The Royal Trinity Hospice in London apparently has a motto ‘living every moment’. It’s a great one for terminally ill people, to make the most of the life they have left. Essentially it’s about enriching time.

If you’re pushed for time, try the technique of playing for time. Tell someone you can come up with a good answer or solution – perhaps better than they’re expecting. But you need another x hours to do so. This blogger has been in a couple of life-threatening, outdoor situations, slammed by multiple problems at once. Playing for time (the plan ‘B’), can literally save your life.

Staying in time (being a slave to the rhythm) can ease the burden. Especially if learning something new like; dancing, singing, swimming, marching, relay races or three-legged races in some parent-child, school event. Making love or debt repayments. Or following that car in front of your one.

Paying for time is a great solution for income-rich, time-poor people. Or those doing online grocery shopping because they don’t want to spend time driving to the store and shopping in person.

Making time and keeping time are like what you should do with promises. Choose carefully how to spend your allotted time (and choose your promises carefully too, preferably under-promise and over-deliver). Keep track of whether the time (and effort) invested is paying off in some way for you. We don’t have to charge for our time. But it’s ok to have expectations. That in return for your valuable time, something positive should result.

Leveraging time is about reaping multiple benefits from one action. Lazy people love it.

Use your daily work commute productively, not simply as an entertainment opportunity. Let your car’s onboard computers automatically handle more support aspects of your driving experience. So you can have a rewarding conversation with passengers instead.

Juggling time (or thin-slicing your time) is about juggling lots of loose ends, when you face delays and lead times. This blogger was recently given the job at work of setting up a new office in a foreign (non English speaking) country in Europe. As you can imagine, loads of signed form originals and ID documents were required, all referring to each other. Since you can’t complete any one aspect in its entirety, juggle the steps in the various processes concurrently instead. It is effectively filling in the waiting time with productive work. Accept that progress is uneven and therefore do planning ahead of time. And fact-find in the quiet times.

As always, if you find these blogs inspiring or thought provoking, spread the word for others to benefit too.

Simon