Time goes by so slowly...

As we were driving home my wife said that time seems to be flying by, which is good because we are waiting for my daughter to come home for a visit. As our sense, that time was going faster meant that she would be here sooner. But it also meant that when she was here the time would go faster as well.

I know that as I get older time seems to be slip sliding away. Why does time seem to slow down when you’re young and speed up as you get older? There is a theory that claims this phenomenon is because when you’re younger, each year comprises a larger percentage of your total lifespan and thus feels more sizeable; one year is 1/14 of your life when you’re fourteen, but only 1/40 when you’re 40. That’s a fun theory, but there’s an actual neural cause for how our perception of time changes over time.

Time, according to our scientists, is a fixed dimension. Time can be broken into minutes, seconds, and nanoseconds, and can be objectively measured. However many of us have internal clocks which often do an excellent job of tracking time; if I asked you to guess the time right now, you’d probably be pretty close.

Depending on where we are and what we are doing, time may seem to contract or expand, speed up or slow down. In contrast to our other senses like touch and taste, which are located in specific parts of our brains, our sense of time is woven throughout our neural matter. We understand time as a concept and since it is an overriding concept, our perception of time is tied up with our emotions and memories. 

Time is an abstract construction of our brain. We love stories and we love stories that are linear, that is they have a beginning, middle and an end. So as events unfold around us or to us, we sift through and our brain tries to put the best most interesting and useful story of what is happening. One of the ways our brain does this is by editing and lengthening or shortening events to fit the story we are creating.

Thoughts on Time Management

Why do you need to learn time management when you are retired. The myth is that you will have all the time in the world, to do what you want, when you want. Talk to friends and others who have been retired for a while, and you will find that we do not have any time and for most of us we are juggling so many activities it is hard to keep them straight. That is why learning time management is important and not as difficult as many believe.

One of the first steps in managing time is to understand your individuality and what you can handle. What are you currently doing with your time, and what is important to you, need to be examined before starting to manage our time. We can break time management down according to your individual needs, but for the most part managing time is the process of handling tasks so that we can complete the tasks we have undertaken. 

One trait that comes in handy when we start to manage our time, is flexibility. We may need the ability to alter our plans, since people, places, things, and businesses change. We need a direct order of skills to make a plan work and need the ability to comply with those plans. We need to learn to accept changes as they come and learn social skills and conditioning in order to manage our time. 

When we are balanced and learning our time is spent wisely, which contributes to time management. Another great tool to have when starting to manage your time is motivation. Motivation is achieved in many ways, and some things in life can affect how we feel or think. Some of the things that affect our motivation levels are smoking, caffeine, lack of exercise, overeating, lack of dieting, and having the ability to cope with changes. To cultivate motivation then we need to treat our minds and body well. 

Learning time management is essential for all the things we do in life. From the first day, you came into the world up until the time you went to school you were learning time managing skills. If we do not understand who we are as an individual, we are not learning what it takes to manage time wisely.

Transactional Analysis Time Management

Transactional analysis time management is the process of combining two strategies into one plan, making it come together to reach a specific target. For example, when we are working, playing, or doing anything that connects to a goal, we need social skills and effectual communication to make it work. If we are lacking in social skills and communication our time management scheme will surely fail.

If you are ready to get started, today we are going to learn some information that can help us flow with ease through life and through everything, our life touches.

I was watching a Youtube segment about how to learn the Newfoundland language, which is English. However, the dialect of Newfoundlanders is unique to that Province and I think the world. Understanding each other is important, and even if we all speak the same language but have different dialects, we may not understand each other. If we do not understand that each of us is different in our own way, we are often on the road to failure.

Dialect consists of grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, language, and so on. The world focuses on proper English, as a rule, to follow that leads us to productivity. The fact is most North American’s do not know proper English because they fail to understand the dialect. The American English first came into focus in the earlier centuries and came directly from England. The English Language spoken in the United States and Canada is mixed up and visibly distinguished from British England, yet not as different as to be a divided language.

This means everyone has their own method of communicating; leading us to believe that proper English is a diverse form of communication and it takes an open mind to communicate effectively as well as having social skills that develop good relationships. We are all different in our own ways, and so are our languages. No one really has the correct way of communicating effectively, yet all of us must conform to some rule. This is where we combine elements of one technique with another to make a complicated skill work.

Now to combine transactional analysis to get time management in order, we must open our minds and think creatively to reach a goal. The transitional action is the process of communicative (open-mind) action connecting more than one person or things that equally have an effect on our influence on how we connect. The analysis then is the employ of purpose word in its place of inflectional forms as a characteristic method of a verbal communication.

Inflectional is changes in your tone or volume in the voice, and the changes of form that words undertake to mark differences that meet gender, race, mood, tension, voice, number of people and so on in the process of communication and socializing. Breaking it down, when you keep an open mind you are combining transactional analysis, contributing to time management since social skills and communication are CRITICAL to reaching goals and managing time.

