Time, sometimes it seems endless, other times it passes bye in a blink of an eye. Recently, I’ve started to notice my changing attitude towards time. In a nutshell, if I come back from work early and I have a lot of free time – time seems useless, I simply waste it and almost nothing gets done. When I come back from work late and the hours before I go into dream land seem limited, I manage to get so much more accomplished. Clearly, the procrastinator in me has something to do with this. But moreover, when time is limited, it becomes valuable, like any commodity. We take air for granted but if you had a limited amount of air, you’d certainly appreciate it more.
Several programs exist to help you save time, like RescueTime, a toolbar that monitors your websurfing and allows for “easy time management”. There’s even a Google lab widget that kicks you out for a few minutes, when you spend too much time on GMail.
But is that the solution, stopping yourself from wasting time on the web, won’t you just waste time some other way. For me clearly one thing that worked is using up a lot of my time doing work things, it makes whatever is left over feel so much more valuable. But this is not a great solution either.
Any ideas? How can we motivate ourselves to see the time we have for what it is – a moment that we will never get to use again, once it passes.
One thing that’s important is to have something to spend your time on. If you find yourself “wasting time”, you should have a list handy that you can glance at that will remind you of things you need to do. I’ve read somewhere that some “successful” people (i.e. people who make a ton of money) write down a list of 6 things they need to get done that day so that they stay focused.
Another way of motivating yourself is to attach a monetary penalty to wasting time. For example, use rescuetime to track how many minutes you are wasting and donate $1 to charity for every minute wasted over 15 for the day. Just an idea.