‘Lost time is never found again.’ – Benjamin Franklin.
Time-eaters
A ‘time-eater’ is an activity or event that is very time-consuming and usually a waste of time. How many such time-eaters do we meet on daily basis? Maybe ten, maybe a hundred? From traffic jam when going to office or with kids to school to the colleague that is consuming your time with unneeded discussions instead of doing his part of task for completing a project.
Time-eaters are all activities or persons around as that let us the impression that we have no time to do what we planned or what we wish.
Time-eaters put a lot of pressure on all of us. How can we avoid them? Are we too busy for having a look?
Time-savers
There is no definition in dictionary for time-savers, but we can imagine that is the opposite of a time-eater. According to Collins dictionary a ‘saver’ is a person who regularly saves money using a bank account or an investment mean and ‘time’ is what we measure in minutes, hours, days, and years. In the time of technology we should invent a technique to save time using a time bank or a time investment fund.
After years of running against time, postponing activities and being frustrated, there may be some ideas on saving precious time:
- Set your priorities and just split so-called “important” activities in urgent and essential. After it put first the essential activities and let the urgent ones for later.
- Interrupt your colleague when complaining about something – if you pay attention it may be a habit to have this discussion each time when you meet him.
- Say ‘no’ to least to 50% of formal and informal, large and small requests from bosses, teammates, friends, and family that keep coming every day across different channels.
- When you cannot say ‘no’, make a shift from doing to leading and delegate small tasks to others either in your team, either to friends or family members and in this way, you create time for what matters most.
- Hire someone to do it for you: there are so many service providers that may help you and give you back some precious time. When you hire somebody, you actually buy time for yourself.
As this is a quieter time, let’s imagine that you are the owner of your time. What is your plan for your free time?
In a hypothetical scenario when we have enough time, are we better with each other?
Wishes for 2023
We wish you a good year with more time-savers and less time-eaters!