More than seven years ago, I wrote my experience about the mirage of free time. In that story, I thought I had all the time in the world to do the things I needed to do, but I basically did nothing in the end. It was a confounding paradox that always proved true from my experience then on.
I find that the more my day is restricted, the more I was able to do the things I needed to do. And the more the day is laid out for me like a blank canvas, the less productive I become.
Your Time’s Worth
This can be explained when we look at our time as a resource. When something is scarce, we place more value to it and so we try to utilize it better. But when it is abundant, we waste it like it was nothing.
On regular days, I only have about an hour of free time without distractions. I place a lot of value on this hour, and so this is the same hour when I get the most productive (for non-work tasks).
When I have time off from work that spans multiple days, I find myself just loafing around. I wasn’t even able to do house chores like I was planning to. This seeming abundance of free time is actually a hindrance, not a blessing.
Survival Mode
Given that time is a resource, how can we make us value it more? By making it scarce.
The concept can be better illustrated using money, which is another resource. When you think you don’t have enough, your mind goes into survival mode and you do everything you can to earn income. But when you feel you have more than enough, you get complacent in spending, purchase things without much thought, and spend much more than you were supposed to.
One trick you can use to trigger this “survival mode” is by putting most of your net worth in illiquid assets. These include real estate, private equity, gold, and so on. These assets cannot be readily converted to cash or money in the bank. Of course, in order to handle your day to day needs, you still leave a small percentage in cash. As you look at the small balance you have in your bank account and in your wallet, this can cause a feeling of uneasiness and inspire you to work more to increase this balance.
While this could work, I would not recommend this as you get more vulnerable in case of an emergency. However, I know a friend who does this so he can be motivated to earn more money. If that works for you, then that is one tactic you can employ.
Making Time Scarce
With that example, we go back to time. We experience a shift of thinking when we build a scarcity mindset with regards to our time. One important difference to money though is that while money is a renewable resource, our time cannot be increased nor extended. This makes time much more valuable than money.
When you ask someone how to be more productive and to achieve more, the common answer is by setting a hard deadline. However, setting a deadline has these effects:
- Since the deadline is in the future, we procrastinate and tend to just do it once the deadline is near (temporal discounting).
- The work will expand with the amount of time allotted to it, therefore reducing the time we have even further (Parkinsons’ Law).
If setting a deadline is not as effective, then what do we do? You make time scarce by actually doing your tasks.
There is a saying, “If you want to get something done, give it to the busiest person.” This sounds ridiculous, but chances are, you know someone in the workplace who is like this. They seem to go through their tasks like a knife through butter. And the reason why they are like this? They know their time’s worth. Since they have a lot of things on their plate, they don’t waste their time doing pointless things.
We can do the same thing. Instead of clearing your schedule in order to accommodate something, try to squeeze it in.
Try not to overdo it though. Life is not a race on who gets to be the most productive. But if you have trouble accomplishing the things you need to do, then shifting to a scarcity mindset can work wonders.
Photo by Samer Daboul