Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life by
Ashley Whillans My rating:
4 of 5 stars This book Time Smart by Ashley Whillans, starts with identifying the time traps and the reasons for time poverty. It suggests some steps, habits and strategies to become time affluent. The book also talks about how to fund the time to get rid of the activities that we do not like.
The author also lays out strategies that can keep us time affluent in the long run and how the government and private companies can help to increase the time affluence of common people and their workers respectively.
Let's start by asking this question, Which is more important between time and money ?
The author says, both are valuable, scarce and measurable. It’s also difficult to gain as much of both as we want. We are often choosing between them and making trade-offs. Vacation or no vacation ? eat at home or go out ? are some of the situations where we have to make a choice. And most of the time we end up taking decisions which favor money.
Since childhood we are told or we see that Money is very important. if one is poor then the only thing he wants is money. Many of us learn that time is money and nobody sees anything wrong if you spend every second of your available time to earn more money. Though, even after earning a significant amount of money you do not stop there, you continue to want to earn more and more and
spend countless hours at work ignoring your loved ones assuming that you will make time for them someday and that someday never comes. We do not realize that sitting at home idle or talking to loved ones or spending time with kids is as important as going out and working in an office.
As per the book, We also don't understand that time is finite and is our most valuable resource. Money is valuable to a point, the author says, but it’s an infinite errand which never stops.
This focus on money can cause stress, unhappiness, and loneliness. The cost of getting out of these problems is huge and sometimes you never overcome it.
The book talks about six traps that make us time poor. These traps are -
Trap #1 Constant connection to technology - Cell Phones, Laptops, emails, messages and other technologies constantly interrupt us. This happens both at home and office. It stops us from doing any deep work at the office or complete relaxation at home.
Trap #2 Obsession with work and making money - People wrongly believe that if they work and make money now they will have more time to relax in future. But in reality, making money only leads to an increased interest in making more money.
Trap #3 Limited value placed on time - People often give up large amounts of time to save a very little money. People don’t correctly value their time.
Trap #4 Busyness as a Status Symbol - In many cultures people use their busyness at work as status symbol and are considered of higher status and rich wealthy people.
Trap #5 Aversion to Idleness - People don’t want to sit idle. They simply don’t see any value in being mindful and doing nothing.
Trap #6 Over commitment - people often over commit and then spend extra hours to meet those commitments. They often make over-commitment a habit and they end up working extra hours every day. At the end of the day it doesn’t add any value to their life.
This book has a diagnostic tool which can help you measure how time poor you are and it makes you aware of the traps that are causing your time poverty.
After you have identified your time poverty this book suggests Five ways to alleviate your time poverty and improve your time affluence -
Step 1 - Know your default setting - After doing the exercises suggested by the author you would know where you stand when it comes to giving importance to money and time. if you value money more than time and you are not struggling to meet ends then start moving towards respecting your time more.
Step 2 - Document your time - Be mindful about the activities that you do whether it is productive or unproductive, Pleasurable or purposeful, does it add meaning to your life or not. Identify the Unproductive activities that make you stressed. Once the activities are grouped, reflect on them. Now you should ask yourself if it’s possible to spend less time on the activities that make you unhappy and stressed ? If not, is it possible to make them pleasurable. Think about it.
Step 3 - Find Time - Sometimes we get stuck in activities that we do not like and can’t control. Such activities are the biggest causes of time poverty.The solution for this is that Deliberately spend more time on the tasks that bring you joy and less time on activities that bring misery. The author suggests following activities to find more time or steal more time from your daily routine -
Transform Bad Time - Identify the time that you don’t like and look for ways to improve it.
Augment good time - Knit multiple positive activities together.
Hack Work time - if possible, work from home more often, Take all your paid leaves and vacations and utilize them.
Practice Active Leisure time - the author says that free time spent on active-leisure activities like volunteering, socializing, and exercising promotes happiness far more than free time spent on passive leisure activities like watching TV, napping or online surfing.
Meet New people and help Others
Step 4 - Fund Time
Instead of doing everything yourself you can outsource the activities which can save you time . For example you can order home delivery of groceries, take Uber for office and use that time to read or listen to your favorite music. If you find these expenses are high then you can try to outsource the tasks which you dislike the most and that outsourcing will not cause any big hole in your pocket. If you think you will always find ways to save time.
Step 5 - Re-frame Time
If we change how we feel about our time that can also make us time affluent. The author has given some examples here - if we treat an upcoming weekend as a holiday it can change the mindset of a person how he spends the weekend. One more example is that in physically demanding jobs if one considers them as “Exercise” then he can start liking the job more and feel more physically fit.
Accounting for time and writing down how long you are spending on tasks shows your respect for time.
In this book, the author says that the people who value time are happier, healthier and more productive than those who value money over time. The author suggests to account your time. Spend your time more proactively rather than just let it pass. Daily Reflection on how the day was spent by you can give you ample ideas about what you can tweak in daily routine to make yourself time affluent.
Overall this book is a good book. The book comes with strategies and tool kits to help you build good habits and break away from bad habits to manage the time better. I had been following some of the techniques suggested in this book unknowingly which my family always made fun of and called me lazy. Now I can tell them that I am not lazy. Awesome !
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