What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!
Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence
If you had 86 400 dollars, how would you spend it? Not too much for someone. But if it’s a daily budget for whatever you want? Oooh, that probably makes sense. What if I say, you already have it. Every single day consists of 86 400 seconds, which are valuable and priceless time. Without doubts, sleeping, daily routine, whatever take some. And which kind of epic things are we able to create during a couple of seconds? Anyway we are rich, aren’t we? Such obviously, as a sunny sky to encourage: “Hey bro, use time wisely!” So subjectively. Wisely could mean even walking down the street and observe hidden dreaming of the environment; letting us wander and be lost, pull ourselves together and insatiably live like The Phoenix.
Let’s move on and discover some new simple developmental techniques, which could be effective for some of us. Again, you need a small piece of paper, a pen or color markers, to be honest with yourself, let you stop, realize and reflect. Answer one question «What was I doing yesterday?» You can draw a vertical or horizontal timeline with hours from the morning till night and text all the things that were done step by step yesterday. Look at your portrait of the day. Let you analyze.
- Which of the tasks took the biggest period of the time and vice versa? Why?
- Could you consider yesterday as a productive one?
- What in particular do you feel makes it effective (your special mood or state of mind, some inspiring things, etc.)?
- What would you like to change?
- Which kinds of time-absorbers did you face?
- How is it possible to prevent the influence of these time-eaters?
Thank you for analyzing thoroughly and being ready to use your time wisely. You know, W. W. Atkinson suggested that to grow disciplined and acquire your vital habits it’s enough 15-25 days. Furthermore, in a TEDx Talks speech «The first 20 hours – how to learn anything» Josh Kaufman points out that the crucial condition to acquire even in 20 hours the skills what we need is our strong motivation and transference the similar mechanisms of working many things to understand basics and to start practicing confidently. At the same token, such tools as habit trackers, prioritizing tasks (GTD, The ABC Method by B.Tracy, Eisenhower priorities’ matrix, The Pareto principle) will help us to get an illustrative representation how we organize the time.
After all, imagine one new day is an empty jar, and fruits are things that we’d like to do, filling in the day, putting it inside a jar. The big lemons and oranges are our obligatory and urgent essential tasks, which have to be completed as soon, as possible. Plums, cherries, and raspberries are slightly less important things according to their sizes. If we spend the day, doing only obligatory tasks, we put only the large fruits to the jar, limiting the space for things related to seizing the small details and relaxing. And vice versa, procrastinating and forgetting the vital «lemons and oranges», we fill in the day only with raspberries. Of course, it is delicious but it would be great to put the fruits step by step, keeping the balance between smth hard and relaxing, necessaries to take your time to be closer to our life-mission and enjoying time. In like manner, we can chop it into tiny pieces and smooth it to be done on time. Just remember how to deal with the bitter time-absorbers. Only you know it. In the movie «In time», an episode «Hang the Dj» of the series «Black mirror» the characters could see their time-screens and control it but there are no such possibilities in real life.
Well, carpe diem, seize the day. Wisely. Since now.