you organize your time and to realize the number of tasks you can do throughout the day.

Making the most of time: a complicated mission

It is difficult for the most organized of mortals to make the most of their time. If we subtract an average of between 6 – 8 hours of sleep from the 24 hours of the day, we will be left with 16 – 18 hours. If we add to this the hours of work or academic classes, personal rest, meals, etc., we will probably be left with about 6 – 8 hours “free”.

These 6 – 8 hours that we have do not necessarily have to be followed. That is to say, work schedules, meal schedules, transportation trips also mark our use of time. It is indisputable that of those 6 – 8 hours there were “dead hours”. Dead hours because you can’t take advantage of them.

A detail that cannot escape us: if you are one of the people who must work in a group or must carry out work with other people, those 6 – 8 hours will probably be “minus 0”. Agreements or disagreements between different people when establishing a common project can sometimes leave us without the well-known key phrase “no time” .

Take advantage of time: delivery dates do not show benevolence…

If we talk within the work and academic context, delivery dates do not understand the limits that we can have as beings that act under environmental demands, some more important than others. Carrying out academic projects, work projects, etc., have their cost in time and many times, no matter how much time we dedicate, it requires even more than we have available.

This sometimes generates frustration and hopelessness.. On many occasions we tend to blame ourselves for not being able to take advantage of our time and, on many occasions, it is not part of our responsibility either. Nobody told us that “taking advantage of time” was an obligation in a productive sense if there is no important objective behind it.

Procrastination and the unexpected events of the day

First of all, we will mention the concept of “procrastination”.. This phenomenon is characterized by the postponement of important activities for other less important ones. Some important activities may be relegated in time as a way to delay the inconveniences they may cause, not to mention the fear associated with using all our resources to solve complex tasks.

To this can be added the tasks that arise throughout the day that appear unexpectedly.. These types of tasks, when it comes to taking advantage of time, can lead to delays when planning the available time we have when carrying out other activities that we considered important. However, it is important to maintain a certain degree of flexibility and be aware that not all tasks must be resolved on the same day nor that all planned tasks can be done in a single day.

6 ways to perceive that time is being used

Being aware that we are delaying important activities and that unforeseen events may occur throughout the day, we will give some keys to perceive that we make the most of our time in the best possible way:

Planning

Rest hours: such as the hours of sleep and the times at which we usually wake up during the day. Planning sleep schedules and meal times can give you more time to carry out activities that we consider important.Diary: Making the most of time also means planning and dividing complex activities into days. In some cases we want to do certain activities in a single day and if we don’t get it, we feel bad. Allow yourself to give yourself a space in which you can do some of the more complex activities little by little, breaking it down into small steps.

Organization

Segment. Many complex tasks need to be segmented or rather divided into small steps. In some cases, when we face complex tasks, taking advantage of time becomes very difficult if we do not know where to start, so dividing small steps towards the final objective becomes especially important.Aim. For example, while you have breakfast you can make an outline of the tasks you want to complete during the day and give them a schedule. The ultimate goal is to find a balance between what you want to do and what you would like to do. At the end of the day, you can review this diagram and analyze feelings. Here it would even be valid to note how we have managed those tasks that have appeared without us expecting them.

Estimation of achievements and time

Don’t let yourself be dragged. There are times when we get entangled in some tedious task that we cannot find an end to or that we find very arduous and we spend all our time and energy on it. Give yourself a time limit for each task. For example, if we want to read a 400-page book, it will be very difficult to read it in a single day, so we can estimate an average of 10 or 15 pages a day.“Small big achievements”. You can start with tasks of lesser complexity to be aware that you have carried out X number of tasks at the end of the day. Additionally, if you use task segmentation, more complex tasks will be easier to deal with little by little.

In short, there are many options through which we can have the feeling of making the most of our time. However, on many occasions, it will be the calendar itself that will set dates. However, these ways of taking advantage of time are not only limited to the academic and work level, but also to daily life and day-to-day routines so as not to fall into boredom and despondency by thinking that “we are wasting time.”

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