I once felt that the most valuable thing I owned was time. The reason is simple, fascinating, and often repeated. When this idea is brought up in popular culture, it seems to mean just that: “Time is the most constant resource used to move toward a goal.” That’s natural, isn’t it? Because you can’t control your spending rate. The spending rate disappears every 60 seconds per minute and every 24 hours per day.
One morning I woke up and realized I didn’t have enough sleep to reach my goal. (Yeah, the self-evident Eureka is that kind of paradox.) This made me wonder if there were other natural limits to available time that I didn’t immediately understand.
To this day, I am a personal productivity nerd, avid reading books on time perception, and tracking every activity at work, but I believe that time itself is not my most valuable resource. Now…
It’s clear to most people that only their waking hours can be used productively toward their goals. Sleep is essential for recharging energy, but it cannot be used to move towards a predetermined goal. Although I don’t agree with that opinion, some time management fanatics will tell you to sleep less to be more productive. Regardless of how much waking time I have, I have to admit that waking time is my most limited resource.
Hmm…. Another idea is that you sometimes feel tired while awake, which does little to help you achieve your goals. So, isn’t your most valuable resource the time you have energy? Human beings vary greatly in their ability to use energy during their waking hours, but we generally find that when we poop, we I’m not very good at pursuing goals.
However, I also don’t have complete access to “time for energy.” Life is full of small, boring tasks like getting ready, commuting, eating, and bathroom breaks that take up even more of your energetic time that you have no control over. So perhaps the answer is a subset of “discretionary energy time,” that is, the time when I have energy and can truly decide what to do with it.
But wait…even if you have “discretionary time” (and energy), having so many things to do can make it difficult to focus on your goals.
It is well known that every individual’s mental “executive function” time is limited. It literally runs out. When it becomes depleted depends on factors such as the biology of the individual, the frequency and strength of recent demands on this period, and the stress that depletes this period without valuable results. 1
During this time, we have demands that require “focus” but are beyond our control. For example, driving a car or making small daily decisions.
In other words, the most valuable resource I have may be the time I have to effectively focus on whatever I choose.
so it will be mine Dany EEffectively FOccurred Tme or dexterity. Sorry, I work in technology and a Clever Ruse ○f Nimpose Your MMemories are always in the back of my mind 😉
It’s worse!
Time is the most valuable resource, but the reality is that the actual valuable portion is much smaller than the total time.
Am I bearing bad news or what?
There is a famous proverb that says that knowing the truth will make you free, but not all the truths that make you free are happy ones.
Knowing this particular truth will free you from riding the wheel of optimizing the wrong type of time. How do I know? I simply ran too many miles on the wrong time management hamster wheel 🙂
Let’s look at this idea more critically.
clever optimization
A common mistake when trying to manage time is to maximize discretionary time, which in theory would give you more time to accomplish your goals. This idea is based on the premise that all discretionary time can be put to good use to achieve goals.
As a result, all non-goal-oriented activities may be drastically reduced or uninteresting activities may be eliminated. In the short term, this may result in a modest increase in discretionary time, leading to an increase in DEFT. However, carelessness in this approach can also undermine the balance in your life to effectively focus your discretionary time. Thinking from a DEFT perspective sheds light on the myth that if you only have 10 hours left in a day, you can use every minute of it to reach your goals.
Working in IT, I counter-test the code I build to see if it not only produces the desired actions in the expected conditions, but also executes when those opposite conditions exist. need to do it.
If you were to counter-test the idea of discretionary and effective focus time, what would you find? It explains my other experiences with spending time on things other than “moving efficiently toward a set of goals.” Does it explain? Does it help explain your interactions with others? Does it correlate with other wisdom about productivity, time, and resource management?
Let’s test it.
A good balance between work and life
For me, DEFT helps me gain balance. That’s because stretching your health too far in order to “get more time” often has the opposite effect of reducing your ability to concentrate during larger blocks of actual time. I have more minutes, but they are each less effective. It also helps you balance where you spend your focused time effectively. If I spend all my time doing task-oriented work and my relationships become unstable because of it, I’ll be headed back to an unsustainable place.
