Learn to Make the Most of Your Time: Leadership Tips

Most of us have a tendency to overvalue money and undervalue time. In our attempts to spend as little money as possible, we rarely think of trading money for time. But we make trade-offs between time and money all of the time, willing to sacrifice hours to comparison shop to save a few dollars or driving out of our way for slightly cheaper gas.

That undervaluing of our time is one of six traps that make us time poor, says a recent post on the Leadership Now blog, based on the book “Time Smart” by Ashley Whillans.

The post offers eight strategies to become better at prioritizing time, among them:

• Ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing. If it is just to kill time or for no reason, then stop doing it. For example, rather than mindlessly surfing the Internet before lunch, consider taking a walk to clear your head and recharge.
• Be intentional about how you spend your time with specific action statements. If you want to read more books, say, “I will use my commute to listen to books on tape.”
• If your time goals are going well, reward yourself. If not, you need to implement a cost.
• Engineer defaults to help keep you on track. Turn off your notifications and check in less often. There are also apps—Freedom and Ransomly—to help you do this.

Source: “How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life,” Leadership Now, Jan. 29, 2021

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Frequent breaks are important to help recharge our batteries at work. Most advice says to make these breaks screen-free whenever possible, but sometimes you just can’t get away from your devices—or you just don’t want to.

Luckily, the right screen-based breaks can provide you with similar benefits as the offline variety and help you take more breaks throughout the day, says a new article from Harvard Business Review.

Be sure to choose breaks that get your body moving, connect you with other humans or challenge your brain with something different. Get an on-screen workout by chasing down a new Pokémon in the mobile game Pokémon Go. Belt your heart out with some YouTube karaoke. Take a story break with your favorite audiobook app—at your desk or while on a quick stroll, doing chores, etc. Try an audio-only social network like Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces. Tune up your brain with a few rounds of Words With Friends.

Source: “Taking a Break Doesn’t Always Mean Unplugging,” Harvard Business Review, March 3, 2021

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