24 HOURS RULE

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We often hear people say 24 hours is not enough. But the truth is that we forget there is time for everything. The thing is, we are mostly victims of procrastination, and if we can master effective time management, we’d realize that 24 hours is more than enough to get us through the day.

I used to be a victim of procrastination too, which we all know to be a thief of time. One minute I'm lazing about doing nothing, and the next minute I'm working under a lot of pressure due to limited timing. As the situation continued, I soon realized that procrastination builds up my anxiety; thus, it became a struggle going through the day having my act together.

Soon enough, I became tired of constantly feeling overwhelmed and stressed. Gradually, I came to the realization that things needed to change. So, I resolved to do better by making effective use of my time so that by the end of the day, I could feel some sense of accomplishment.

In order to effectively manage my time, I had to first identify the cause, having known the problem. Thus, during this time, I realized how powerful the mind was as well as the important role it plays. I saw that our minds not only create our outcomes, they also determine the actions that we take.

For example, during those times, my pending tasks kept piling up due to procrastination; it was my mind actively informing me that whatever I wanted to do in the moment to get my pending tasks sorted could be done later. This made me relax, as I thought I had a lot of time on my hands.

Meanwhile, as the deadline drew near, it was also my mind freaking out about limited time, forcing me to panic and act under pressure.

Once I realized the trick my mind played on me, it became clear where my poor usage of time was coming from. Having identified the cause of my problem, the situation became less overwhelming as I had something else to focus my mind on, which was a solution.

Thus, to do better, I employed the principle of opposite action. How this works is very simple. In my situation, I started doing the opposite of everything I’ve identified to be doing wrong. I started by sorting out my tasks as they came without leaving anyone pending for later. Basically, whatever I can do in the moment, I do not postpone for later.

Although there were times when the volume of activities got overwhelming, what I did in such situations was to draft a to-do list, itemizing each activity according to a scale of preference given the deadlines.

As I progressed with my newfound life hack employing a new mindset, I saw that I was more efficient and proactive in handling my daily activities. Not only that but, I could fit all my to do list in a day and have all task sorted out within 24hours

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