The Last Single Advice You Need on Time Management

A common eternal quest for all of the mankind in all several centuries has been to get more time.

More time to do everything. The most common mental excuse for any deficiency is the lack of time: ‘Oh , I wish I had more time! Variations of that sentence have been used several times irrespective of caste, creed, and geography! Well, with all the advancements of medical science, we still have not found solutions to stop aging; neither have we, with all technology experiments, managed to stop time. Called it old fashioned, but these things of the yore are here to stay. So, like all aspects of life, when something is a given, we attempt to make the best out of time and make it look good in our minds (at least)…

Wallace Stevens, an eminent philosopher and poet, writes: “In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts!” He refers to a structural issue with sentences. To understand the sentence, we need to understand the words that the sentence is created with. But, the sentence in itself carries more context than each of the words ever can. Same with time. You can’t break the time down to the fundamental unit of second hand, hoping to understand it or making it more productive. So, is there a panacea or a snake oil cure? None, but, you can train your mind to be more conscious and efficient.

The single advice to manage time is ‘ENGAGEMENT’! Deep involvement in whatever we do, enhances our ability to do things efficiently, pick up a wide variety of things to do across fields, and encourage to seek completion of what we do rather than leaving it incomplete before the next wave of thoughts crowd in. Engagement also does the following.

Engagement prepares our mind for serendipity – picking up ideas from diverse areas and keeping a look out for interesting cross-sector insights.

Engagement builds porous walls around ideas and helps cross-pollination of ideas.

Engagement clears the deck of the mind and prepares it for ‘deep work’.