Fresh Start Monday #004: Time passes, and we're seemingly unaware
Why do 5-minute tasks take us an hour?
Time passes, and we're seemingly unaware.
How can we be more focused with our time?
I first noticed my poor perception of time when going to the gym. Between lifting, chatting, and being on my phone, I can spend up to two hours without noticing.
For years, I never tracked my rest time between sets. I would look over at the wall clock and guesstimate 90-seconds. I thought I did a good job.
One day, I needed to sneak in a 45min workout before an event. I set my Garmin for 90-second rest times. I swear my Garmin was fast. I had to set my phone timer at the same time to double-check.
I finished the workout in 45min and didn't need to skip anything.
On most evenings, going to the gym is my only plan. I'm giving myself the evening to complete that task.
Parkinson’s law states: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
We have several tasks that don't have natural deadlines throughout our week.
This post is a great example. I could spend a month writing this. No deadline. Nobody’s telling me to write it. My perfectionism will say to do more research, find synonyms, and edit more.
I created an artificial deadline by telling myself I'm posting every Monday morning.
We put tasks off or take hours to complete them because why not? I finished the workout. I published the post. But did they need to take as long as they did?
Other examples:
A three-sentence email takes 15 minutes.
Pulling a report becomes a half-day endeavor
Renewing your passport takes six months
Repotting a plant takes three months
A grocery trip takes an hour
Tasks drag out. For tasks we don't want to do, it's harder to start next time because of how long it took last time.
The goal is not to rush through but cut off the excess.
How can we better utilize our time?
Back to the gym example, rest intervals provided an easy way to keep track of time and progress. We can break down any task into smaller chunks and assign time to it.
For next week's post, instead of giving myself a full day for each task, I can say:
1 hour Tuesday for research
1 hour Wednesday for a shitty first draft
1 hour Thursday for rewriting
1 hour Friday for editing and polishing
I can decide an email takes two minutes to send. I can decide a report takes 30 minutes.
Assigning time to tasks does three things:
It helps to know how long something takes before we start.
Tasks become smaller, and easier to do in bite-sized chunks.
Work can be imperfect. I have time to do the 80% that matters.
This is a mindset shift. We're accustomed to being given deadlines in school for papers. Or at work, a project has a due date. When we have tasks on our to-do list, we wonder how long they will take. Or we assume a lengthy period of time.
Instead, we own our time. We decide how long tasks, projects, people, and commitments take. We establish deadlines.
How can we be more aware of time passing during tasks?
We can set a timer for different activities.
For example, I park at the grocery store and set the timer for 30min because that feels like a realistic amount of time. Or maybe it's starting a timer for a proposal you need to write. What activity are you interested in timing?
Timing an activity is similar to calorie counting. We're bringing awareness to what we do. I can't sustain calorie counting and timing everything, but I can do check-ins. I calorie counted for two days. The awareness of how many calories are in one avocado reverberates years later.
We can start to "feel" time passing and snap out of our daydream-like trance.
We all have activities where we are time indulgent, but don't we all want to have more time in our day?
Last week
Batching all my meeting notes into one calendar event worked wonders. I liked hammering it out all at once. I'm sticking with it, although I spent close to an hour on it between distractions and losing steam.
Fresh Start Experiment
I'm sticking with my EOW calendar event this week with an adjustment.
A 30min meeting feels arbitrary. Instead, I'm setting a 5-min timer for each client meeting I have. That feels reasonable. To find a total length, I'm multiplying 5-min by my five client calls this week for a total of 25min.
We avoid taking action when presented with a time-consuming task. Breaking up the meeting into bite-sized increments creates a sort of progress bar. The task ahead of me is 5min long. I can do that.
Progress begets progress.
What activity are you timing?
How can you use Parkinson’s Law to set artificial limits on tasks that might drag on for hours or months?