Are You Feeling Rushed? Then Take a Day Off to Think

I have often felt tired and drained in the last few weeks. My books are not selling as well as I would like, I can hardly find time to exercise, and I had no idea where to find the time to write my articles.

I was still productive, but suddenly everything felt twice as difficult. I sat at the computer from morning to night and still managed to get my work done just in time. But when I had completed my workload, the day was over, and my energy was used up.

And yet I still have so many plans for other projects. I want to revive my blog, write more articles, and start making music. Do I have too many ideas? Or am I wasting too much time?

I couldn't answer these questions because I didn't think I had time to think about it seriously.

So I decided to spend a whole day doing nothing else but writing down everything I have to do and thinking about what I have to do to get everything done without burning out.

If you clicked on this article, you are likely at a similar point in your life. Keep reading if you want to know what you can do about it.

You are planning in the wrong time unit

You probably know pretty well how many words you can write in a day or how many customers calls you can make in a day.

But do you also know how many words you can write in an hour? Do you know how many calls you can make in that time? Well, you should, because days are made of hours.

If you're a writer, for example, and you want to write three thousand words a day, then you probably can. The problem is that if you don't make your goal more precise, it will take you a whole day.

But if you know that you can write a thousand words in an hour and you need a fifteen-minute break after each hour, you can plan your day differently.

Now you can plan to start writing at eight o'clock, write a thousand words until nine o'clock, and then take a fifteen-minute break. Then repeat this twice more, and you will reach your daily goal of 3000 words by 11:30 a.m.

The work that could have easily lasted until the evening without planning is now suddenly done before lunch.

Why is that? A task tends to take up as much time as we have available. If we plan three thousand words a day, we tell our brain that we have the whole day for it.

But if we plan three one-hour writing sessions with fixed start and end times, the brain knows that it must complete the task within that time and will do everything it can to meet the deadline.

Plan hours instead of days and get your time back

So I advise you to do in three hours what you usually take all day. But didn't I want to tell you how you could feel less rushed?

The advice to do more in less time and thereby bring more peace into your life sounds paradoxical at first. I admit that.

But why do we initially feel rushed at all? Because the day is over when we have done our work. The work is done, but we no longer have time for all the other things we have to or want to do.

But when we have done all our work by noon, we suddenly have many hours left to pursue our goals and dreams. Time suddenly seems to be in abundance. How can we still feel rushed?

A day to plan with the new model

So we created time where before there seemed to be none left. What matters now is what we make of it.

We have to prevent our dreams and goals from going the way we did with our work before. Just because we suddenly have a few hours does not mean that all our problems are solved.

We also have to plan the projects we suddenly have time for in the same way we planned our work before.

For example, if the next goal is to learn Spanish, then we should also plan this project on an hourly basis. If we don't do that, we will spend the rest of the day learning as much Spanish as we could actually learn in an hour.

Remember: a task tends to take as much time as there is available.

So take your calendar and start by entering your most famous work, which you have previously reduced to three hours. Also include the break.

A more extended lunch break or time for a power nap should also be considered. Enter everything to the minute in your calendar and allow for an additional half an hour for unforeseen events.

Then plan your next project directly in your calendar.

For example, if the language course you have chosen has thirty lessons and each lesson has a grammar section, a vocabulary section, and a reading section, plan on one part of a lesson per hour at most.

So if you want to spend one hour every day, this means that you need ninety days' net for the whole course. Weekends, holidays, and other days planned for other reasons will, of course, extend this period.

You must enter everything exactly into your calendar so that you can look in every morning and know exactly what to do on that day.

Again, think of time buffers and breaks.

One after the other

Finally, a warning: You should not plan your day from morning to evening. Always leave a few hours off, during which you can do all the other things that belong to life.

You have to shop, cook, do the laundry, spend time with your partner, and much more. If you stuff your plan with projects, you will feel rushed again after the first week at the latest.

In the long run, therefore, it makes sense not to pursue more than three projects at once. Two would be even better, but if the third is comparatively small or natural, there's nothing wrong with pursuing three projects at once.

By the way, if you can, you should also include everyday things like shopping and cooking in your calendar. A lot of stress arises because we regularly ask ourselves when we should do all the things we need to do.

If it is written in the calendar, this question does not arise. We know when to do what, and we know that everything will work out if we stick to the plan.

So plan your lives by the hour, not by the day. That way, you can do more in less time with less stress. For me, this method works wonderfully. I wish everyone to experience this peace of mind, as well.