In world full of competing interests, there are a lot of things vying for our attention. From advertising to social media to just managing relationships, this demand for our focus means our time has become our most valuable commodity.
That’s right — in today’s culture, nothing, not even money, is of greater value than our time.
It sounds counter-intuitive — after all, given the choice, most people would save money over time, reasoning that money is the rarer commodity. But the truth is you can earn back money you lose; once you lose time, it’s gone forever.
That’s why your greatest possession is the 24 hours you have directly in front of you, and sadly, most of us don’t manage that possession well. We allow others to determine where we place our focus and energy instead of establishing priorities for ourselves.
We justify letting others set the pace by saying, “Well, I’m getting a lot done.” But activity and accomplishment are not the same thing; making today matter means identifying our priorities and then behaving according to those choices.
It’s not how hard you work — it’s how smart you work. The days of automatically filling up your calendar with tasks need to be done. You can’t afford to confuse activity with productivity. You have to prioritize and commit time to those things that make the day most productive.
One strategy is to schedule white space into your calendar. A good target is always to leave 20 percent of your time free — we urge you to fight for that same percentage.
What might that look like? You could choose to create margin every day. If you spend on average sixteen hours a day awake, creating margin means leaving three hours and twelve minutes unscheduled every day. If you wanted to think in terms of your week, you would need to leave about twenty-two and a half hours unscheduled every week. Margin by the month: leave six days totally open. By the year: seventy-two unscheduled days.
You may be saying to yourself, “I can’t do that. I can’t spare three hours a day or six days a month. And I’m definitely not taking more than seventy days off!” That’s why margin is so difficult to maintain….
Yet to create margin, taking essential time off is exactly what we need to learn how to do. You can’t maintain your priorities if you fill your life with busyness.
If you’re a high-energy doer, you may find it difficult to stop, take stock of your activities, think through your priorities, and reevaluate what you do and how you do it. But you need to do it — not just once but day after day, year after year. Priorities never stay put. Yet if you can learn to master the principles of priorities and you develop the discipline of applying them continually, you will find your personal and professional effectiveness will be off the charts.
Few things give as great a return as good priorities. When you intentionally use your day well, you set yourself up for success!
Change That Up!