Using the “Time Between Time” to be More Productive

We all have the same 24 hours in a day.  That is 1440 minutes per day to do everything we want to do.  Some people have the incredible ability to seemingly get a huge amount done in that time, while others never seem to be able to get much done, even when they have free time.

One of the most effective techniques to deal with time wasting and make us better at time management is using the calendar.  This is not a new technique; people have been using paper wall calendars to note their important appointments for decades, businesspeople have used desk, pocket and then electronic calendars to run their businesses.  We all have them on our smart phones now, so this can be a particularly strong time management practice.

While successful people are usually expert at using the calendar, they have another technique that is very easy to implement but is also incredibly effective.  They use what we call the “Time Between Time.”

The best way to understand this method is to think about all of the time we spend in small moments where we seemingly cannot do much.  Things like waiting in line for coffee in the morning, riding the train to work every day or being on hold on a phone call.  While some of them, like commuting, are large enough that many people use them, the small bites of time appear to be of no use to us.  Taking a 30-minute train ride or even a car ride can be useful in a variety of ways:  we can read, listen to audio books or podcasts or do some writing. 

But what can we do with the 5 minutes in the line at the grocery store or the 15 minutes we are in our dentist’s waiting room?  A surprisingly large amount actually.  If we add up all of the 5–10-minute spaces in the day, we could easily come up with 30 minutes per day.  That is 2 ½ hours per week, more than enough to read many books.  Or write a blog article or book chapter.  Or write sales copy for your side business. These small blocks can add up to large results.

This might seem great in theory but the question that inevitably comes up is how?  These small blocks of time do not seem to allow us to prepare for what we want to do, but they do!  If you would like to read more, having a book in your pocket handy to read will do the trick.  So will having an app on your phone that you can read books on; there are a number of them, including Overdrive, a free library app that allows you to check out books from the library and read them on your phone or tablet.

Want to write a blog article?  A pocket notebook and pencil will do the trick, or you can go high tech and use the note app on your phone or tablet.  The same can be used to write a book or sales copy.  The point is to make it so easy to do that it can be done at a moment’s notice.

So, rather than spending those precious small moments scrolling through social media or checking email, you can use the “time between time” to make strides towards achieving your goals.