Thinking About Time

Bryan Robinson, Ph.D., seems to be the online expert on the phenomenon of time famine, or what he describes as “starving for more time to do everything we need to do.” I’ve been poring over some online references for time famine, but it didn’t take me too long to come across two distinct, magnificently written articles on the subject by Dr. Robinson.

The way he describes time famine is more like describing today’s individual as someone driven to eat time up as if he were in an all-you-can-eat buffet when the option to be a connoisseur has always been available. 

The term time confetti was coined by Brigid Schulte, but Ashley Whillans describes it as “little bits of seconds and minutes lost to unproductive multitasking.”

Every few seconds or minutes don’t seem too bad, but collectively, that confetti adds up to something more pernicious than you might expect. A straightforward example is the whole duration of a work break, which, these days aren’t very wisely utilized by people. 

Someone who doesn’t fall into the trap of turning that 1-hour time off into time confetti would wisely remove himself from his workspace and get a breather fresh air.

Whenever you feel overwhelmed due to lack of time, remember this – each person has 24 hours in a day, no more, no less. Appreciate every second, minute, and hour. Productivity is great, and it might help you advance your career but it can also come at the expense of living a good life or failing to appreciate the mundane things that you pass by along the way.

Software engineers turn to playing music, mathematicians to stand-up-comedy, doctors to painting. When you remove yourself from what you do for a living (even if you enjoy it a lot, or even if you do it very well), you should do so while turning towards something almost completely unrelated to it. The effect becomes all too refreshing, and at the same time you are also taken from the environment that caused you to overload your schedule.

Usually, the most difficult things to learn take a lot of patience. Take for example the sport tennis. Learning how to serve, do a forehand stroke, a backhand, footwork, learning how to toss the ball – each of these individual tennis skills takes a lot of practice for you to even be considered a beginner in the sport and start playing with others.

The goal is not to become very good at the skill – instead, it is going through the process of learning the skill that’s valuable here. When you learn to be patient about acquiring each of the individual skills that make. up the general skill

 When you surround yourself with people who are obsessed about moving up in life or doing so much in their free time that doesn’t constitute leisure, you can’t avoid looking yourself in the mirror and asking, “What should I be doing? Shouldn’t I be doing more with all the free time I have?” This mentality will put you in a cyclic trap, always looking at social media posts to see what your friends have been up to and you either feel anxious or deal with the anxiety by keeping busy.

The solution? Simple. Find friends who don’t put that kind of pressure on themselves.

This is said too much, too often in every time management course, book, article, and whatnot. But as you progress in whatever pursuit, you’ll eventually appreciate the power of ‘saying no’ And it’s just not saying no to others when they coerce or trick you into a commitment – you have to learn to say no to your own wants or wishes that seem too impractical.

Learning how to prioritize is the most basic skill when it comes to managing time and overcoming time traps, time famine, and time confetti. Prioritizing includes giving up on things that matter less than the things that are important.