November 11, 2008

How I live in 30 hour days and how you can too

Time is relative to perception. If you think you have a lot of time, then you generally do, based on your goals. There are three principles of time you can use to keep your day productive, and actually feel as though you have more time to get things done.

Still Time

When you begin your day, you almost always begin it in “Still Time. Still Time involves any block of time that is insignificant to the events that occur before or after it. This includes waiting time, slow days at work or class, and generally anything that occurs after 9pm and before 6am. Still Time is also known as being bored, or those days when you’re too sick to do anything particularly productive, but not sick enough to sleep all day. Still Time can be harmful to your productivity, as it might lead you to practice time discounting. On the other hand, proper time management can help your business grow exponentially.

stilltime1

When I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is check my email. Afterward, I’ll spend time working on a design brief, or commenting on blogs, or writing forum replies. Anything to get my brain woken up and going. The key to controlling Still Time is simply to start working on something. This can be a task as simple as moderating blog comments or answering client emails. The more you finish smaller tasks, the more you’ll feel as though you have time to finish larger tasks, and you’ll get a lot more of your “need to do” tasks done. The more you finish, the more you’ll feel yourself slip into “real time.”

Real Time

Real Time is when you’re focused and the amount of time you take to do something is proportional to the amount of time that actually passes. Real time can be utilized by organizing important tasks and attempting to finish one overall goal.

Real Time can also hurt your business because time moves faster, and you can waste it by not doing anything productive. Even if you’re without computer access, you can use real time to develop your business offline. However, there are good days when, while working on something, you can slip from real time into inverse time.

Inverse Time

Inverse Time is when the amount of time you you take to complete something is significantly less than the amount of time that passes. These are times when you’re completely focused on completing a goal, and do all of the necessary steps to finish in a timely manner. Inverse Time is generally always productive, and the best way to utilize it is to avoid distractions, which can loop you around back into Still Time.

How Do You Control Time?

How do you utilize your time to get things done?

Related posts:

Corey Freeman is a web designer and aspiring developer who has been blogging and building sites since 2004. Deadly Clever Designs is her first online business and provides custom website and wordpress designs.

  • Alex- The Blog Traffic Guy
    November 12, 2008

    Wow! I love your post! The time management method I love the most is plan my day in the morning. When I don’t plan in the morning, I will basically screw up my whole day by playing around and dealing with urgent but unimportant matters. Planning the day is the most important thing to me as a blogger!

  • Nicolas
    December 1, 2008

    I like this article very much - very interesting concept of time. I was thinking on how to gain ONE extra hour every day.

    In my Time Management Master blog I collected about 200 concrete time saving ideas on how to gain an extra hour every day. These tips apply at home, at work or on the road.

    http://memytime.wordpress.com/

    Please check it out and  - may be you can do a 31 hour day :)

Posting a Comment:

Thank you for commenting on this post. Please do not use keywords in your name field. You are allowed to use your site's name, but not the tagline. Any comments seen as spam will be deleted at the discretion of the administrator.