When Life Gets Busy, Just Concentrate on What’s Important

It’s been a while. Life got busy and I had to concentrate on what’s important. If you were following asimplelifetime, or just looking at it for the first time and wondering why there is such a big gap between articles, well, it all comes down to priorities.

Life sure can be busy and there is only so much one person can do. In this day and age, it can feel like everyday is task overload.

You may be feeling maxed out or like you just can’t get enough done- a little bit of perspective can go a long way. It often comes down to time management and what is truly important to you. Once you have a good sense of what you truly value, it can become much clearer on what you can drop to free up your time.

To use your time effectively, first, you have to define what is effective use of time. Stephen R. Covey the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has a great time management matrix to help you gain perspective on all of the daily tasks your faced with.

Let’s have a closer look.

The Time Management Matrix

Pin

As you can see, your time is divided into 4 quadrants based on what is important or not, and what is urgent or not.

Have a look and try to relate it to your daily life. Think of all the things that fill your day: work, family time, exercise, daily emergencies, the constant stream of emails, social media, time with friends, online shopping, cooking, eating, cleaning, watching TV. The list goes on…

When life gets busy, just concentrate on what’s important

The end goal is to live as much of your life as possible in quadrant #2. This is where you spend time on things that are important to you without the stress that comes with urgency.

Here is the tricky part and the key to all of this: to spend more time in this quadrant, it requires planing and preparation. You really have to put some thought into it and define your values, what’s important to you, what brings you joy, what gives you a sense of purpose.

What are you going to do when you’re facing all the distractions, emergencies and things that try to move you into a different quadrant? It’s amazing how much easier they are to deal with when you have a plan or have just put some thought into what you might face. This can make you more intentional and effective. Or at least recognize when you are being pulled off your path.

Life in this quadrant requires you to act, instead of feeling as though you are constantly reacting.

I didn’t say it would be easy and I think that is why we often live in the other quadrants. That being said, here some easy solutions to free up your time.

The easy stuff

I am not here to tell you how to live or make you feel judged. I am hoping to help you free up some of your time. I like entertainment as much as the next. In my experience, the stuff in quadrant #4 is the easiest to delete. You know the mindless scrolling on social media, the video games, the endless TV, the shopping for things you don’t need, useless emails and calls. These are the time wasters.

Watching a movie with friends and family can be important. Everyone needs a little down time. You might wonder, what about sports or meditation? I would say those might fall in quadrant #2 if that is what you value. Try dropping the long hours of scrolling on TikTok, or at least keep it to a minimum.

Urgent and important

The stuff in quadrant #1 needs your attention right away and can’t be ignored. Emergencies, crises, pressing problems and deadline driven projects need you to react. Regardless if you had thought about them or planned for them, you’ll need to jump into action.

Chances are that if you pre-planned or had even just given them some forethought, they will be easier to deal with.

If you spend too much time in this realm, you are bound to crash into quadrant #4 and find yourself repeating this cycle.

Consider that in our modern society, so much is designed to feel like it belongs in quadrant #1 when it truly belongs in quadrant #3. We are constantly bombarded with unimportant stuff that is designed to grab our attention and distract us from our priorities.

Urgent and unimportant

Have you thought about the stuff that has been designed to make you feel the sense of urgency when it’s often not important? This is often the general noise in our life: the phone ringing, constant notifications, junk mail, and the constant marketing we are exposed to. They are all distractions and interruptions from what’s important.

So much of this is based on tried and tested science to make us react. Think of the limited time sale that is designed for you to drop what your doing and buy.

A little bit of awareness goes a long way.

In the end

I’ve been reminded time and time again that living a life filled with the things that are most important to me, that bring me joy, that give me a sense of purpose, has led me to a pretty fulfilling life. Yes, I have to check myself from time to time, but I aim to let go of all the unnecessary noise. Our time is too precious.

To keep it really simple: Think, plan, do.

Please share on your socials or even better subscribe below for regular updates.

Thanks for reading,

Pat

Here are some other Minimalism posts that can help:

• The Best Minimalism Websites for life and design
• The Irony of Minimalism and Social Media
• What is minimalism in less than 100 words
• Minimalism, less is more