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We’ve become used to gauging our importance by how much we can pack into each day. We constantly try to outdo and outperform one another. It can often feel like we’re in the midst of a busyness epidemic, which results in us having to deal with far too much stress.
How can we make more time in our lives so that we don’t have to feel so busy and overwhelmed? Most of us turn to time management to solve our problems because we think that if we could use our time more effectively, we could get everything done and reduce our stress levels.
The problem is, most of us have more time now than at any other point in history. On average, people in developed countries are working fewer hours than in years gone by. Despite this, many of us feel we are busier than ever. Why?
Part of the problem is that we have too much leisure time, as counterintuitive as that may seem.
If we know that there are ten great books to read, eight TV shows we need to catch up on, and several skills we have yet to master, it can foster a perpetual fear that we may miss out on something fabulous. Being aware of what we might be missing can make us feel anxious about the limits of our time and begin to doubt our ability to make the most of it.
Therefore, as we create more time, we want to use more of it.
Time management has its limitations when it comes to helping us feel less busy.
Thus, in the rest of this article, we’ll explore eight alternative strategies that will help you make the most of your time.
Let’s jump in.
1. Ask Yourself What You’re Sacrificing to Busyness
The 19th-century Danish Philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard regarded busyness as something we can use to distract ourselves from the important questions in life, like what the purpose of life is.
People who are always busy fill their time, and always find something to do, but often they have no key principles that give their lives direction. Everything seems important to them, so nothing is important.
We’re not saying that everything you spend your time doing is unimportant, or insignificant. However, if you leave yourself no time to decide what values influence your decisions, merely keeping busy may lead you to a quite different destination than the one you sought to reach.
When you sit down and consider your values, you may find that it is worth sacrificing a degree of productivity and efficiency to pursue something that truly matters to you.
2. Tackle One Task at a Time
It can be tempting to squeeze as much as you can into a short period of time. We dash off answers to emails while trying to do our work, we eat as we surf the web, and we jump from task to task in a permanent state of divided attention. As a result, we spend only about half our time concentrating on a single task. Check out our post on task-switching to learn more.
The irony is that we are at our happiest when we focus only on the task in front of us. For example, people are happier when they concentrate on just washing the dishes, rather than planning their week while doing so.
Try to be aware of whenever your mind starts to stray from the present moment to dwell on future worries or past mistakes make a conscious effort to bring your mind back to the present moment and focus on what you’re doing. This may make you happier and more satisfied, as well as help you to become more productive. Remember to be patient with yourself, as it may take a while to become adept at practicing mindfulness.
3. Accept Your Limits
When you accept that you can’t do everything, you free yourself to re-think your priorities and find out where you can save time by not doing tasks that no one really care about. Tell yourself that something must give to reduce your anxiety and stress levels, then decide what that is.
If you use a task management system like Notion or ClickUp start getting comfortable with postponing or deleting events and allow yourself to stop worrying about dedicating a set day to a task you can’t bring yourself to discard. You’ll likely to get through the same amount of work done, but you’ll feel better about it.
Next, we’ll look at why allowing yourself to be creative might be a smart move.
4. Let Yourself be Aimlessly Creative
When we don’t feel we have enough time, we tend to fill our days with tasks that seem useful and urgent. This leaves no room for creativity. However, research suggests that aimless creativity may have its uses.
One study involving 658 young people found that those who engaged in creative activity once a week were more likely than others to experience a greater sense of enjoyment, purpose, and satisfaction in life during the following days.
So, do something creative for its own sake, get yourself into a more curious frame of mind, and use some of your time to get more satisfaction out of life.
5. Make Time to Spend with Friends
Spending time with true friends can offer you a mental and emotional buffer against the trials and tribulations of everyday life. If we feel we are supported by our relationships it lowers our cortisol levels and blood pressure, both of which are key indicators of stress. So next time you get an invite to see a friend, why not think about accepting. It might do you good and be a valuable use of your time.
Soon, we talk about the advantages of spending part of your day outside. For now, let’s discover the benefits of taking time to read a book.
6. Read a Book
Even bookworms get distracted by the manifold temptations the internet offers. You can begin to crave the flow of easy information, which can contribute to persistent fatigue and distraction in other areas of your life.
To break this destructive cycle, why not try reading a book?
Simply reading a book can help us focus, give us more time to reflect, and can even help develop our problem-solving skills. It can also help reduce stress levels as we explored in our post on reading and productivity.
It may well benefit us to pursue slower ways of absorbing information.
7. Spend a Portion of Your Day Outdoors
Our increased stress is connected to the increasing amount of time we spend indoors, sitting down. Studies suggest that spending just 15 minutes outdoors each day can help reduce stress and can help improve your health long term by lowing your blood pressure and heart rate.
So, on your next lunch break, invest in yourself and your health by taking a stroll outside. You could even leave your phone behind and have 15 minutes free from distraction. That could do wonders for your focus.
8. Give Your Time to Others
If you give time to others, you may come to feel that you have more time than you thought rather than less. If you devote some of your time to helping and serving others, it helps makes us feel more useful, capable, and confident. You are more likely to feel you’ve achieved something, which increases self-assurance. This, in turn, makes it seem as if you have more time, and can help you feel less anxious and stressed.
Wrapping Up
We’ve covered some strategies that you can adopt as alternatives to avoid stressing about time management to help you make the most of your time. Why not try a couple of them to see if they help you feel less stressed and improve your life?
You might find getting lost in a good book provides more than just a dose of enjoyment but may also provide stress relief so that you can focus better on work. You may even see an uptick in your productivity.
Let us know which alternatives you’d like to try out in the comments.
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