Latest news with #timeManagement
Entrepreneur
3 days ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Your Time Is a Weapon. Use It or Waste It.
The difference between being busy and being lethal is knowing what's worth your minutes and being bold enough to protect them. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Humans haven't figured out how to create more time. The people who win? They protect it like their life depends on it. Because it does. Time is your sharpest weapon. You either use it to cut through the noise, or you let it dull itself with distractions. If you're not lethal with your time, you'll lose it. Simple as that. Related: Time Is Money — Here's How to Leverage It to Add Value to a Product I talk about urgency a lot I talk about urgency all the time. Not just in business. In life. Urgency isn't panic. Urgency is respect. It's knowing time is limited and treating it like gold. When you move with urgency, you cut the fluff. You get to the point. You stop dragging things out that don't need to be dragged. The fastest way to kill momentum? Move slow. The fastest way to build momentum? Move now. People always say life is short. I don't believe that. I believe life is long. The question is not how fast you can fill your calendar. The question is how well you can fill your life. I love to work. But I had to learn the hard way. I love to work, but over the years, I've learned there's a difference between being busy and being lethal. That's a hard pill to swallow. People love to seem busy. That's not bad. It's human. But the faster you can learn what's not worth your time (and actually be okay with that decision), the more unstoppable you become. Busy people are usually just disorganized people in disguise. You can be busy doing the wrong things for years and still end up nowhere. Being busy is easy. Being intentional is hard. Busy fills your calendar. Intention fills your life. Busy says yes to everything. Intention says yes to what matters. Busy burns you out. Intention builds you up. I had to learn that busyness is a trap. It's loud. It's addictive. It makes you feel like you're winning when you're actually just treading water. Being intentional is uncomfortable because it forces you to choose. Busy people say they don't have time. Intentional people know exactly where their time is going. Related: 10 Simple Ways to Escape Busyness and Enjoy Free Time Fatherhood changed everything When I became a dad, my life got a whole new point. It wasn't about the next company. It wasn't about the next deal. It wasn't about stacking more to-dos. It was about family. It was about being present. Being a dad made me lethal with my time. When you realize your kid's only going to be that age once, you get real clear on what matters. I don't waste minutes anymore. I don't have minutes to waste. Faith brought it all into focus As a Christian, I know I don't control my timeline at the end of the day. God's in charge of that. Not me. But I do get to choose where that time goes. I don't want to waste it. I don't want to miss what matters. I had to learn to sharpen my time like a blade. Ruthless. Precise. Non-negotiable. You don't need more hours. You need sharper decisions. Your time sets the tone When I was building my companies early in my real estate career, I used to take every call. Every meeting. Every coffee. I thought being available made me valuable. It didn't. It made me exhausted. People respect your time when you respect your time. And theirs. Your calendar is your property. Treat it like that. If you're loose with your time, you'll attract people who are loose with your time. If you're lethal with your time, you'll attract people who value time. You set the tone. You build the boundary. You decide what's worth it. Related: The Most Successful Founders Take Retreats — Here's Why You Should, Too The power of no You can't master your time if you're afraid to say no. You're not being mean. You're being honest. Here's a rule: If it's not a "heck yes," it's a no. You don't need to apologize for it. You don't need to explain it. I've missed out on things I didn't need to be at. I've skipped calls that didn't move the needle. I've walked away from opportunities that weren't aligned. Saying no is how you say yes to what matters. Related: Why Rejection is the Best Thing for Every Entrepreneur to Hear Time doesn't wait Time is not waiting for you to get organized. It's not waiting for you to feel ready. Guess what? Perfect never shows up. You have to move now. You have to decide now. Time is your most unforgiving currency. You can spend it, but you can't earn it back. When you start treating your minutes like money, you get very clear. Very fast. On what's worth it and what's not. Be a time assassin Do you want to win? You have to become a time assassin. Cut the fluff. Cut the overthinking. Cut the dead meetings. Optimize the pointless tasks. Move fast. Decide fast. Focus fast. When I got lethal with my time, I made more room for what actually mattered. More room for building. More room for thinking. More room for living. And the best part? I made more room for them. My family. My why. You don't need to fill your calendar to feel valuable. You need to own your calendar to build value. Your time is either building your future or it's bleeding into someone else's. Be lethal with it. Every minute counts. Especially the ones you spend at home.
