4 July 2022

Today I want to talk to you again about the concept of time, but today I want to focus on talking to you about the importance of valuing your own time, not just valuing the time of others. There is a real difference.
Many people say that if you do not value your own time, you cannot expect others to value it. This is so simple, but so true, yet we are often caught up in our daily routines, distracted by our commitments to others, be they personal, family, or work, or just have other things to do that always seem more of a priority to us, so we forget to stop and step back to consider the value of our time.
You not only need to value your time, you need to think about how to spend your time wisely. You also need to focus on practical limits of what you can do within the time available. In this way, you do the meaningful things that you want to do in your life, which have the most impact on you and others, not just end up doing the things that you feel you need to do, which may not be so important in the long run.
But do not confuse being busy with being productive. You also need to look realistically and objectively at actually how much you achieve from doing something and then additionally consider how effective or productive you really are by doing it and if, in fact, you doing something is actually worth you doing it for you or others in the long run.
We learn over time, usually the hard way, that not all tasks are equal. You also see that there are different times of the day when you are better at what you do, or that you are often more productive or effective when you do less. For example, working longer hours is often actually decreasing our productivity and effectiveness. Sounds counterintuitive, doesnāt it?
But working longer hours is often time when we are tired or doing less effective work. Although you feel busy, you are actually not accomplishing as much overall. Often, if we take a cold harsh look at how we spend our time daily, we often realise that we are just frittering time away. It is not only telling yourself when it is time to do something, it is also telling yourself when it is not time to do something!
It is also better to do only one thing properly at a time, rather than doing lots of things at the same time less well. Ironically, if you focus on only doing one thing well at a time, you free up more of your time to do another thing well. So you then give the impression to others that you are doing many things well at the same time, in the same amount of time that you might do lots of things together, but not as well!
Another way of using time effectively is by grouping together similar things that you need to do together, wherever possible, whether they be chores, or lots of little tasks that are still important and need to be done, but not as meaningful. In this way, not only will you get these things done more quickly, but you will then free up more time to do those meaningful things that you want to do!
Finally, there is also a difference between being creative and being productive. You can be creative without being productive and you can be productive without being creative. The trick though is to try to do both and try to be creative and productive together at the same time!
So, this week, try to value your time and focus it wherever possible on doing the more meaningful things. Also try doing fewer things and focus on one thing and doing it better if you can. You may be surprised at how much more productive and effective you are when you do things in this way!




