Not enough hours in the day? Steve Dinneen suggests tricks and technology to help you maximise your minutes.
Time is a slippery character. Our lives are governed by it, but most of us would struggle to define exactly what it is. When you’re giving a presentation, a minute can feel like an hour, while a week’s holiday passes in seven seconds flat. Even our way of measuring time, based on the rotation of the earth, moon and sun, seems anachronistic in a digital age.
Many physicists and philosophers argue that our fundamental concept of linear time, passing from day to day, year to year, millennia to millennia, is a fallacy. As far back as 1908, John McTaggart’s The Unreality of Time argued that time could not adequately be described in terms of past, present and future.
This idea gained traction after Einstein’s theories of relativity suggested time was a dimension existing in the same way as space. In theoretical terms, this leads down a road that, for many, ends in a universe where everything that has happened, is happening and will happen, is somehow going on at once. This concept is rather difficult to get your head around and, in any case, isn’t all that useful when you’re running late for an important meeting.
On a more practical level, our concept of time has become blurred. Whereas only 100 years ago most of us would have risen with the sun and gone to bed when the evening came, now we’re working across multiple time zones, totting up the hours we have gained or lost as we touch down in different countries, and battling against our body’s instinct to keep a static sleep pattern. It is possible to fight it – Sir Richard Branson stays on the same sleep pattern wherever he is in the world, making the people around him work to his schedule – but few of us can afford such luxuries.
And while our grip on time has become fuzzier, we have never been so surrounded by its markers. The minutes tick by in the corners of our phones and laptop screens, while countless apps and programs have been designed to help us milk every last second. Computers’ ability to crunch complex data makes long-term predictions about everything from the weather to the stock market more viable, allowing us to plan further and further ahead.
It’s exhausting. Time can seem like a weight around your neck – there are always ways you could manage it more effectively, achieve more, spend it better.
Reclaiming the “present” (whether it exists or not) has become popular among psychologists. Practices such as “mindfulness” promote worrying less about the bigger picture and concentrating more on the immediate details of your life – what your coffee tastes like, how the breeze feels on your face. The Pomodoro Technique suggests breaking your day into 25-minute periods in which you focus on specific tasks, rather than worrying about the hundred things you have to do before you can go home.
At the centre of many of these ideas is picking apart unhelpful routines and replacing them with more constructive ones. Sometimes this can mean rediscovering the art of doing nothing – spending time simply listening to the sound of the ocean (even if it’s a digitally rendered version played through your laptop speakers) or taking a walk with no purpose other than clearing your head.
Carol Wilson, a former Virgin executive who now runs Performance Coach Training, which helps companies to improve staff productivity, says that, unfortunately, there is no one solution for managing your time better.
“The Pomodoro Technique may work for a lot of people but it would be useless for me because my concentration peaks at between half an hour and two hours,” she says. “You have to look first at how your brain works. If there are certain tasks you’re not getting done, there may be an underlying reason. Saying ‘I don’t have time’ is usually an excuse for not doing something you feel anxious about.
“Once you have worked out what works for you, there are a million little ways to help you fine-tune your time management. Beware, though – technology is there to save us time but if you’re not careful you’ll find it eating into your day, with Facebook, Twitter and the constant deluge of emails all providing an unwelcome distraction.” Here is our guide to the technology that can help you get more from your time.
Seiko Astron GPS Solar
- from £1,750
- seiko.co.uk
Seiko claims its Astron GPS Solar watch, which was set to be released on September 27, may be the most intelligent timepiece ever created – and it could be right. The Astron uses a low energy-consumption GPS receiver to work out where it is in the world and updates the time and date to fit the time zone.
Once you have stepped off the plane, all you have to do is press the button on the side of the watch and it will update in about six seconds. It recognises all 39 time zones and, once set, will keep pace with a margin of error of one second to every 100,000 years. Its battery is also solar powered, so you never have to worry about changing it.
Tic Toc Trac
- Custom made US$55
- tictoctrac.com
Hours and minutes may be fixed periods of time, but try telling that to a football fan watching the final seconds of a match. This is where the Tic Toc Trac comes in – a watch that not only measures the actual time but also our perception of it.
To get the time, tap the face of the watch. It will then ask you to keep track of a randomly generated period of time – say, 15 minutes – and tap the watch again when it’s up. It will record how close you came to guessing correctly, allowing you to work out when time seemed to last “longer”. Unfortunately, if you want one, you’ll have to follow the instructions online and build it yourself.