Forbes
30-06-2025
- General
- Forbes
Find More Time In The Day
Getting more time in the day doesn't require magic - just some intentionality. If a genie suddenly popped out of one of your reusable water bottles (not too many oil lamps laying around these days), what would you wish for? Assuming your first two wishes cover health and wealth, I'm guessing your third wish might be for more time to enjoy both. Time is the resource we can't manufacture more of. It's finite. That means we have to get creative in how we use it. If you don't happen to have a genie, let me suggest some time magic you can do all on your own. What if your calendar was a productivity tool rather than a problem statement? Seventy-eight percent of knowledge workers say that they're expected to attend so many meetings that it's hard to get their work done. We adapt by trying to squeeze work in around the edges rather than take control of our time. If meetings are overloading your calendar, here's where to look to reclaim some lost time. Start with recurring meetings. Recurring meetings tend to start strong and then lose utility over time. Take a close look at your recurring meetings to see if they can be delegated to another team member, if their cadence / length can be adjusted, or if they're no longer necessary. For the recurring meetings that remain, ask for a purpose-based agenda for each instance, and decline if you're not needed that week. Next, take a look at your 1:1s. One-on-one time is important – staying in close touch is critical for keeping projects on track and maintaining connection / psychological safety. But you may be able to optimize. Could the frequency be reduced? Could 45-minute meetings be replaced by more frequent 15-minute check-ins? Finally, work with your team to cluster your remaining meetings. Organizing your meetings into blocks creates larger chunks of free time – much better for digging into focused work than the 15-minute scraps we've settled for. A typical day in the office tends to be a lot like working in a pinball machine: you shoot out of your morning routine and into your desk, full of momentum and promise. And then you hit your first obstacle – an unclear email request. As you're sorting that, BANG, you hit another obstacle – you can't find the report you need to respond to the email. On your way to track down the team member who knows where it is, WHAP – you get intercepted by another team member with a more urgent issue. And so it goes until the end of the day, when you roll back down the chute and into your car, feeling banged up and bewildered. Not all collaborative fire drills can be avoided, but setting some working norms, for yourself and your team, can help head them off. Here's a few we recommend: Make your own magic by becoming an intentional, active manager of your own time. You'll fit more work into your actual workday and leave more left over for other things that count.
New York Times
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
6 Podcasts to Boost Your Productivity and Focus
Productivity has become an obsession, both for individuals and companies. Across numerous industries, employee productivity is now being monitored and scored, with the specter of artificial intelligence automation only adding to the pressure to always be hustling. But there's real value in learning how to prioritize tasks and organize your schedule in ways that work for your brain without compromising your well being. These six podcasts offer steps and tools for making the most of your time and energy at work and beyond. 'Deep Questions With Cal Newport' Cal Newport, an author and professor of computer science at Georgetown University, has long been known for his balanced approach to productivity — his most recent book, 'Slow Productivity,' emphasizes working less to produce higher quality results. In Newport's podcast, he offers detailed advice grounded in a few core concepts: deep work (focusing, without distraction, on a single, cognitively demanding task), digital minimalism (limiting technology use to reclaim the time and energy that digital pursuits can drain from us), and time-blocking (dividing a day into segments during which you focus on one task at a time). As he addresses listener questions and shares concrete tips and techniques, Newport also encourages his audience to question their assumptions about productivity as a goal in itself. Starter episode: 'It's Okay to Slow Down' 'Relaxing White Noise' While many podcasts offer tips and advice on how to focus better, this series is a practical tool in itself. Despite its somewhat bland title, 'Relaxing White Noise' gives listeners access to a smorgasbord of soothing soundscapes. With more than a thousand episodes in the back catalog, the options include soothingly mundane noises (dishwasher sounds or the whir of a fan), evocative nature scenes (a rainstorm in a forest or a cascading waterfall) and even potentially stressful scenarios ('Rain & Stormy Ocean Sounds Aboard Wooden Ship' may be an acquired taste). There are also many white, brown and pink noise options — for the uninitiated, these all describe different audible frequencies with varying effects. White noise has more of a hissing sound than brown or pink, which may make the latter options more soothing, but all three have benefits for focus, not least because they effectively block out other disruptive sounds. Starter episode: 'Super Relaxing Waterfall Sounds for Sleeping' 'Cortex' Since a lot of productivity podcasts are geared toward those with traditional 9 to 5 work schedules, 'Cortex' is a welcome alternative with an emphasis on freelancers and creatives. The show is hosted by CGP Grey (best known among podcast fans for the beloved but now-defunct hit 'Hello, Internet') and Myke Hurley, a founder of the British podcast network Relay FM, who share their strategies for time management and getting things done. The duo affably discusses specific work flows, apps and frameworks that help them push forward with creative projects — for instance, planning your year around a broad theme and using this to guide actions rather than relying solely on rigid, time-based goals. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
CNET
17-06-2025
- CNET
How to Boost Your Productivity With This AI Tool
