While it sounds onerous, logging everything you do in a week is much like a very thorough physical exam. Everything, from brushing your teeth to making your bed to your commute and break times should be logged. In the book 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam, one of her first suggestions is making a log of your time for an entire week. Being mindful of your time means you are setting the rules, you are taking control and you are paying attention. I cannot stress enough how important it is to be mindful of your time, and this doesn't mean checking the clock every hour or setting a chime. Even emergencies (which I'll handle in a moment) won't throw our life into disarray if we have the knowledge of how our time flows at any moment. By becoming more aware of how quickly time passes while our minds are engaged in a task, we can start to feel more in control of our daily tasks. Mindfulness has a specific meaning for Buddhists, but I'm really referring to the awareness aspect. First I'm going to explain what you should be doing, then I'll list some apps to help you out. But of course, there are dozens of timer and productivity apps on the store to help you out. If you use Siri, you can easily set a timer just by telling your iDevice for how long. The Clock app has both a stopwatch and a countdown timer. Guess what? There's an app that ships with every iOS device currently made which will help you be mindful of your time on tasks. This is to avoid fatigue, primarily, but also so that you are making sure you get to all the stuff you have to do in a day, not just the one thing you're communing with that morning. Brain scientists and productivity experts agree that there are good reasons to break up marathon work sessions into smaller chunks. You'll also find smaller stuff starts slipping through the cracks. ![]() Think about it like this: How many times have you become engrossed in your work so much that you "lost track of time?" While being in a state of flow and working on something for a long stretch can be beneficial, over time you'll find that you tire easily and get "burnt out" after too many of these marathons sessions. At the end of the day you will have a better idea of where your time went, and by not getting bogged down in one or two things during the day, you'll find you can better cope with the myriad items you happen to be juggling. While the Pomodoro technique might not be for everyone, simply setting a timer to keep track of how long you're working on a given task is absolutely vital. ![]() What are you doing?Īt any given time, what are you doing? Probably the most significant thing you aren't doing is being mindful of the time you are spending on tasks. Here are some ways to get those tactical moments - the day-to-day stuff - managed and under your control. How do some people manage this while others are constantly rushing around late to everything? I was certainly guilty of this until I started minding my time in small chunks. Or, as one author has framed it, you have 168 hours in a week to accomplish what you want and move forward toward your goals. Every day you have the same 24 hours as the rest of us to get what is likely a crushing amount of work done and out of your way so you can spend some time relaxing.
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