Time Saving... A Landmark of Success

[Shamim Ansary]

Reasons to Ditch Your TV

1. TV consumes an enormous amount of time

Let’s do the math. According to a 2009 Nielson study, the average amount of time an American spends watching TV is around five hours per day! Five hours!

Excluding time spent sleeping, this means the average person is spending a third of their day distracted or downright comatose. By extension, this works out to more than 3.5 months (15 weeks) of nonstop TV watching each year.

If that doesn’t strike you as extreme, think of it this way: if your employer offered you 15 weeks of vacation each year in exchange for giving up TV, wouldn’t you jump at the opportunity?

Admittedly, you may be spending less time per day in front of the set. I currently live in Switzerland where the average daily viewing time is closer to three hours. Yet, even at these smaller figures, television still accounts for mammoth amounts of time wasted each year.

2. TV is full of reruns

Syndicated shows are played ad nauseum. At one point I was able to recount my favourite episode of the Simpsons verbatim. By watching these repeats you don’t even get to hear a unique joke or learn something new. TV reruns are quintessential time wasters, not only are you vegging out, you’re also not taking in anything novel.

3. TV news is a poor way to be informed

TV news justly receives much criticism. It has followed the path of professional wrestling: once genuine, yet now mostly for entertainment. Getting news from a rolling ticker or a talking head is like going to a restaurant and waiting patiently to be served whenever the staff gets around to it. News should be ready on demand. With the internet it is. With TV, you wait. If they have a story about a kitten caught in a tree, you endure it, lest you miss a minute of something that is actually relevant to you.

In truth, any news worthy of knowing will find its way to you through others. Let someone else waste their own time filtering out the kitten stories.

4. TV hinders the development of relationships

Time spent watching TV is time you’re not enjoying quality experiences with friends and family. Instead of tube time, try something new and out of the ordinary with the people in your life. Play billiards. Fly a kite. Or just talk to each other.

5. TV is expensive

Basic channels, premium channels, video on demand, DVRs, and TVs themselves are all costs you can live without. Many of these are also the worst kind of expenses; ongoing ones, not to mention the periodic high-priced equipment upgrades. In my homeland of Canada, the typical cost of cable service alone adds up to enough for a week-long, all-inclusive Caribbean vacation every year.

6. TV has too many commercials

The average 30 minute slot of television programming has 8-9 minutes of commercials. Based on our earlier calculations, this can work out to more than a month each year spent watching advertisements. Books have no advertisements. Even ads on the internet can quickly be ignored if they’re of no relevance. TV ads, in contrast, are time wasters that are forced upon you.

7. TV isn’t that hard to get rid of

You might think, “I couldn’t possibly quit watching [insert favourite show]”. Firstly, you don’t need to. There are alternatives, including downloading the show or watching it on DVD, both of which offer stop/play control with no commercial interruptions. Secondly, it’s really not that hard to give up a show. They’re not like nicotine. There’s no chemical dependence. Sure you might get disappointed the first time you’re left out of a watercooler conversation about last night’s episode, but you can offset this disappointment by telling people about how you learnt to hang glide instead. I’ve liked a lot of TV shows but I’ve never seen one that wasn’t completely disposable at any given minute.

8. TVs are the last non-portable relic

For the most part we’ve managed to make our technology mobile. Internet and phone services are available almost everywhere. TVs, in contrast, are like the coil-corded phones of yesteryear, keeping people cooped up indoors, glued to the couch. A stationary TV sets encourages a sedentary lifestyle that seldom serves us well.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I value entertainment and relaxation as much as the next person. There are shows I download and watch regularly, summing up to perhaps four hours per week. The truth is once you target a few specific shows and cut out commercials, there’s really not that much to watch.

So save time, learn something new, try something different, build your relationships, and for your own sake, turn off the TV.

[Shamim Ansary]

Stop Wasting Time by Matching Your Past High Level of Efforts

If you want to see if and how you waste time, compare your current productivity to that which you have had at a winning time in your days. There is much benefit to gain from looking at a time when you felt like you were doing all the right things for a short time. You can see and reflect upon why that period of time came out feeling so good, and get new sense of how the time period you are now in is going.
You Can Stay At Your High Production State

The first thing to accept here is that you can maintain the high level of production that you have put out at some point. There is no reason you are weaker or less able now. You might have some distractions or pressures that you didn’t have when you were at your peak, but those can be pushed aside by your bigger vision. Let’s say you are a student who had a period where you were really focused on your schoolwork, and had a time where you were doing all the assigned reading given to you for a couple of months, and then slowed down since then. After a sizable amount of time passes from this period of success, you might start to feel like you can’t reach that state again. This isn’t the case, as you can reach that state, and even add to it, with new abilities you have strengthened since then.
Look At Your High Production State As The Goal

