Unfolding Our Time

Each of us has spare hours in every week—about thirty of them to be exact. This includes all the time we have discretionary choice over. And though we may trick ourselves into believing we have no time left, the truth is rather revealing, even compelling.

Come. Let’s unfold some time together.

What are we going to do with this notional thirty hours per week (if we’re not otherwise committed to other discretionary tasks already)? I’m implying choice here.

These discretionary hours are considered after our non-discretionary time is spent: most of us need to include eight hours for sleep; ten hours, five days a week for work and travel to and from; and, then say three hours per day for meals and catching up with loved ones and friends.

Using what’s left responsibly is up to each one of us as individuals to decide.

Spare Time – What’s That?

And this itself is the key. With so many potentially gorgeous things to get our teeth into, chances are we’ve already become swallowed to a passion or two—but are these things you? Without trying to dissuade you, there is only one person who can decide. It does, of course, take reflection, insight and courage to change—if change is considered necessary.

It’s your life. Nobody can really complain for having insufficient time. It’s ironic that many of the busiest and most productive people don’t ever complain about not having enough time.

That complaint is a nonsense much of the time—an excuse we shouldn’t buy into.

Optimising Each Hour

We can optimise every hour of the day and not be rushed one little bit. We’ll simply be making our life work more productively and we’ll experience more joy and fulfilment as a result of stoking the furnace of our hearts with joy and optimism.

But we do need to break down our hours and begin to plan. This means starting out manually, making lists and breaking down and analysing our days—if we’re serious.

Ten Minutes

What if we disassembled each hour into six segments? We’d all of a sudden have up to 180 discreet blocks of time to do many good things well. This is what explains the productivity of some; they use this incredibly vast resource of time really well.

(That’s 1,800 minutes per week. That’s a lot of minutes. Every week.)

We can achieve an immense amount in ten solitary minutes if we’re focused and motivated, splitting even the minutes and seconds. This isn’t about us rushing about all in a fluster. It’s simply being as efficient and diligent as possible.

A Final Word on Rest

We need to be diligent—even to the point of diligently getting the necessary rest we need. Rest this way, too, is time used productively. In fact, we’ll never get close to our potential productiveness if we don’t first get our rest. Rest comes first. It’s our platform. Our rest defines the quality of our productivity.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.