26 Hours a Day - uncover your 2 hours bonus

"Time management", that was the first thing crossing my mind. But before I enter a bookstore for an selfhelp book, which I didn't even to time to attempt doing, I contemplate on the problem while mixing the baby formula.

To fit in the new family schedule, there were basically two choices: drop other items from the time table** or reduce the time to perform those tasks. I tried both. Not easy, but it's time for some pruning.

Here is the math, if I save 3 seconds on every minute, 24 hour will yield 72 minutes. If 6 seconds a minutes, then 144 minutes, or 2 hour 24 minutes are saved. Imagine you have 2 hours extra for your day... how will you use it?

"Is saving 3 seconds hard?" I asked. Not at all. Instead, 3 seconds are VERY easily let slip away. Time used in things like staring at the computer screen saver, digging for the keys in the handbag and washing dishes can be reduced without sacrificing the purpose or quality of living. In other words, if I used to perform a task in 3 minutes, if I can find ways to perform this same task without comprising the desired result and quality in 2 minutes and 51 seconds, save these 9 seconds. (that's 3 seconds per minute)

For instance, I used to walk for 3 minutes from the parking lot to my office, now, roughly, 2'51". Well I can dash, but it'll sacrifice my chance to greet others and I'll need more than 3 mintues to recover from panting. So I won't.

** Refer to some time management practices

Now I've got my saved 3 seconds scattered among different minutes of a day, how can I use them?

Disconnected seconds won't do me any good unless they are collected into continuous hours like rain drops into puddles. But for time, how? There is no container to bank time, it just passes away. It's like some magic money that you must spend, or it will vanish the moment you try to hold on to it.

Remember when you tried to parallel park your car but had to give up because the space is just not long enough? And later you found that if the car in the front move forward a bit and the one behind back up a bit, yours can fit in. Same for our time, even though the scattered free time is not "collectable", we can reorganize our tasks to connect the bits of time into a longer one.

(oh no you must try this one: parallel parking game Click "play" then use the arrow keys)

There are a few tricks. The obvious one is to minimize the time between tasks. (write some more...)

2. re-ordering
3. multi-tasking