Upgrade Your Beliefs About Your Time
Richard Branson on ‘Precious’ Time Management
How to start making the most of your time.
It is said that “attitude is everything”.
It determines how we approach all things in life, including our time — what we do with it, how we feel about it, what we get out of it.
Whether our attitude is positive or negative makes all the difference.
A Negative Attitude is to Your Detriment
People with a negative attitude about time are frustrated. They moan about not having enough time for everything they want to do and resent half the stuff they feel they have to do.
Under the surface, they feel regret about past decisions or wasted time, and are anxious about the future and whether they’ll ever have enough time to get to it all.
They’re usually elsewhere in their head — distracted at work wishing they were at home, yet stressed at home because they can’t stop thinking about work. Rarely will you find them at peace, enjoying, or engaged in the present moment.
On the other hand, some people view things very differently.
A Positive Attitude Helps You Make the Most of Your Time
People with a positive outlook see time as abundant, and life as full of freedom and choices. They’re grateful and enjoy making the absolute most of all the time available to them.
As such, they possess a sense of underlying happiness and overall contentment about spending the time they have.
Thinking like this is a smart thing for us all to aim for.
After reading this, you may feel that you have a negative perspective.
Good. Now you know, you can look for opportunities to change it.
Cracking Your Mind Open to a New Perspective
Multi-billionaire Virgin Group founder, Richard Branson, wrote something years ago that stuck in my grey matter:
“I am so aware of how precious time with [my family] is, I ration myself to only fifteen minutes of business a day when we’re together. How can you do it all in just fifteen minutes? It’s easy. Just make every second count.”
OK so he values family time enough to allow only fifteen minutes of work to interrupt it — I’m a family guy, I get that bit. But the handling of business, the oversight of over four hundred Virgin-branded companies, in fifteen minutes? Wow!
Still to this day, what really shorts my circuits about it isn’t his ‘time management’ of those fifteen minutes, but his belief that those fifteen little minutes are worth using, that he can make a difference with just fifteen minutes.
It’s 1.5% of an average waking day. Most of us would piss that completely down the drain and think nothing of it.
Richard however, values all and wastes none, keeping family time precious and maintaining the Virgin empire in fifteen minutes per day.
His positive attitude and effective use of such small windows of time should encourage us to rethink and upgrade our attitude towards our own time — both what we can do with it and what we can attain from it.
Here are some practical and mental exercises to initiate developing positive beliefs about your time, so you start making the most of it.
1. Nobody Has More Time Than You
This is true whether you have much to do or not.
Time is the great leveller.
Regardless of how much more money or fewer problems you think others have than you, we all pass through time at an equal rate.
We all have twenty-four hours a day. That’s 1,440 minutes in which to choose what to do and make the most of each moment.
You need not feel any more rushed or lost for time than anyone else. Remember, some people have bigger goals and even more to do than you. Richard Branson for one.
Draw inspiration into your own life from the lives of those who have a positive attitude towards time. Be conscious of a growing desire within you to experience contentment about your time, and affirm to yourself often the self-effacing truth: “Nobody has more time than me”.
2. Limited Time Accumulates Significantly
Fifteen minutes may seem little, but it is precious time.
Fifteen minutes invested daily in activity towards a goal accumulates over one year to 91.25 hours. That’s equivalent to over two working weeks.
A modest sixty minutes per day accumulates to eight working weeks.
Either of these scenarios gives you a significant amount of your time to dedicate to creating something meaningful in your life. There’s significant time hidden in those minutes!
Accept and allow into your mind a new belief that even a few minutes is precious time, and visualise how it accumulates over a longer period. Imagine looking in your diary and seeing two whole weeks or months completely blocked out for a personal project you’ve been wanting to get underway.
3. Limited Time Can Build Momentum
Daily activity towards a goal beats sporadic flourishes of activity.
Even if all you have is fifteen minutes per day, it adds up, and your efforts compound your results.
- Fifteen minutes of jumping rope.
- Fifteen minutes for updating your accounts.
- Fifteen minutes of networking on LinkedIn.
- Fifteen minutes for conversation over coffee with your partner.
- Fifteen minutes of writing, sketching, taking photos…
If you have a body, business, career, relationship, or anything else that you want to see thrive, make daily contributions to it.
4. Limited Time is a Catalyst
Rather than being a problem, limited time is actually a catalyst for getting things done.
The old adage that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion” is true. But it will also contract to fit in the time we give it.
Think of a book or movie you love. The work that made it happen not only a start date but an end date that was set before the work even started.
From now on, before starting any activity, create a timeframe or ‘timebox’. Decide a time you will start and time you will finish. Set a timer and get to work, so that you and other people can experience the benefits of it sooner rather than later.
Once you’re in a timebox, concentration and focus are your greatest assets. If you’re anything like me, those need work, so limited time can be your catalyst to finally develop those too.
Working to a timeframe is even more important than doing your best. Your ‘best’ is highly subjective and can always improve, but if you’re in the habit of delaying and procrastinating then you’ll produce little, ever.
Think of small blocks of time as little windows of opportunity to get something done. They’re also far more common than big chunks of time, and a great deal more useful. When faced with big chunks of time we’re often wasteful. Having only limited time is often the catalyst we need to use our time well and get something done.
5. Limited Time is Easier to Master
It’s not easy to appreciate, enjoy, fully apply yourself, and extract maximum productive value from all your time.
But mastering fifteen minutes is a good start.
Then you can stretch yourself to thirty, sixty, ninety minutes and beyond until you can master a whole day.
Repeat that day after day and you master the weeks, months, and years.
But mastering fifteen minutes is where it starts.
Mastering the minutes is the key to mastering all the years ahead of you.
As of right now, begin assigning a higher value to the minutes of your life, and the smaller actions you can take within them. Master this skill of extracting maximum value from a little time, then imagine what you could do with a lot.
The Takeaways
- Nobody has more time than you — True, whether you have much to do or not.
- Limited time accumulates significantly — Fifteen minutes per day becomes two working weeks by year-end. Sixty minutes becomes eight working weeks.
- Limited time can build momentum — Daily activity soon adds up and compounds your results.
- Limited time is a catalyst — Consciously use small blocks of time as windows of opportunity to get something done. Set a timer for fifteen minutes and get to work!
- Limited time is easier to master — Learn to master your minutes and you’ll waste none of your hours.
Forget about trying to find all the time you think you need, and start using the time you have.
Even the little bits are precious.