We can also consider other facets of analysis that can help us produce effectual communication and social skills. After carefully analyzing words for years, I come to the conclusion that understanding is part of the speaker’s problem. If you do not understand someone, it might not be you with the problem. The speaker, if he or she is not using their words properly, can interrupt communication negatively. Therefore, you must learn to listen to speakers, reading between the lines as you hear what they are saying. 

Finally, if we want a well-planned time management scheme, we have to work hard every day to make our dreams come true! 

Stress and Time Management

Stress that is related to work are often brought about by lack of proper time management skills. With too much activity, one never have enough time to attend to work responsibilities within the alloted time, thus resulting to a stressful working environment. This applies on either small or complex projects, therefore careful planning of your schedule is crucial.

Therefore, for individuals who had to constantly hold projects and manage their schedules are ones often subjected to a lot of stress. Plus, there are several factors involved in the planning method that are uncontrolled or cannot be prevented. All these add up to the level of stress that one had to go through. Therefore, stress management and time management are typically addressed side by side one another due to their interrelation with one another.
Avoiding Time Wasters

When you talk about stress concerning proper time management of your activities, it is usually about your aim to increase productivity, whether at the office or school. Although stress is often a good stimulus to have in order to drive you towards achieving more, you need to also look at managing your time properly for higher productivity.

Below are some factors you need to avoid if you want to make the most out of your time and reduce stress at the same time:

• As with anything, there will always be a source of interruption. Learn how to deal with those interruptions effectively to save you time and you can get back to doing what you had to.
• Make sure to carefully plan out what you need to do and how you do it. This will make it more convenient for you later on when you have to execute your plans.
• If you are working with other people on a project, having proper delegation skills is crucial. This involves your ability to share the workload to people. But more than just sharing workload, it also involves your ability to determine which people are best suited to perform specific tasks for higher efficiency.

Symptoms of Poor Time Management and Stressful Life
Effective time management can definitely do so much to change a stressful life and also boost your level of productivity. To get started on an efficient time management technique, one must find a strategy that he or she can use then adapt for a few days until he or she has become accustomed to it. Eventually, you will find it second nature once you got used to your new schedule.
But the more important step towards making that change is recognizing whether you have poor time management skills that can lead to a stressful life. Here are tell-tale signs that you need to revise your time management methods:

• When you easily become irritable in the middle of doing your task.
• When you constantly end up feeling over-fatigued.
• When you have trouble concentrating on what you need to do.
• Inability to track your activities and keep in tab.
• Inability to sleep well at night due to anxiety or unexplained worries.

Improving Time Management and Productivity
Proper management of your time often directly translates to increased productivity. Therefore, this should be one of your priorities if you want to reduce the level of stress you have to deal with on an everyday basis. Try out the strategies below and see if it fits you.

• Plan your daily activities. When you list down the set of activities you had to do for a given day, rank them according to the most important ones to avoid rushing your work.
• Never agree to doing other works when you have already scheduled other important activities prior to that.
• Practice the ability to delegate tasks properly so you would not have to do the major chunk of work.
• In between your tasks, take time to evaluate whether you are spending your time efficiently. If not, then switch to another more effective plan...and quickly!
• If possible, avoid any form of distraction.
• Give yourself a break. This will reduce stress and increase your productivity.  

More time management ideas

11. Don’t waste time waiting. If you find yourself waiting for things to get done, bring work along with you, or even a good book that you have been wanting to read. Getting an oil change? Bring something to work on.
12. Get a planner. There are many types of planners out there today, some of the better ones out line each day of the week in 15 minute intervals, as well as included a full page monthly calendar. Once you find one you like, use it.
13. Differentiate between urgent and vital. Urgent are things that are due soon, but may not be life or death. Vital are things that may or may not be urgent, but that you absolutely must do.
14. Schedule your priorities do not prioritize your schedule. Take charge of what you have before you. You have the power to decided what you do and when.
15. Time journal for two weeks, giving account for every 15 or 30 minutes of time. This will help you see where your time is going and what takes up most of your time.
16. Learn to say no. This is your greatest ally. Practice saying no in polite but firm ways. You are no one’s door mat. Decide what you are going to do, then do not get distracted by other tasks that people may want you to do for them.
17. Learn what drives procrastination. Examine that times that you find yourself procrastinating. Is it because of the task, the time of day, or your overall mood?
18. Figure out what your time is worth. If you make 30,000 a year, each hour is worth roughly $3.50 (including waking and sleeping hours). Now, decide what tasks are worth your pay and don’t sweat the small stuff.
19. Set clear goals. Having a clear direction will help keep you on task. For everyone item on your to do list, think through each step that needs to get done to complete that task.
20. Put things into perspective. Take a moment each day to take a larger picture look. This can be considering yourself in relation to your life goals, or to humanity in general.