The Audacity of Managing Time

It's amazing what has happened within the spans of a year. An entire pandemic completely held the world in its' grasps and tossed it around like a toddler. It challenged the perimeters of the hospitality and entertainment industry to facilitate the masses. As such, trickling down to other industries that co-related with each other and affected production disastrously.

This time a year ago I was starting my second contract position and snowboarding along Massachusetts and Maine ski areas. It was the beginning of the pandemic.

Time has a funny way of interacting with our day to day lives. It exist for only 24hrs within a day and then that specific elapsed time never shows up ever again, it's then a whole new 24hrs . As I entered the job market at 18, I never challenged time. It existed as this fixed construct that passed and tasks were completed within the time frame given.

As time was not challenged, I never analyzed it.

Fast forward to a decade, I found myself challenging time with every single task I complete. I constantly find myself always looking for ways to maximize the opportunities available and the return on investment wherever I dedicate my time.

My time constraints started from completing college assignments to relationships and even my career. I began to value time more than money because you can always increase money but you can't increase time.

After reevaluating my life during the pressures and constraints of being an international student, I analyzed my life into tasks that needs to be completed within a certain time. It started from analyzing my morning routine into instrumental tasks such as, getting out of bed, time taken to boil water for tea and getting out of the door. I was so critical that I even timed myself and developed methods that would allow me to cut down on simple tasks such as the amount of food consumed, length of showers, time taken to get dressed and other similar tasks.

This mindset finessed my time management strategy and I gained more productive hours within my work day. I began to see time as task blocks instead of hours and minutes clicking away. I factored in breaks and speed within the task so I'm focusing on completing the tasks within the realistic allotted time block.

Each block was assigned a task and the amount of time it takes to complete that task. I honestly felt like I was consistently computing linear equations in my mind for every block as the task was always directly related to another event that can be completed simultaneously. For me, this works because I enjoyed plotting and computing graphs in my mind to find solutions for problems.

It is a beautiful way of thinking because everything made sense. I'm guessing that's how my mind works, numbers were associated with physical tasks and they were manipulated to maximize efficiency. I designed this strategy for my lifestyle so that its practical with constantly changing schedules.