“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”
-Carl Sandburg, American poet, biographer, writer, and editor.
No tool is as handy as the right question. With the right questions we can inspect our expectations, reflect on our values, and renovate our lives.
I recommend you cultivate the habit of collecting questions in a file you can refer to later. It can be helpful to organize these questions by topic, so as you find yourself facing life changes, work decisions, or relationship shifts, you can rely on a solid set of tools to help you find your way.
Recently I came across four questions which can give you back more of your most valuable resource: time. The questions come from Rory Vaden’s TEDTalk, “How to Multiply Your Time.” Vaden believes in the concept of “time multipliers.” Rather than asking what the most important thing to do today is, Vaden asks, “What’s the most important thing I can do today that would make tomorrow better?”
For Vaden’s money, there are four questions you can use to optimize your to-do lists and identify ways to reclaim time.
They are:
- Can I eliminate this task?
- If I can’t eliminate this task, can I automate it?
- Can it be delegated, or can I teach someone else how to do this?
- Should I do this task now, or can I do it later?
I urge you to take a few minutes today and dig into these questions in this article. Regularly applying them to your list of priorities will pay off big:
https://ideas.ted.com/multiply-your-time-by-asking-4-questions-about-the-stuff-on-your-to-do-list/
What can you do today to multiply your time tomorrow?
