Learn to single-task first

I recently reviewed some of the most popular methods recommended for saving time. As part of that review, I actively followed instructions to the letter and took each piece of advice as far as I could. The results of that review proved something I had suspected all along:  I cannot save time.

Time is doomed. No matter how much time I “save” I always run into situations where time has to be spent anyway.

Timesaving is largely an illusion created for those of us who live with the guilt of “not being able to do enough with our lives.” A lifetime of swallowing the “life is short” dogma has programmed us to squeeze as many activities as we can into as little time as possible.

Almost as if we were given a budget.

Is time a currency? It’s perpetually current, if you see what I did there, but is it supposed to be like money? I mean, all that “time is gold” stuff won’t win you an argument when you run to the store and try to get a discount because you trotted instead of sauntered. I do not know of any supermarket that lets me trade in my shaved seconds for coupons.

This is a good time to recall something the great Jerry Seinfeld once said. I am paraphrasing, but as he talked about “timesaving” devices — cars, coffeemakers, airplanes — he posed the question:  “Where does all the time we’ve saved go?”

Are they in a jar somewhere that I can break? With all this time I’ve saved, can I shake a few minutes out of the jar to make up for lost time when I am running late?

If it doesn’t work that way, what am I saving time for?

Here is an interesting study on how the average adult spends his time daily:

Sleeping: 8 hours.  (I use about six.)

Eating and/or drinking: 1.5 hours.  (I use about three.)

Bathing and household preparations: 2 hours.  (Me, 20 minutes.)

Working: 4 hours.  (I use about six.)

Combined travel time (included going to and from work, ambulating to the restroom, strolling to the cafeteria, etc.): 2 hours.  (I mostly work from home, so maybe 15 minutes on a regular day.)

Traffic variance: 30 minutes.  (More like an hour and a half!)

Coffee and smoking breaks: 1.5 hours.  (I do not do either.)

Leisure: 4 hours. Of which up to two hours on average are spent on social networking.  (I use about eight!)

Since I define Leisure as “the stuff I really wanna do,” it seems sad that the average adult only allocates 16.67 percent of his/her total time for the good stuff.

A life of 83 percent maintenance and 17 percent function. This is not the life I want to live.

I propose we stop thinking of time as a finite currency we have to allocate for proper productive usage. I propose we stop breaking it down based on what we want to (or should) use it for.

I propose that Time is for whatever you want to be doing at this moment.

The Super Secret Law of The City Slicker: The Secret of Life is THIS: ONE THING. Once you figure out what that one thing is, nothing can keep you from it.

Curly, as played by the great Jack Palance, said it best: “Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean s**t.”

I’m being serious now, so let’s go back to Jerry Seinfeld to wrap this up. He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. He talked about getting a big wall calendar and a big red magic marker.

For each day that he did a “writing task,” he would put a big red X over that day. Over several days, his calendar would show a chain of big red Xes. His only job was to not break the chain.

That was his ONE THING, so that was all he needed to keep track of. As long as he took care of that, he got to put another big red X on his chain. His day would be complete, and his conscience would be clear.

DO NOT BREAK THE CHAIN.

To take this concept from macro to micro, I try to do only one thing at a time.  I make everything a series of present tense attempts. You must understand that I mean no disrespect when I refill my ice cube trays before I call you on your birthday. It is not a matter of priority or importance anymore, but simply a matter of sequence. I simply do one thing, then the other.

Poker coach Tommy Angelo calls out multitasking as a lie. I always suspected it myself. Whenever my eyes swept across a room, it never actually “swept.” It jumped — stopping periodically to take in one thing at a time in rapid succession. When I think that I am doing several things at once, my mind is actually just quickly shifting from one task to another.

Now I am typing. Now I am reading a chat message. Now I am checking my email. Now I am typing again. Now I am having a drink of water. Now I am seeing what all the ruckus on the TV is about. Now I am... wait, what was I doing?

Oh yes, I was multitasking. 

So here is the ultimate “timesaving” tip — and probably the only tip you need to take from all of this:

DO NOT MULTITASK.

The Super Secret Law of The Perennial Multitasker: Two things do not get done until you do one.

SINGLE-TASK. Studies have shown that multitasking can waste up to 40 percent of your time and energy because of the need to refocus each time you switch tasks.

A friend of mine recently had this on his Facebook status:

“The one task I clearly set out to do today got pushed back by so many ad hoc and troubleshooting concerns that now that one task is what still remains to be done. Such is the nature of work.”

Such is the nature of multitasking. It makes us lose track of ONE THING.

So, friends, what is your ONE THING?

You can create a list of everything you want to do, then measure each against the other — forcing yourself to choose one or the other — until only one item is left. You may find — as I did — that there is one thing that is so overpowering, just knowing it clarifies your entire existence.

If you live in spontaneous chaos, your “ONE THING” is defined as “whatever is in front of me right now.” That may change from moment to moment, but it will always be just one thing. And as long as you are single tasking, I believe that these things will get done one after one other.

When things get done, people become happy.

And when people become really happy, time stops.