You want to view it like the high production state is where you need to be staying at, and any period where you are not at that state is a period where you are wasting some of your time and potential. This is an uplifting way to look at your effort usage. If you were once trying to sell a product to about 3 different customers every day for a few weeks, you have to now look at any time where you are not marketing at that rate as a time when you aren’t doing what you know you can do. This will keep you on an upward slope. No one wants to be told that they are wasting their time. It makes them feel like their actions are starting to look irrelevant to the masses. Using this knowledge, remind yourself when you do see yourself wasting time, according to the description I pointed out above. You won’t like the feeling, and will quickly build up some self-discipline to avoid that label, and self-discipline is the big deal.
Piano Practice Example

Let’s say you used to play a new piano song every week, and now haven’t played piano for a few years. You might think your past learning ability is out of reach, or that you have missed your opportunity. These thoughts don’t help much. Taking the experience gained from the past piano-playing, along with the confidence received from knowing this habit has already been tackled before, you can return to the routine again. There’s nothing stopping you from getting back your momentum by learning Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” within the next seven days, followed by Brahms “Brahms’ Lullaby” the next week, and Mozart’s theme from “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” the week after. You already have the skills to do so from your experience, and have more goal-setting resources at your disposal today, so you can be back in action in no time. Everyone always says “time flies”, and that means that the period of struggle to get the habit back in place will also fly by.
Work At The Level You’ve Already Shown You Can

Once your mind reaches a certain understanding, your mind will never go back to not having that understanding. In the same way, you can always return to a production ability, or winning streak, that you once had. Toss aside any blame on others, or views of yourself as no longer having the capacity, and you can again be rolling the ball up the mountain, soon enough.

[Shamim Ansary]

Save Time by Improving Your Typing Speed

We are using computers more and more these days. We use it to type documents, play games, browse the Internet, chat with our friends, and more. While there are alternative ways to interact with the computer (such as using speech), the main way of interaction is still typing. So, since we need to type a lot, improving your typing speed is a sure way to save time and increase your productivity. Yes, you need to invest time to improve your typing speed, but it will save you a lot more time in the long term.

Improving your typing speedThe first thing to do to improve your typing speed is measuring your current speed. This way you will know how much progress you make when you learn to type faster. To measure your typing speed, go to this web site, press Start the clock, type the given text, and press Stop the clock. The site will then give you your typing speed in word per minute (wpm).

Next, you can take typing courses that teach you the right typing techniques. I browsed several courses on the Internet and the best I found is Peter’s Online Typing Course. It’s detailed, step by step, and free. It’s also accompanied with exercises to help you practice what you learn.

I’m sure there are other good resources out there I haven’t mentioned. Do you know any of them? Feel free to share them in the comments.

[Shamim Ansary]

How to Save Time in the Long Term

When talking about productivity, we often talk about how to do things efficiently to save time. While doing things efficiently could save you time in the short term, you may still lose time in the long term. The reason is that you lose more time not by how you do things but by what you don’t do. Not doing things efficiently could cost you hours or days, but not doing things at all could cost you months or years.

Why does it happen? Why don’t people do what is right to do? There are three reasons for that:

    They don’t know what is right to do.
    They know what is right to do  but underestimate its importance.
    They know it’s important but procrastinate doing it.

How to Save Time In The Long TermIn this post I will focus on the first and second reasons. For the third reason you can read defeating procrastination habit or my review of The Now Habit.

The first and second reasons have cost me time again and again. One example in blogging is regarding Amazon Associates program. Since the early days of my blogging I often write about the books I read. Some of the posts (like 37 Lessons to Help You Live a Life that Matters and 106 Tips to Become a Master Connector) became popular and attracted a lot of visitors. But I didn’t know that I could earn commissions by referring people to Amazon through those post. Only after blogging for almost one year did I realize that and join Amazon Associates.

Experiences like this teach me that to save time I need to prevent such things from happening again in the future. I must find the right things to do and do them.

Here are some tips to save time by finding the right things to do:

1. Expand your knowledge

The first thing you should do is expanding your knowledge. If you don’t even know that something exists then there is nothing you can do about it. That’s why it’s important that you get as many options as possible on your radar. You can do this by regularly reading books, magazines, and blogs in your field. You can also read materials from other fields – whether they are related or not – so that you can cross-pollinate ideas. Of course, reading is just one way to expand knowledge. There are other ways like watching videos, attending seminars, and joining professional organizations.

