How to use time to solve your problems

Or how to throw time at your problems.

We have all heard about throwing money at your problems, paying to get things fixed. The core of the idea is that of deploying the resources you have against your problems to get to optimum results.

But what of how we use our most valuable resource — time? How do we use it, how do we throw it at our problems?

Time is a surprisingly malleable entity, at least in perception. It seems to slow down and expand while you are stuck toiling away at a boring mind-crushing task, but then find yourself having a good time and watch it speed up and slip away like sand through your fingers

Sure, time is an objective thing that we measure with our watches and clocks, but it is also very subjective in our experience of it. Plus it is always moving and we all have a finite amount of it to use.

It is our most precious resource and asset because once it is spent it can never be recouped. Worse still, it is always being spent, and how we use it is everything. We can invest it, we can use it productively or we can waste and squander it. But it will always keep moving, with or without us.

In my mind, there are 3 different ways we can use time.

On a long enough timeline…

There’s the quote attributed to Jeff Bezos I think, that basically says that on a long enough timeline, you can find the solution to any problem. I always liked that quote. It meant that no matter what problem I was facing, if I approached it with the right timeframe and worked on it consistently, eventually I would crack it.

That is what I would call throwing long time at it. Investing an extended and consistent period of time moving in a certain direction. We already do this automatically in many areas of life. School is one such example. You throw 3–4 years at the problem of obtaining a qualification. You make the consistent effort at the time, eventually, hopefully, you get there.

I have expressed this idea in a previous post about making time work for you. You do so by installing the right habits and routines into your life, so that as time passes, you get better, things grow exponentially, life improves. This is investing. Making your resources work for you.

If we think in this way, then we know that every action we take today is an investment to recoup or a price to pay for tomorrow.

So we are intentional and deliberate about what we do. If we fail to do so, if we laze around without direction, we will find ourselves lost to time.

Shorten the time

Tackling things over the long term is good. It works well for tackling particularly thorny issues and solving intractable problems. But shortening the time you use can also be a very powerful tactic.

This is the power of the deadline. Restricting the amount of time you have to get something done, forces you to work faster, smarter and more efficiently. It causes you to bring massive effort within a focused concentrated burst of time and can this yield powerful results.

It is when you give yourself 3 hours on a Sunday to get your finances in order. It is spending 30 minutes to bang out a blog post.

If there is a nagging problem in your life, an absolute thorn in your side, something you have been procrastinating on, you could probably go extremely far in solving it if you spent a few hours just working the shit out of the problem — googling, YouTubing, researching and experimenting until you solved it.

Here the quality of the time you spend here must be high. This demands full focus, no distractions. So, unless you need it for what you are doing, put that phone far far away and get to work.

Seizing kairos

Or capturing the moment.

Kairos is an ancient greek word meaning the right, critical or opportune moment. In rhetoric, it is described as a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved.

This is taking advantage of time as opposed to merely using it.

There are those special moments that arise. Sometimes, out of the blue with no warning. Other times as a slow steady build you can see coming. But this is a moments when things come to a head, where the all the factors collide and something powerful happens.

Usually this is a time of great volatility and instability. If you are awake, if you have been preparing, using long time and short time to position yourself, you can seize this moment and take advantage. This is the moment of the big opportunity, the big break. It is the chance interview, or introduction. It is the moment of chaos where sparks fly and the great flame erupts. This is when the iron is white hot, this is when you must strike.

It is the time ordained by God, the universe, the higher power and powerful things happen if you are at the right place when this moment arrives.

So use time, in all its glory, in all it’s forms. We are bound to it and its relentless flow. It is up to us to be skilful in our use of it. In this way, we honour it, by making the most of it.

Originally published at https://otoabasibassey.com on July 20, 2020.

I am an brand strategist, designer writer and entrepreneur using my skills to help people and businesses live up to their potential.

If there was an overarching theme to what I do, it would be “The art of being + the act of creating + the space in-between“. I am interested in how we live, how we create and how the two interact and inform each other

My obsession with personal development and constant growth sparked in my early teens remains unabated and now I share what I learn as I build a life by design.

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