How Do We Make the Most of Our Valuable Time

Because we are busy with all kinds of tasks and activities, trying to manage everything, we don’t want to waste time. Our time is valuable and we want to make good use of our time.

Do you ask yourself sometimes if you are as productive as you can be? If you are not wasting your time?

When áre you wasting time?

Wasting time means something different for each of us. When you search for the definition of time-wasting you’ll find this: “to spend time doing something that is unnecessary or something that doesn’t produce any benefit”.

So knowing this, áre you wasting time, when you kick off your shoes and curl up on the couch to watch a movie in the evening? It could well be something you feel necessary to help you relax after a hard day’s work.

Productivity and wasting time

Sometimes you feel you are wasting your time when you aren’t productive. However, we need time to reload our batteries and relax. You need to take care of yourself as much as you take care of your family and others. Sarah has some simple summer self-care tips, not a time-waste in my eyes.

I myself, feel most energized and therefore most productive after I’ve had a good night’s sleep. So I am careful to go to bed around the same time and relax before I turn off the lights.

Make use of small time-pockets.

Waiting for something or someone can also feel like you’re wasting precious time. Think about standing in line at the supermarket or waiting at school for your kids to come to the car.

Use those small pockets of time to answer some emails, read a newsletter, or outline some work. I love to catch up on my emails and newsletter, so that is my activity while waiting for my kids to be picked up.

What is important to you?

When you want to make the most of your time, you need to know what is most important to you. How do you want to spend your time?

For example, if you want to be able to talk to your teenager about their hobby, like photography (which our youngest like to do), you need to learn what it entails. Knowing nothing about shutter time and exposure makes it hard to talk about it with your teen. So although photography would never be something you would want to do, you do want to spend time reading and learning about it. It’s not a waste of time!

You wanna know what your priorities are when you can work on them for the day. When you can finish whatever needs to be done, every hour, a quarter of an hour or even 5 minutes feel like extra time, right? So try at least to get those 1-3 priorities done and you feel more relaxed already knowing the important stuff is taken care of.

3 Tactics for making good use of your time

1. The Pomodoro technique

Maybe you’ve heard of this technique for better productivity. You basically work for 25 minutes, really focused and have a 5-minute break. Because you have a set time (the 25 minutes) you want to make the most of that time. It works, give it a try someday.

2. Say no

By saying no to something or someone, you are also prioritizing what’s important to you. And you keep control of your own valuable time.

I bet you have said yes to something and regretted it later. You felt it was a waste of time and effort. When you can determine early on if an activity will not be in your best interest, do yourself a favor and just say no. Spend your precious time in a different way.

3. Delegate or collaborate on tasks

Hopefully, you have at least one and preferably more to-do lists. Know that you don’t have to complete or accomplish all those tasks alone.

You can save time by delegating tasks that someone else can take care of. Quicker and maybe even better than you.

We had a lot of heavy snow on our carport/terrace this winter. Now I could shovel it all by hand which would be a heck of a job. So I delegated it to the son of our neighbors. He had a snow thrower and within 2 hours the job was done. I gave him a few bucks, he was happy and so was I.

Another great way of making the most of our time is collaborating on household tasks. Get your family involved and spent time together. Again you don’t have to do it all by yourself.

Let’s recap.

• Know what a time-waste means to you, when do you feel you are wasting your time.
• Not being productive doesn’t mean that you are wasting time per se.
• Take advantage of small pockets of time throughout the day.
• Use your time thoughtfully by using the Pomodoro technique, saying no and delegating or sharing tasks.

Now you know how you can make the most of your valuable time and you can identify when you are wasting your precious time.

If you liked this post, you might enjoy these too:

• Why You Don’t Want to Multitask
• Why and How to Set Priorities to Improve Your Life
• How To Effectively Structure Your Day with Time Blocking

And if you like, let me know how you make the most of your time. I love to hear from you in the comments.