It’s been about five months since I joined my fantastic friends at the Two Cities writing team and I’m fresh out of content before this week’s deadline. So I imagine I am doing what most content-editors opt for when they’re out of material — countdown list with shameful, click-baity title. Other “titles” considered and self-loathingly deleted for this post: What We Talk About When We Talk About Time. [Delete, Delete]. Five Strange, But Effective Ways to Save More Time : Number Three Will Leave You Speechless! [Delete, Delete, Delete, hang head in shame].

You’re a busy person — never mind the irony found in your reading this right now on a link from social media. We (many of us) are fixated with busyness. Scheduling dinner with some of my friends is like solving an LSAT/GRE logic game.

As a PhD candidate, I often bemoan the lack of time I have to work on my dissertation. I fantasize often about freezing time. I have recently been dreaming of missing trains (a classic sign of someone who feels like they’re running out of time).

Now just like the case with weight-loss strategies, there are obvious answers here about maximizing time that most of us simply won’t do. We could, for instance, wake up at 4:30am and have more time. For most sane persons, that’s never going to happen. The best we can hope for, instead, are the things we can do to make the time we do have more productive. As a self-proclaimed expert in wasting time (in the mode of thieves giving advice about home security), here are the things that have kept me focused.

 

1. Block & Focus.

All web-browsers should have this or an equivalent extension. Block/Focus works with Chrome and shuts down your browser for a designated amount of time. When you try and surf the web during the lockdown period, it will give you some pithy, scolding proverb about time management from various sources from Gandhi to Thomas Edison to Francis Chan.

Other Equivalents for other Browser Platforms:

Leechblock – for Firefox

Waste No Time – for Safari

Really?  – for Internet Explorer

Block/Focus also doubles as a Pomodoro Timer (which is based on the philosophy of finishing discrete tasks in 25-minute blocks and taking 5-minute breaks in between). Nothing kills time like the internet. Without this, I’ll constantly get trapped in my weird internet loop for way too long (email, baseball stats, Facebook, Reddit, Worldcat, email again (just in case something new came up in the time in between), something stupid on Youtube, refresh email again).

Setting a timer is particularly effective. For me, at least, I work best when I work against the clock. Done is better than perfect. I imagine writing as though I’m running out of time, crunching away on my mechanical keyboard like Chloe O’Brian hacking into the mainframe before the bank assets are stolen by the [gasp] mole inside CTU.

2. Moodil

This may not work for everyone, but pseudo-scientists will tell you {link here}, and therefore I completely believe, that silence is a sub-optimal spur for productivity and memory retention. I need the slight static of continuous noise to keep me locked into the task at hand. Moodil recreates white noise, nature sounds, even café noises that are designed to focus, not distract.

Others have also recommended video-game music, the best of which is designed to heighten concentration. For myself, however, music transports rather than focuses.

 

 

3. Keep the Phones On the Charger At Home.

This applies whether or not you have to do work from home. If you need your phone for a call, it’ll be at the charger where you left it. Otherwise, leave it there, play with the kids, sit with the spouse, wash up the babies, and let the texts and notifications pile up until you can attend to them later.

Not only will this keep you away from the dreaded time-sucks of Candy Crush and Slither.Io (don’t start this if you don’t know), but it will also give you more time with the ones most important.

 

4. Set aside some regular time to do something for other people (particularly those in need).

This might sound completely non-sequitur, but it is the best, if still weird, professional tip I can give about managing time. Don’t carve out time only for yourself, friends, and family, as busy as you are. Consider some regular volunteer work at after-school programs, rescue missions, food banks, nursing homes, relief centers, detention facilities, support groups, or prayer groups, the list goes on. To quote Albert Schweitzer, “Search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity.” There is never a “good time” to add this, but there is never a good reason not to do this either. You may find that in so doing, your appreciation for time as a gift increases, and therefore your stewardship of time matures. Using your time to help others and maximizing time for yourself, I have found in the strange economy of God’s providence, are mutually reinforcing activities.

 

 

<KS>