7 Keys to Maximizing Our Time

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You turn off the alarm — hitting the snooze button to gain a few more minutes of sleep. You know it’s time to get going, have your feet hit the floor and start your day. The clock says time is of the essence. 

This dedication to time started in the early sixth century by the Benedictines, a monastic order who needed to worship before the sun rose, and held organized prayer throughout the day. They invented the clock to ensure prayers were preformed with regularity and precision. 

At first, the clocks didn’t have minute hands or even a face. They just controlled the bells to ring at a particular time. The word “clock” is derived from the middle Dutch word for “bell.” Clocks with minute hands and watch faces came centuries after those first mechanisms for ringing the bell. The purpose of those original clocks was to call people to prayer.

Today, they are a call to move, to act, to perform, to race against time, to become a prisoner to what the clock says.  Even though watches have gone down in sales due to the advent of the iPhone, time still dominates our life. 

As Oliver Burkeman writes in his book Four Thousand Weeks, “It’s somehow vastly more aggravating to wait two minutes for the microwave than two hours for the oven—or ten seconds for a slow-loading web page versus three days to receive the same information by mail.”

The title reflects the amount of weekends an 80-year-old enjoys. In that context, life is rather fleeting, and short. Burkeman knows we are obsessed with getting all our emails returned, being a slave to our calendars, making sure we use all the latest technology to help us cram more work into our day—even though the amount of time never increases. 

Burkeman explains that the more we struggle to control our time, make it conform to our agenda, the less control we actually have over time. All of the tools that make our life go faster, from microwaves, to jet engines, should free up time; yet, Burkeman believes they accelerate our life, forcing us to never stop and smell the roses.

Our time isn’t as limited as we believe. Burkeman offers suggestions for us to gain more balance with time, and not let the 4,000 weekends escape our enjoyment. 

1. Adopt a “fixed volume” approach to productivity. Keep two to-do lists, one “open” and one “closed.” The open list is for everything that’s on your plate and will doubtless be nightmarishly long. Fortunately, it’s not your job to tackle it: instead, feed tasks from the open list to the closed one — that is, a list with a fixed number of entries, 10 at most. The rule is that you can’t add a new task until one’s completed.

2. Establish predetermined time boundaries for your daily work. Train yourself to get incrementally better at tolerating that anxiety, by consciously postponing everything you possibly can, except for one thing.

3. Focus on one big project at a time.

4. Reduce phone distractions as much as possible — first by removing social media apps, even e-mail if you dare, then by switching the screen from color to grayscale. Choose devices with only one purpose, such as the Kindle e-reader, on which it’s tedious and awkward to do anything but read.

5. Experience life with twice the usual intensity. When presented with a challenging or boring moment, try deliberately adopting an attitude of curiosity.

6. Act on the impulse right away, rather than putting it off until later.

7. “Do Nothing” meditation, for which the instructions are to simply set a timer, probably only for five-or-ten minutes at first; sit down in a chair; and then stop trying to do anything. Nothing is harder to do than nothing.

We have limited time here on earth.

Let’s not let time run our life, bur rather let our life run time. 

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