Dr. Mitch Broser
We hear a lot of different excuses for why things don’t get done. For me, I often hear excuses for why someone didn’t follow my exercise recommendations. By definition, an excuse is “something offered as justification or grounds for being excused; an expression of regret for failure to do something; a note of explanation of absence”. Making an excuse is an attempt to remove blame from ourselves to justify the action (or lack thereof). The MOST COMMON and the WORST excuse of all time is “I don’t have the time”. We can’t use time as an excuse because everyone has the same amount of it. No matter what you do, there will always be 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day (we will save the leap year and leap-second discussion for another time). We are all starting on a level playing field, but some of us have time for “x”, while others don’t. Time is a non-renewable resource that moves in one direction. It is up to you to make the most of it. “Not having time” is not justification for being excused.
You don’t need to “make” more time, because you can’t. I wouldn’t recommend sleeping less to make more time either (check out Sylvie’s blog on sleep). You need to use your time more efficiently and effectively. There are many ways we can “make more time”. Here are just a few:
Prioritize
Think about going grocery shopping. You walk down the aisles with your shopping cart. You have your grocery list out, but we all know that your grocery bills don’t look much like our grocery list. As you shop, you start crossing things off your list. You turn the corner and you see “today’s deal”. Even though it’s not on your list, you can’t turn down a good deal! You throw it in your cart, then continue crossing items off your list. You stumble across another deal, or you find your way into the snacks aisle. The cycle continues until your cart is full. You have no more room for groceries in your cart, so you head over to checkout. As you unload your cart, you see everything that filled your cart – some of it was prioritized on your grocery list, but much more of it was impulse buys (a pint of ice cream, or that deal on bacon). The space in your cart is like the time in your day – you have a limited amount and it fills up quickly with nonsense. You get hooked on a Netflix show, you go down an Instagram rabbit whole, you take an extra-long shower… that’s you filling up your shopping cart with junk food and the latest deals. Knowing that time is a limited resource, you need to prioritize what goes into your time cart and leave the distractions on the shelf.
Be More Efficient
In one of my very first personal training jobs in university, my boss told me “you’re not as busy as you think you are”. It took me some time to really understand what he meant, but once I understood, it stuck with me. It wasn’t that I needed to be busier and do more during a workday. It was that I needed to work more efficiently. That is when I first started to really pay attention to where I spent my time. Although I considered myself to be busy, I found that there was actually a significant amount of time that wasn’t being productive. For example, I would study for several hours, but whenever I opened my computer to start studying, I would scroll through Facebook and reddit for up to 45 minutes before actually starting to study! Then I would take a break and read a blog, then study some more, and so on. What was a 3 hour study session turned out to be 2 hours of actual productivity. Being “busy” is not synonymous with being “productive”.
Time suckers can be much more subtle. Do you have the natural habit of opening Instagram every time you pull your phone out? Sometimes you are only on there for seconds or minutes. Doing it once won’t take up much time but making a habit of it quickly makes your time disappear. Think about this… When you blink, your eyes are closed for approximately 100-150ms – that is as little as 1/10th of a second. The average person blinks about 28,800 times per day. Just from blinking, you spend 10% of your waking hours with your eyes closed. If you are awake for 16 hours, that would be 1hour and 36 minutes of your day with your eyes closed! All of those little things you do in a day (like check Instagram) can add up to a lot of valuable time. Pay attention to your tendencies in between task and distraction during tasks. Look at ways to eliminate distractions and kick habits that delay your transitions between tasks.
Multi-task
The amount of attention required for a task is dependent on the complexity of the task. You can multitask (and you should) but remember that each task requires a certain amount of attention and we only have a limited amount of it (some more limited than others). Things like learning an instrument, doing calculus, competing in a sport or playing video games require a lot of attention. If you want to do those tasks effectively, you need to bring as much of your attention to the task as possible. These scenarios would not be a good time to multitask because you are close to exhausting your attention capacity. If your tasks exceed your attention capacity, then your performance in the task will diminish. Things like waiting in line at Starbucks, sitting in public transit and cleaning the house eat up less of your attention bandwidth, leaving room for other tasks to be accomplished. When you know you have “simple” tasks to do in a day, schedule other tasks that also require little attention, like doing your CARs homework, listen to that podcast or reply to emails. Multi-tasking within your attentional capacity will allow you to be more efficient without compromising effectiveness. Another cool feature of attention is that you need less of it with practice. As you practice challenging tasks you get better at doing them and less attention is required. If you practice violin and become an expert violinist, they say you can play violin “in your sleep” because you can play with minimal attention to it. For the complex tasks in your day that require a lot of attention, be sure to set time aside and eliminate distractions so you can give all of your attention to the task and complete it as effectively and efficiently as possible. Then minimize the transition time to the next task.
So if you think you are busy, take a step back and look at how you spend your time. Whether it is weekly, daily or hourly, prioritize your tasks, be more efficient with your time and multitask when you can afford it.
“Time is like money – you’re on a budget, but it’s always diminishing. Spend it wisely