Creative Guidance-IASbaba, Inspirational & Educative Articles
What is time? Is it a resource or a limitation, is it real or an illusion, can you really manage time or all ideas of managing it are a myth? Are there real examples of people who have been excellent time managers? Are there people who are not troubled by managing their time?
Let us explore this a little further. The significance of understanding time is immense, both for personal as well as professional reasons. Very few people can truly understand the impact of time; don’t be surprised if you are one of them.
Firstly time and stress are intricately connected; in fact almost all forms of stress have their roots in time. Let us take a few examples. Why is an examination a stressful experience – because there is a time limit to it. Why is any contest a stressful experience, because there is a limited time in which you have to win it. Can you think of any competition where there is no imposed time limit? Imagine how it would be if there was a cricket match played forever, the winner is decided at the end of time :). All emergency reactions are about time, and even the simple daily routine of activities performed is about time. Time is the deciding factor in everything.
Just reflect on this for a moment, if there was no such thing as time, would there be something called as stress. Where is stress if you had all the time in the world to prepare, write and clear your examinations? If you can accomplish all your tasks at a snail’s pace and do them forever you will never be stressed. Time is the deciding factor of all results, understanding it is everything.
So is there a way to understand, manage, utilize and optimize time? Fortunately, YES! This is how you do it.
Firstly, you have to change the way you look at time. You have to look at time as a single moment available to you and not as a day, or a week or a month. This is the single most important shift that has to happen in order to understand and maximize time.
You are given only one moment at a time, what you do with it is all that matters. The moment you start thinking in terms of days, weeks and months, you have postponed your action. Your mind is a smart, sophisticated and an expert procrastinator. If you give it an hour to accomplish a task, it will postpone it to the next hour. If you give it one week to accomplish a task it will move it to the next week.
The only way to control your mind and time is to be in control of this very moment. When you tell your mind to accomplish something this very moment, it cannot postpone it, because postponing requires thinking, which requires time and a single moment cannot allow this. Remember, action is always about this moment, and thinking is always about what has already happened or what is going to happen.
The easiest way to manage time is to be aware of what you are doing at this very moment. So at this very moment, you can either prepare for your exams or watch television; you can either talk about preparing or actually prepare; you can either sleep or read. If you are aware of all your actions, you can make the necessary shift each moment to align it with your preparations.
The practical implication of this is magical. For example, if you are aware and conscious of yourself while eating your breakfast, you will finish it in 15 minutes and focus on the next activity. Otherwise unconsciously you will take 45 minutes to eat two chapatis. Now! there you have your 30 minutes of extra time. This is just an example; you can be aware of each and every activity and cut down on the non essentials.
And of course, stop giving yourself, convenient, stupid and idiotic justifications like; My food will not get digested, if I don’t eat it slowly for half an hour; I cannot concentrate if I don’t sleep for 11 hours a day; My mind will be fresh only after drinking a cup of tea; Too much of studies dulls my mind; I should not study continuously for more than 1 hour. My eyes will get affected if I see the laptop screen for long. I am different, I can only remember things if I study at midnight between 12 and 4!
Practical necessities and difficulties are always there, but that is for ordinary people. You should not even be reading this article if you consider yourself ordinary. You have to look at yourself as a warrior, an insensitive, hard nut, who is willing to go to any lengths to crack or be cracked by this bloody exam!
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