3 Mindset Shifts To Get More Time 🧘🏻⏳

Introduction

Everybody wants more time, but not everybody reckon all of us get the same 24 hours a day. So the real question is how we get more time to do what we find valuable to our life. It could be activities to improve health, wealth or relationships. And it all comes down to priority (only do stuff that matters) and productivity (to do more in same amount of time). In my productivity journey, there are 3 most important mindset shifts that have been helping me get more time, get more things done and improve myself continuously.

1️⃣ View Time As Granular As 5-minute Blocks

It is very common most people treat time in large chunk of minutes. Your beloved calendar app will default create meeting time for 30mins for example. When you make bookings for a badminton court or a class, they are usually at least 1 hour long. This is especially true for kids, who have little concept of time. When we were kids, we often found there were only 3 periods in a day - morning, afternoon and evening. “We are going to visit grandparents in the morning, then to the park in the afternoon.”

In fact, a lot of minutes slipped through our finger everyday when we could have done something valuable. I might think to myself, “oh I need a complete time block of 30 minutes, sitting in front of a desk before I could start reading the book I said I want to finish. Otherwise how can I focus?” Trust me, after you break down time into 5-minute blocks, you will discover a lot more time in your everyday life, and you will have no problem focusing on it.

You could clear a 2-3 emails before meeting starts. You could read a few pages of book during a 20-min train transit. You could learn something new online (I learnt a few pages of code tutorials on Codecademy) when you have 15 mins before your lunch break ends. These could add up to significant progress. And after you try it, you will realise the “perfect time slot” is indeed every time slot you could grab here and there, and the quality, focus will be as good as what you expect in a perfect time slot.

2️⃣ Evaluate True Reason Of Doing A Thing

I would say this one is straight forward, but hard to do for many people. Think about how your activity link and contribute to you life priorities. What is the true reason you want to:

• Go for a drink with some friends this Sunday? To relax, build network, or perhaps to get social validation?
  

• Watch Netflix after dinner tonight? Again to relax, or to avoid other hard things you know you committed with yourself to do?
  

• Play video games everyday after work?

I used to spend a lot of time playing FIFA, until I realised the true reason was I wanted success. The sense of achievement when you started with an average squad, developed some wonder kids through great effort of scouting and game time investment, and finally completed the treble (for those who are not familiar, it means to win the local league, champions league and local cup all in one season lol). I picked not the top teams because deep in my conscious, I wanted to prove to myself that a person with humble beginning could achieve great success. And I have not achieved any in my real life because I was just starting out, so I craved for the sense of achievement, from digital world.

It was like a red pill, and after that realisation, I decided to find substitute to video games that could still bring my sense of achievement. Now I spend more time on working on self improvement, and thoughtfully monitor progress (e.g. I set daily input target of learning to code by 1 hour). Finally I get more sense of achievement whenever I am able to hit my target and build out some new function on my personal project.

I still play video games, but a lot less. When I play, I am aware that I am doing it because I want short breaks, entertainment and a little bit of excitement. After 1-2 matches I usually find I can achieve these goals and are very willing, satisfied to pause.

3️⃣ Prioritise Tasks According To Energy Level

I cannot stress enough of the concept of energy (aka focus/will power) as valuable as time. From the moment after waking up to the end of the day, our energy drains. This is because we face information input, process data in our mind, and make many decisions in the background without us noticing at all. Most of the time, we need high energy to surpass the mental barrier of starting doing hard things, and maintain deep focus.

A simple hack is a strategy called “Eat the frog” - do the hardest, most important thing first thing when you start working.

Some readers may wonder an opposite saying of starting with small, easy tasks first to gain momentum. I find them not contradictory and both applicable, just not in same context. For eating the frog, I tend to apply it for my work. For starting easy, I apply it in personal life.

For example, when I get changed after waking up, I like to fold my sleeping clothes. A task as simple as this brings me a little sense of achievement and momentum. Once I start in front of my work desk, I pick the most important task to start. It often is the one I subconsciously procrastinate.

Conclusion

There are a lot of productivity tips, hacks but first, they always require some higher level of realisation and paradigm shifts on treating time and energy before you can master them all. I hope my real life experiences above could provoke some thinking.

After all, test these out and find what works best for you. Comment below on what you think about the mindset shifts!

PS I finished the second half of this blog on my Notion iPhone app during a 20-min transit✌🏼