Time Management: Tips To Regain Mental Bandwidth
We all constantly live under the perception that time is a scarce and limited resource. We view time as a measure of our productivity. We hate the idea of “wasting time” and convince ourselves that only time spent productively is time well spent.
This mental framework is created, partly, because we have become obsessed with clock time: seconds, minutes, and hours in a day, passing by, unchangeable, inexorable, to be filled, to be scheduled. It's also created by the fact that we let our time be filled with external stimuli and demands over which we think we cannot - and therefore we do not - exercise any control.
And so, we live our days on autopilot and lose awareness of time in any other way than as measured by the ticking of the clock. However, your perception of time may change if you think of it in other ways.
You can view time as what you decide to dedicate attention to, and the quality of that attention.Your attention is the scarcest, most precious resource you have, especially now in the digital age, and if your “attention bandwidth” is completely used all the time, your time will be as well.
If you view time as an allocation of attention, you will start perceiving time differently: you will feel the rhythm of time, what each moment means to you, what experience the moment brings.
Seeing and feeling your time in this new, different way will help you recognize something very important: your time is your own. No one decides how you should spend it other than yourself. If you have duties and commitments, it is because you have chosen them.
Every moment of your life is not an empty clicking clock to be chased; it is instead the choice you make at that very moment of what to dedicate your attention to. And the sum of those choices is what will shape the content of your life.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati