We’ve got more time-saving tips, tricks, and hacks available than ever before. A minute here, an hour there; we’re saving more time now than at any point in history!
With all this extra time we’re saving, it seems like we’d be rolling in it, with enough extra hours in the day to check off all those wish list items we’ve been dying to do.
But, alas, we’re still spinning our wheels.
There really is no extra time in our day. Parkinson’s law tells us that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” We try tip after trick after hack. No matter how much time we save, we’re still way too busy to get anything done.
Is there anything we can do about this problem? How do we make more time in our busy schedule? Is it possible for us to slow down the clock?
While we can’t add more minutes to our day, we could learn to use our available time more wisely.
In his best selling book The War of Art (a must read for anyone trying to get anything done in their life), author Steven Pressfield offers a solution to this age old problem. In his Priority Principle he explains that we first need to “know the difference between what is urgent and what is important” and then must “do what’s important first.”
All too often we hide behind the mask of “being busy” to shield us from facing our fears. We know what we should be working on, but we spend our time “rearranging the deck chairs” instead of (to paraphrase author Seth Godin) doing the hard work of providing value.
Once we take the leap and stop hiding behind our busy work (which, face it, will always be there), maybe we could really do something important.
Maybe.
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