There are a lot of AI tools to help out your productivity at work, but not as much gets written about using AI for your home tasks. Time is the most precious thing you have -- so if you can save time on your weekly to-do list, in all parts of life, you could be saving a lot more time for the fun things. Just like money, there's no time savings too small. Saving 15 minutes on your weekly responsibilities is better than nothing. Become a time budgeter with the help of artificial intelligence. AI productivity tools can help you with a lot of things, like planning, saving and maximizing time on cleaning, cooking, exercising, shopping, scheduling, traveling and life admin. Look at the tasks you procrastinate on – this is where you can use the most support. ChatGPT seems to be one of the best AI productivity tools to chat with, so I'm testing out its time-saving chops. OpenAI's ChatGPT was released in 2022, but it has undergone major updates, notably to the free version. There's a premium subscription for $20 a month, but the free version is usually all you need. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) Review your week for pain points Society obsesses over AI being able to generate jokes or scripts in seconds, but does this really solve problems? No. Ponder on your personal pain points and use the tools tactically to find better or faster ways of doing things. If meals are always a mess, use ChatGPT as a co-cook. If you want to get the kids off screens, you could use ChatGPT to generate trivia questions for their age group. If you never know what to wear to work, you could ask AI to plan your week's outfits, based on your wardrobe. Contemplate how ChatGPT can best help you, with two to three top tasks or categories. AI productivity ideas For example, here are two weekly tasks (one home, one work) that could be organized and optimized with AI: 1. Family chores and housework. 2. Digitize handwritten meeting notes. AI to schedule family chores and housework Organize your family chore chart with ChatGPT. It's a handy tool to help assign age-appropriate housework tasks. You could ask ChatGPT to use a star or point system, which connects to your kids' allowance, screen time sessions or weekend activities. Let's use a family of four as an example: mom, dad, a 6-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl. In your prompt, include specific details that might affect a weekly schedule. For example, commuting to work, playing sports, music lessons and recurring household tasks. Prompt: "Create a weekly chore chart for a family of four, with kids aged 6 and 3. Include age-appropriate chores, the estimated time to complete each task, and a reward system based on points." I wanted to see what it generated, because it gave me ideas I hadn't thought of, such as watering house plants. Screenshot by Amanda Smith/CNET And here's the points-based reward system it generated: Screenshot by Amanda Smith/CNET I asked ChatGPT to remove the dusting, vacuuming, sweeping and organizing books and toys from the kids' list, but make packing and unpacking the dishwasher a daily task and add help with cooking on Saturday or Sunday. I made a couple of requests, such as adding "get shoes on" daily, then asked ChatGPT to sort in order of daily to weekly tasks. I also asked it to switch up the parent tasks. Prompt: For parent tasks, change laundry to Wednesday and Sunday. Daily cooking, 1 hour a day including lunch and dinner. Vacuum on Sunday, 30 minutes. Clean stovetop, surfaces and toilet, 15 minutes. Dust on Sunday, 15 minutes. Take out trash and recycling, twice a week, 20 minutes. Meal plan and grocery shop on Sunday, 1 hour. If there are any errors, just ask ChatGPT to regenerate it. Small tweaks are to be expected. Screenshot by Amanda Smith/CNET ChatGPT's reward system suggestions triggered an idea: The kids could earn bonus points if they help with any parent tasks, especially for Sunday's chores. You could even ask ChatGPT to turn its plan into a printable page to stick on your fridge to use as a scoreboard. AI to digitize handwritten notes Another way to gain AI productivity is to summarize handwritten meeting notes in seconds. If you're in multiple meetings during the week, use ChatGPT to digitize your handwriting. Download the ChatGPT app so you can easily take and upload a photo of your pages. Prompt: Transcribe these handwritten notes into text. Amanda Smith/CNET Then open up the desktop version to easily check the text and paste it in a word document. Keep the physical notes page (or photo) open to cross-check. I have the handwriting of a high school student, so I had to make a few requests. I told it that the sixth bullet should read "Clearer briefs – deadlines, time, priority list (one for you)." But still, not bad, ChatGPT! Screenshot by Amanda Smith/CNET While this might not save you hours per week, it's a good example of a small task that can be sped up with AI. Once you start using AI productivity tools for these tasks, the time savings will soon add up.
CTV News
17-06-2025
- General
- CTV News
Canadians spending less time with friends, especially those of working age: StatCan
People eat and relax at picnic tables at the ByWard Market in Ottawa, on Friday, June 23, 2023. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang) A Statistics Canada report says Canadians are spending less time with friends than ever, with the decline sharpest among the working-age demographic. The new data shows that in 2022, only 19.3 per cent of Canadians saw friends on an average day, down from 47.9 per cent in 1986. The questions to those in the survey specify socializing as in-person with family and friends, separate from communicating using technology such as phone, email, or social media. The report says the sharpest drop was recorded for people between 25 and 64 years of age, where the likelihood of seeing a friend on any given day fell from 42 to 14 per cent in the 36-year period. Canadians between 15 and 24 years old also saw the likelihood of spending time with friends on an average day fall by more than 30 percentage points during that time, although younger people remain the most likely to have the interactions at 41 per cent in 2022. Statistics Canada says the trend coincides with a rising number of Canadians worrying that they are not spending enough time with friends and family, with more than 46 per cent of respondents feeling that way in 2022, versus just under 34 per cent in 1992. The report also shows Canadians in 2022 feel the most 'pressed for time' since the early 1990s when data collection began, with almost a quarter of respondents saying they feel such pressure when compared with 15 per cent three decades earlier. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 17, 2025. Chuck Chiang, The Canadian Press
