The TED talk of the week is what I am sending to you. To celebrate the new year,I think we can all agree that we can all work on how to gain control of your free time. I know you as a missionary don't have a ton of free time but I think this talk can help you to gain control of your time on your mission and what you do with it. The TED talk is called " How to gain control of your free time." By Laura Vanderkam.
She says there are 168 hours in a week. That is a lot of hours. She asks the question: how do we find time for what matters most? This women- Vanderkam is supposedly a time management expert. Which I have a hard time believing I mean who can be a time management expert, seriously? But she does offer a few practical strategies to help find more time for what really matters to us. I think this is a good way to start in the new year! Here are parts of the talk that I really liked and can be more applicable to you. Here it goes enjoy!
Beginning of her talk:
But after studying how successful people spend their time and looking at their schedules hour by hour, I think this idea has it completely backward. We don't build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want, and then time saves itself.
ExampleHere's what I mean. I recently did a time diary project looking at 1,001 days in the lives of extremely busy women. They had demanding jobs, sometimes their own businesses, kids to care for, maybe parents to care for, community commitments -- busy, busy people. I had them keep track of their time for a week so I could add up how much they worked and slept, and I interviewed them about their strategies, for my book.
One of the women whose time log I studied goes out on a Wednesday night for something. She comes home to find that her water heater has broken, and there is now water all over her basement. If you've ever had anything like this happen to you, you know it is a hugely damaging, frightening, sopping mess.So she's dealing with the immediate aftermath that night, next day she's got plumbers coming in, day after that, professional cleaning crew dealing with the ruined carpet. All this is being recorded on her time log. Winds up taking seven hours of her week. Seven hours. That's like finding an extra hour in the day.
But I'm sure if you had asked her at the start of the week, "Could you find seven hours to train for a triathlon?" "Could you find seven hours to mentor seven worthy people?" I'm sure she would've said what most of us would've said, which is, "No -- can't you see how busy I am?" Yet when she had to find seven hours because there is water all over her basement, she found seven hours. And what this shows us is that time is highly elastic. We cannot make more time, but time will stretch to accommodate what we choose to put into it.
***And so the key to time management is treating our priorities as the equivalent of that broken water heater by putting them into our schedules first. We do this by thinking through our weeks before we are in them.
When should we plan this time management? I find a really good time to do this is Friday afternoons. Friday afternoon is what an economist might call a "low opportunity cost" time. Most of us are not sitting there on Friday afternoons saying, "I am excited to make progress toward my personal and professional priorities right now."
But we are willing to think about what those should be. So take a little bit of time Friday afternoon, make yourself a three-category priority list: career, relationships, self. (Or in your case Tanner you could do a priority list pertaining to the people you teach, scripture study, and tracting) or something to the lines of that...
Making a three-category list reminds us that there should be something in all three categories. Then look out over the whole of the next week, and see where you can plan them in.
This is the part I love-(Cameryn) I love how she says this because it is so true. And I know in my life the small things matter the most. Even if it seems like a burden you can't think of it as a burden your just gotta do it. That's why I like Nike's slogan Just do it. It requires no thinking but you take action and get it done.
Making a three-category list reminds us that there should be something in all three categories. Then look out over the whole of the next week, and see where you can plan them in.
This is the part I love-(Cameryn) I love how she says this because it is so true. And I know in my life the small things matter the most. Even if it seems like a burden you can't think of it as a burden your just gotta do it. That's why I like Nike's slogan Just do it. It requires no thinking but you take action and get it done.
But small moments can have great power. You can use your bits of time for bits of joy. Maybe it's choosing to read something wonderful on the bus on the way to work. I know when I had a job that required two bus rides and a subway ride every morning, I used to go to the library on weekends to get stuff to read. It made the whole experience almost, almost, enjoyable. Breaks at work can be used for meditating or praying. If family dinner is out because of your crazy work schedule, maybe family breakfast could be a good substitute.
It's about looking at the whole of one's time and seeing where the good stuff can go. I truly believe this.There is time. Even if we are busy, we have time for what matters. (Love love this! Make time for what matters most in your mission, I know you don't have technology to get you distracted as much but I think this is a big problem in our culture right now.) And when we focus on what matters,we can build the lives we want in the time we've got.
Anyways I know you were wanting a TED talk! I am going to try and send you the ones I really like it may not be every week but the ones that affect me the most. Hope this is interesting to you I know it was to me.
Just a little snid bit of our lives right now and what we have been up to this week. I worked a little last week and Chris has had thursday-monday off this week which is really nice. We have been on lots of hikes trying to walk this baby out. No luck, he likes it way too much in there. I am feeling contractions/braxton hicks. Which means he is coming eventually.
We have been hanging with some of Chris's residency friends too. We went to dinner at one of Chris's fav. restaurants called Byrd and Barrell. You would really like it. I got to try fried chicken liver... weird after taste. Baby didn't like it so much. We went to a resident new years party and celebrated in incoming new year. We had sparkling cider and appetizers and played Code Names which is a really fun new game that came out this year. But mostly we have just been relaxing and enjoying this time before the baby comes. Taking full advantage of it- going to movies, going to dinner, playing games because we will more than likely be stuck here in the house for the first while when he comes. So that means I can send you more TED talks :) We found this really cool bar/restaurant called Pieces- they charge a small fee but you can choose over 500+ games to play and they will walk you through how to play. It was super fun. Anyways, hope you have a great week and we will too! Love you bro!
Cameryn
Anyways I know you were wanting a TED talk! I am going to try and send you the ones I really like it may not be every week but the ones that affect me the most. Hope this is interesting to you I know it was to me.
Just a little snid bit of our lives right now and what we have been up to this week. I worked a little last week and Chris has had thursday-monday off this week which is really nice. We have been on lots of hikes trying to walk this baby out. No luck, he likes it way too much in there. I am feeling contractions/braxton hicks. Which means he is coming eventually.
We have been hanging with some of Chris's residency friends too. We went to dinner at one of Chris's fav. restaurants called Byrd and Barrell. You would really like it. I got to try fried chicken liver... weird after taste. Baby didn't like it so much. We went to a resident new years party and celebrated in incoming new year. We had sparkling cider and appetizers and played Code Names which is a really fun new game that came out this year. But mostly we have just been relaxing and enjoying this time before the baby comes. Taking full advantage of it- going to movies, going to dinner, playing games because we will more than likely be stuck here in the house for the first while when he comes. So that means I can send you more TED talks :) We found this really cool bar/restaurant called Pieces- they charge a small fee but you can choose over 500+ games to play and they will walk you through how to play. It was super fun. Anyways, hope you have a great week and we will too! Love you bro!
Cameryn
Castlewood State park- It was 55 degrees beautiful here in STL!
Puppy kisses don't get grossed out just because we kiss our dog.
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