Balance tactical and strategic actions
If you spend too much DEFT on execution and only raw time is left for planning, you can get a lot done, but because you are not spending DEFT on strategy, you are less likely to accomplish the right things. Masu. . Many time management books talk about the need to take the few minutes of planning time you can squeeze out (his DEFT creation in the first place) and do some strategic planning. The end result is fewer fires and potentially better protection.
Skillfully realizes all cognitive abilities
Not all parts of the mind function optimally under extreme concentration. Most notably, creative connections are known to occur late in the day when focus is blurred. Some things require many, many days of thought to bring them to the richest version of themselves. I often experience this with difficult technical problems that develop the ability to innovate. My mind recalls them at random times, like a child playing with blocks on and off throughout the day. Essentially, this natural behavior of our minds asserts that intentionality is not the only mode of being that produces valuable awareness and insight. Therefore, time cycles lacking significant intentionality (goal-driven) are productive and valuable for periods of strong intentionality.
skillful charging
Humans are cyclical beings. A recharge cycle is required between exercise cycles. And it’s not just necessary, cycling is a known way to increase performance, as evidenced by the most effective high-intensity interval training (HIIT) approach to fitness training.
DEFT-ly Building Reserve
Operating at peak capacity like DEFT requires a reservoir of capacity to tap into. Creating a reservoir takes time. Staying healthy, getting enough sleep, and proper nutrition are all part of the puzzle, and everyone’s needs for these are unique and vary throughout the seasons of life.
Skillfully adhering to the 80/20 principle
DEFT also fully acknowledges the Pareto principle, which states that careful attention to DEFT creation and allocation is likely to yield far greater results than efforts to optimize the rest. Scaling DEFT may require optimizing the rest, but the focus of that effort is on his DEFT, not a blind belief that managing the whole will automatically increase efficiency. .
skillfully understand others
The DEFT model helps people who are in declining health or who cannot tolerate the time pressures and changing circumstances of aging to take control of how they spend their focused time effectively and feel good. It also helps you do this. Focusing on DEFT fosters teamwork between individuals and teams with different natural DEFT levels. In my profession, operations teams generally find his DEFT low. And teams that have more of his DEFTs can help by leveraging some of them. Agile development recognizes and tolerates the fact that different people work at different speeds. Part of this difference may be due to differences in the natural levels of DEFT.
DEFT is variable and changeable
Unlike a 24-hour day, DEFT is a subset of raw time, allowing for some extended flexibility. This is good news. This is because it offsets the false pressure created by the fact that the 24 hours in a day cannot be extended. The crux of the problem lies in focusing on his unchanging 24 hours as the main target of time management. It is an oversimplification that the total possible DEFT is simply a function that frees up other time. In reality, there is a maximum DEFT that is much smaller than the total available time, and optimizing it is very different from simply cutting out all the “non-essentials”.
24 hour agility or bustiness!
At this point you may be wondering. How can I give him 100% discretion to effectively focus my time?The answer is both “I can’t” and “I don’t want to.” The above correlations between DEFT and other realities should serve as a valid warning that you are designed to require and enjoy multiple modes of being with respect to time. Some are intentional, others are not.
However, you can also flip this 100% formula and say something like, “I want 100% of my work time to be DEFT.”that vision may guide you Reduce work to suit one’s abilities Perhaps you can think of something like a 4-hour work week? 😉
Is DEFT a new idea?
We’ve created terminology and abbreviations to help you remember this important idea, but there’s a lot of wisdom about time and resource management woven into the underlying concepts of DEFT. Unfortunately, this is often an easy to miss undertone. If you read between the lines, you’ll start to see it everywhere.
PS Time nerds can want more than 24 hours a day (or even less).
Through this post, I acknowledged that time passes at the same speed for everyone.Yet we all have a sense of time flight or time drag. What if you could manipulate your own sense of the passage of time? So you could slow down for the good stuff and speed up for the uninteresting stuff.
Book”The power of time awareness: control the speed of time and make every second count” surprisingly begins with some serious neuroscience of the physical brain, which serves as the baseline for our perception of time. Next, we’ll talk about how you can take action to speed up or slow down these perceptions.
Interestingly, your sensing reality has a big impact on you actual A sense of well-being and physical well-being – so managing your time perception can help you feel like you’re squeezing more life out of each moment.
The power of time awareness: control the speed of time and make every second count