Mutewatch
- £199
- mutewatch.com
If you’re the kind of person who drifts off at work only to come around six hours later having done nothing productive but somehow ordered a new set of golf clubs, the Mutewatch could be for you.
It looks like a simple wristband, with the screen only coming to life when you move your wrist to check the time. It has standard date, time and stopwatch features, with the added bonus of being able to programme silent alarms that subtly vibrate, allowing you to set yourself mini-goals throughout the day and know exactly when you should have finished them, without annoying the rest of your office (or aircraft cabin). It also looks very cool.
HD3 Slyde
- From £4,800
- swisswatchshop.co.uk
The HD3 Slyde is the kind of watch that appeared in science fiction movies a few years ago. Its curved touchscreen display features customisable watch-dial displays as well as bells and whistles such as a chronograph, calendar and moon phase indicator.
The Slyde is one of a new generation of watches bringing the ethos of quality Swiss engineering to the digital timepiece. The basic model has a stainless steel case with a black PVD-coated wrist strap and will set you back £4,800. If you want to upgrade to rose gold or diamond trims, don’t expect much change from £10,000.
Pebble
- US$150
- getpebble.com
The Pebble started life as a great idea that lacked one vital ingredient – money. When its makers listed it on crowd-funding website Kickstarter, it took off like a rocket, with users investing a staggering US$10 million to send it into mass production.
The product is a smart watch that allows you to download new faces, use sport and fitness apps, and sync it with your phone to get notifications. It can also silently vibrate when you receive a call, making it great for work.
It has an e-ink, rather than a backlit screen, meaning it looks like printed paper. While the product won’t ship until early 2013, you can pre-order it now.
Pomodoro Time Management
- £1.49
- Apple App Store
The Pomodoro Technique was created in the 1980s by Francesco Cirillo. It involves breaking your day into a series of 25-minute slots in which you should try to complete one simple task. This is followed by a five-minute break, with longer breaks after every four slots. The problem is, if you need a system to stay organised, you’re likely to forget when 25 minutes is up.
Enter the Pomodoro app, which lets you set up customisable time periods on your smartphone, separated by a retro alarm sound. You can also create “to-do” lists of what you need to achieve in your slots. A free version called Pomodroido is available for Android.
Do Nothing for Two Minutes
This website is incredibly simple and very effective. Log on to the website and you are greeted with a relaxing photograph of the sun setting over the ocean. “Do nothing for two minutes,” it says, and a timer starts counting down, playing the sound of the ocean through your speakers. If you touch the mouse or keyboard the counter turns red, tells you that you’ve failed, and resets for another two minutes.
The focus you can achieve from taking a short break with no email to distract you shouldn’t be underestimated – in an increasingly busy world, sometimes the best thing you can do is nothing.
World Clock– Time Zones
- Free
- Apple App Store
Be a master of time with this clever app, which helps you to keep track of exactly what time it is wherever you are in the world.
Useful features include the ability to add your most visited cities to the home page. It will also automatically update to take account of time zone changes around the world.
For an extra £1.49, you can upgrade to a graphical display of the world’s 39 time zones with your favourite cities pinned on – useful if you deal with clients on multiple continents and want to make sure you’re not about to call them at 4am. If you’re a frequent traveller, this app is priceless.
Time Clock (location-based)
- £1.99
- Apple App Store
This ingenious app will help you use time to your advantage. It uses GPS to work out how long you have been at work – once you pass within a certain distance of the office door it will log you in, and log you back out when you leave for a break or finish up for the day.
It will store the information even if it isn’t being directly accessed, meaning you don’t have to remember to switch it on every day.
You can then export the information to a spreadsheet that gives an accurate breakdown of how many hours you have worked – helping you to see when you are spending longer than you should at your desk.
Sleep cycle Alarm Clock
- £0.69
- Apple App Store
Make the best of your time, even when you’re asleep. Instead of setting a definitive alarm time, you instead set a 30-minute window – between 6.30am and 7am, say. You then put your phone under your pillow, and the app uses the iPhone’s in-built accelerometer and gyroscope to monitor how much you’re moving around, and wakes you when you come out of a period of deep sleep.
The idea is that you feel refreshed when you wake and are therefore less likely to hit the snooze button. The app will also create a graph tracking the time you spend in each sleep phase and the total time you’ve slept.
