A Step to Find Own Time
A newly delivered sharp packing box poked one balloon. The long balloon trail lost one more. I was kind of disappointed to realize that birthday night was over and eventually the setup would go away, either because of sudden mishaps like this or because of a well-planned reset work. I placed the box on the coffee table and then opened it slowly. A big stamp shouted along with the delivery boy, ‘fragile’. The delivery boy added, “Careful.” It got a bandage kind of cello tape covering. I started stroking the pen knife in a vertical motion quite patiently. It was a gift from a friend; it was a sand timer.
This week was hectic, fun-filled, and of course a patient cross-checker for the next few days. Any special day gets long lists of preparations, and eventually, when that day closes the curtain, it's just the memories that tie us back to that time. I knew it was enough scrolling through the photographs and I had to speed up my work for this Wednesday blog. My weekly planner knew the time blocks and every bit of my scratch list. It was just that I had to cope with practicality.
I was recently reading an article from Harvard Business Review. Author Erich c. Dierdorff showed a layout of a research on measuring time management skills. He added, “The evidence was crystal clear that people are not at all accurate in self-evaluating their time management proficiency. For example, less than 1% of people’s self-ratings overlapped with their objective skill scores. Moreover, self-ratings only accounted for about 2% of differences in actual time management skills.” This issue is not a joke. But the good part is that as the study mentioned there are many significant waypoints to deal with such crap situation. One point the author mentioned was “developing arrangement skills.”
In my last blog, we discussed intentional-procrastination and the fun part is that this method can work well with time-blocking techniques. The planning and intentional-procrastination have a connecting point. If someone starts using intentional-procrastination as a buffer and then uses a time-blocking system for most non-negotiable tasks, it certainly can create a continuous chronological productivity stream. The buffer part or the ‘break’ part has your measuring and usage control. In most cases, each day we all have at least two/three non-negotiable tasks that we either can’t cancel or postpone. Firstly,fix that with a planned checklist. It’s one of the best approaches to start working on developing arrangement skills. Once those tasks get the ticked off, then we can tap into the less-burdened minutes and subsequently can create space for breathing. A constructive approach to time and task significantly reduces the risk of putting yourself in a trap of “unnecessary busyness” or into the “dump of sulking.”
The time sand drops continuously, but the practicality can beat that only if we have the confidence and effort to choose the list of priorities. We can’t stop or pause the giant timer of life, but we can batch our tasks out at the very first place of our days to create a new space for our own time without any guilt or burden. It gives an openness to a new time, which perhaps gets layered down into some dust of unkind busy times. It’s our choice to rub that dust off. I call that process Ina*. Time is a sharp sword; everyone can swing that; everyone can be a productive warrior. It's just that it needs dedication and practice.
(*In Sanskrit, Ina (इन).—a. means determined or anything that is powerful.)