Taking Steps to Put Time on Your Side

Every weekday morning, John Kobara rouses himself from sleep at 5:15, reads the newspaper and groggily switches on his computer to begin sifting through e-mail and checking enrollments at OnlineLearning.net, the electronic college he heads.

Most of his friends say he’s crazy to rise at that hour, or accuse him of being a workaholic. But Kobara insists that it’s no great strain, and it gives him time to do the things he wants without guilt.

“I’m trying to carve out more time in my existing day,” Kobara says. By getting up 45 minutes early, he estimates he adds about five extra workweeks to his year.

And more time is exactly what most people think they need. Analysts say most of the stress and anxiety we feel in our lives can be directly linked to a sense of “time poverty,” the feeling that there’s not enough time to accomplish all the things we want to do.

Guilt over how we manage our hours on the job has been fed by bosses, management consultants, the media and others who tell us that learning how to use technology and prioritize tasks can help us do more than ever before.

The problem is, experts say, once we have more time, most of us don’t use it to do things that we enjoy, or that help us achieve personal and professional goals. Instead, we waste it on extra meetings, phone calls and on the Internet.

So although experts say we now can produce our 1948 standard of living (measured in terms of marketed goods and services) in less than half the time, many of us feel like we’re constantly running behind.

We should reconsider what kinds of activities we are spending our time on, analysts say, instead of focusing on how many tasks we’re fitting in. “The whole key is for people to distinguish between being busy and being productive,” says Henry Marsh, author of “The Breakthrough Factor,” (Fireside 1997) and a consultant for time-management expert Franklin Covey Co.

“You have to act on the things that matter to you most,” he says. Do what gives you a sense of accomplishment and occasionally joy in your work. Marsh suggests coming up with a mission statement that explains how you want to live, then setting goals in accordance with that mission and sitting down monthly to plan how you’re going to achieve them.

Work on these goals in some small way every day and keep them in a place where you can look at them often, Marsh says.

If you’re having problems making a decision about which projects or tasks to take on, Marsh suggests asking yourself: “Five years from now, would I be glad I did this?”

Kobara decided he didn’t want to look back and regret not spending more time with his young son. So he made a promise to attend all of the boy’s school events. He also committed to spending more time on the links, improving his golf game.

“One of the biggest challenges is to keep your priorities straight,” Kobara says. “Nobody wants an epitaph that says, ‘I wish I could have worked harder.’ ”

Although pursuing personal goals on company time may seem at odds with the unspoken corporate dictate to boost the bottom line by not wasting a second, Marsh says it all balances out.

“We just went through a big period of downsizing and there are now fewer people doing the same workload. They are burning out and companies are paying the price in stress-related claims and lost productivity.”

Sometimes what you want to accomplish can be achieved in the job you’re in. Sometimes it can’t, and that’s a scary prospect for most people who crave security, experts say.

Most people who complain about not having enough time, or not being fulfilled in their jobs, are unwilling to make changes or take steps to pursue their dreams, because they fear failure and possess low self-esteem, wellness expert Dr. Stephan Rechtschaffen writes in his book, “Time Shifting: Creating More Time to Enjoy Your Life” (Doubleday 1996). Most worry about how they will be perceived by other people if they aren’t one of the last ones to leave the office, or that they will be ridiculed if they take on a new project that could expose their lack of knowledge on a subject.

Some people, he says, actually create busywork for themselves as a way of showing how needed they are, and use that as a measure of self-worth. Kobara calls these people “members of the federal witness relocation program” because they assume identities that they think satisfy others but don’t really reflect who they are or what they want.

To make sure you’re living the life you want, experts say, make sure you schedule time each day to work on your goals--be they professional, spiritual or even social.

That might mean scheduling a call to connect one you haven’t talked to in a while, getting a book and logging computer time to learn new software, or adding another block to your jogging route.

Each month, Marsh recommends taking stock of what you’ve done and reevaluating your objectives and deadlines. It’s working in small ways, he says, on the goals that matter to us most, that give us moments of joy and make us feel like we’re accomplishing something.

Meanwhile, Rechtschaffen suggests coping with everyday time crunches by taking occasional breaks, refraining from doing too many tasks at once and remembering to stay “in the moment.”

Most stress, he says, comes from worrying about what might happen in the future, not what’s happening now. Several times during the day, Rechtschaffen and other experts suggest taking a few minutes to concentrate on your breathing or a peaceful picture. Joke around with friends, play hooky from the office if you can.

“Without regularly refreshing yourself with fun and childlike play,” says Dallas consultant Ann McGee-Cooper in a Harvard Business School newsletter, “you will get less and less done in more and more time.”