Does it sometimes feel like your life is rushing by and you can’t keep up with it? Too much to do in too little time? Do you find yourself rushing around saying, “I don’t have time for …?” Is time pressure stressing you out? Most people have these feelings from time to time about time.
Here are some tricks and tips to stretch time out for you so you get a pleasanter future ahead of you. Please take a couple of minutes of your precious time to read them and see if they can be helpful to you.
Philosophy of time:
I have noticed that I always have time for the things I REALLY want to do, and to back this up, I found an interesting quote from an ancient Chinese philosopher and writer, Lao Tzu (founder of Taoism):
“Time is a created thing. To say, ‘I don’t have time’ is to say ‘I don’t want to.’ ”
If you run around all day saying to yourself and everyone near you that you don’t have time, this will definitely become a fact. That is probably the very first thing that it would be most helpful to change.
“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.”
– Michael Altshuler
How to create time:
- Decide that you have lots of time and what you would like to do with it. See the future as bright and wide open and available to write anything you want on it.
- Set your priorities. You need to CHOOSE them. Perhaps on Sunday night before you start your new week you should take a few minutes with your diary or scheduler and work out when you will accomplish the things you REALLY want to do and record them.
- If something happens that wipes out a special time you had set aside, don’t go into apathy about it EVER happening. Just set a fresh time.
- If things are crashing in on you all at once, on top of each other, as can happen at work on a busy day, take a few moments of time to chill and make a decision about which comes first, then second, then third, and so on. If possible, delegate –decide quickly who could help you in the situation rather than trying to do it all by yourself (which actually might be impossible).
- Learn how to make decisions quicker instead of hanging up in indecision. Being stuck in indecision eats up more time and causes more stress that you need. Top producers make decisions very quickly and clearly. Don’t hem and haw.
- Don’t procrastinate and put things you DON’T want to do way off into the future. It makes the future seem full of bad stuff and it can seem to be coming “too fast”. Confront what needs to be done, good or bad, and get it done now and not hung up into the future.
- Be sure to put pleasure into your future time planning. If there is nothing put there to look forward to, the future can seem unpleasant and you will feel it is coming too fast.
Hope these suggestions help you create a better future.