2. Write down all potential ideas

While expanding your knowledge, you will find potential ideas along the way. Write down all of them in your idea journal. The act of writing makes the ideas sink deeper into your mind. You should write not only the ideas that incrementally improve your way of doing things but also the ideas that could radically change the way you do things. I often get such ideas from unrelated fields and experiences.

3. Take the ideas seriously

This is where I often make mistakes. It deals with the second reason above: knowing what is right to do but underestimating its importance. To overcome it, whenever you encounter an idea ask yourself: what if the idea is right? What consequences will it have on my way of doing things? Perhaps there is no consequences right now, but what are the potential consequences five or ten years from now?

4. Find the ideas that have the biggest potential regret for you

Since you have only limited resources (whether they are time, money, or energy) and most likely many potential ideas, you should choose only a few of them that are most promising to implement. My favorite way of doing this is by assessing the potential regret I would have if I didn’t implement an idea.

Imagine yourself years from now looking back. What can you potentially regret if you don’t implement the idea? Questioning potential consequences as you do in #3 should help you find the regret level you could have if you don’t implement it.

So here is a key question to choose the few ideas to look deeper into:

Which ideas – assuming the ideas are right – could make you regret the most if you don’t implement them?

5. Investigate the ideas

Now that you have a few promising ideas, you should look deeper into them. Get as much information as possible about them. Ask or learn from people who already apply them. Use the questions what, why, when, where, who, and how to guide your investigation:

    What is the idea?
    Why should I apply the idea? Why is it good?
    When should I apply the idea?
    Where can I apply the idea?
    Who should apply the idea? To whom should the idea be applied?
    How should I apply the idea?

If possible, find multiple viewpoints for the questions so that you get complete view of the idea.

6. Test the most promising ideas

From your investigation you will get one or two most promising ideas. Now what you need to do is testing them in the real world. Apply the ideas. Incorporate them into what you do. Find out by yourself whether or not the ideas work. Some of them will fail but that’s how you improve yourself to save time in the future.

[Shamim Ansary]

Learn to Say 'NO' and Reserve Your Mental Energy

Not getting the wrong things done is just as important as getting the right things done. Of course, it’s up to you to classify something as the right or the wrong thing to do. But once you decide that something is wrong to do, you should not get it done and not even work on it in the first place. That ensures that you have the time and energy to get the right things done and done right. Reserve your mental energy and don’t waste your resources on something that will give you nothing in the end. Of course, it doesn’t mean that you should be selfish and not help others. What I mean is you shouldn’t help others in a way that will harm yourself.

How can we decide whether or not something is right to do? Here are two questions to help you decide:

    Does it help you reach your goal in one way or another?
    Do you have the capacity (time and energy) to handle it?

If your answers to both questions are no, then most likely is it’s not worth doing. The second question is especially important if the request is unrelated to your goals (which could happen pretty often).

For requests you think you shouldn’t do, you should learn to say no without feeling guilty. Some people may try to make you feel guilty if you don’t comply with their request, but don’t fall into the trap. If you know you’re right, you should be confident with yourself. Say no, give them the reason if necessary, and don’t apologize.

Here are three reasons why it’s important to learn to say no:

1. Other people should have realistic expectations about you

One reason people give their requests to you is because they have unrealistic expectations about you. They may think that you have large capacity to handle more requests while in fact you aren’t. Your saying yes will only worsen the situation. If you say yes, people around you will continue to have wrong expectations. It’s your job to let them know that your capacity is limited.

2. You can’t please everybody

Perhaps you are afraid that you will ruin your relationships if you say no. But the fact is no matter how kind you try to be some people may still resent toward you. While it’s important that other people have realistic expectation about you, it’s equally important that you have realistic expectation about yourself. There is no way you can please everybody. Trying to do so will only drain your time and mental energy.

3. Your self worth is not determined by your performance

If you think that you are worthy because you meet people’s requests, you need to change your mindset. Your performance doesn’t determine your self worth. You are worthy because of who you are and not because of what you do. So don’t fall into the trap of trying to meet everyone’s expectation. Even if they say something negative about you, understand that your self worth is not determined by it. You can still feel good about yourself no matter what other people say.

Source of all the articles: http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/category/timesaver/

[farzanamili]

good post...to save time for good works is very important for achieving goal...often we indulge our time in those works which are not important for our goal, we have to know our workloads & complete these on priority basis...without being punctual,we can't expect success!