You mean I'm paying money to read free stuff?

A reductionist and selfish (?) view below but bear with me for a moment.

I read a lot online. It could be work-related, for studies, for learning something new. But the most common and ambiguous category of stuff I read is anything that is 'interesting' to me. This could be in the domains of current affairs, news, politics, religion, movements, technological advances, entertainment, psychology and many more. Do I learn something new through this? Sure. But for the most part this new learned entity is 'information'. I'm well-informed thanks to my reading. It doesn't imply I'm growing as a person because of it.

Indulging in this 'interesting' category also costs me a lot of money, I think.

How? I'm spending time on this reading business. Over a year, an average of an hour a day spent reading translates to 350+ hours. And this is a conservative estimate, also excluding additional time spent thinking about the stuff, talking about it, etc. That's close to two months of a full-time job. Instead, what if I had used at least some part of this time for learning a new skill or just earning money in a different way. Maybe I'd have finished reading 'The Intelligent Investor' in the past one year and started investing. Or performed freelancing tasks. Or set up a little business. Or monetized this blog.

Instead, my time and attention is going to an army of online writers and journalists. Since how much an article is read and shared, how many views and clicks it garnered is probably the primary metric for their paycheck and them keeping the job, I think I've been contributing to their (economic) bottom-line (I won't go into how well or poorly this breed is paid). So every time I read such an article, in a way I transfer some of my money to them. In this context, hate-reading would be especially painful. Why pay money to someone you dislike!

Suddenly, that urge to read about the latest political scandal or a supposedly incredible thing someone somewhere in the world did is dissipating.

Sure, there could be many non-tangible benefits of such reading. What I have to decide though is whether the cost is worth it. I don't think it is.

A beautiful way of looking at Time

In his introduction to the Pomodoro technique, Francesco Cirillo gives some context to how he thought about and developed the idea of the method.

He says there are two ways of thinking about time, described by Bergson and Minkowski.

One is the Abstract way. The other is to view time as a succession of Events.

The Abstract way of looking at time creates more anxiety and is counterproductive. Cirillo offers his Pomodoro technique as a solution; it is based on viewing time as a succession of events.

I'm wondering how looking at time in a particular way leads to such a big difference in how one works.

The Abstract way leads to thinking about time in a linear manner - imagine a line in dark space marked at regular intervals with seconds, minutes, hours and so on. This line extends into space in both directions - to infinity (since we don't know when time 'began' or when it will 'end'). You are standing on this line. This is your line. If you look around, the people in your life are on each of their own, similar lines.

And these lines are moving, constantly. Time is constant, elusive, you can't stop it. You are either running or walking or crawling on it, depending on what's happening at the moment (I'll let Einstein tell you why this passage of time seems so relative). Everything you do is measured against this passage of time, secondary to this movement.  This constant  measuring (conscious or unconscious), added to the comparisons made with others around you 'more successful' in managing time creates anxiety. As Cirillo says,

'We lose our élan vital, our vital contact, which enables us to accomplish things. “Two hours have gone by and I’m still not done; two days have gone by and I’m still not done.” In a moment of weakness, the purpose of the activity at hand is often no longer even clear.

What's worse, you don't know when this movement will suddenly stop. The moment to moment transition makes it look like you have an infinite amount of time left but you know at the back of your mind that you have no idea when you will suddenly drop off the line.

As opposed to this, you can measure time in events. Here too, time doesn't stop. However, you are now measuring time in terms of what is happening and what you are doing. Immediately, I can see how this approach leads to being more aware, more mindful (I have to plug my favorite word sooner or later). Perhaps that is the reason why he says this approach does not cause as much anxiety. Instead of fretting about the time passing by, you are now primarily looking at what you are doing with that time. You are actually living in the moment, to use the cliche.

[Reminds me of how a common piece of advice in schooldays was to measure how much was studied instead of how many hours were put in for studies. Of course, the latter way of thinking was also heavily encouraged by some disciplinarians. I suspect its popularity was because of how convenient and tidy it sounds - 'put in 5 hours of study daily' or 'pull an all-nighter' sounds more impressive and awesome than saying 'read and understand two chapters and answer 20 questions'.]

Cirillo has created the rest of the technique based on this concept and other ideas. Quite impressive. I like that the method isn't rocket science. It really reinforces some of the good habits we commonly learn as children and fine-tunes them, while keeping things simple. The simplicity makes it easier to inculcate it into a habit.

Changing the concept of when a day starts

Just an experiment.What if we started thinking that a day starts at 9 pm instead of when one wakes up in the morning or at midnight?

Well, you could have a rocking start to the day with friends, dancing, parties and booze. Or you could start the day by spending time with family. Or waste time in front of the TV. Or if you are the organized disciplined types, you could start the next day by getting your clothes and food ready.

The next best thing about this day is you get to sleep right away! If you are anything like me, you love sleep. You'll be getting good sleep for several hours, not just a little nap.

Ok, so nearly half the day is over, you've enjoyed your time till now AND you are well-rested. A good time to run or work out or simply go for a walk. It's fun to take a break right in the middle of the day have coffee and breakfast.

And all you have to do now is squeeze in a few hours of work before the day is over and you get to food and fun again. If you are a work masochist, think of this - you will be working 'late' since the day ends at 9 pm. But who cares? The next day is going to start with fun and sleep.

3 basic steps to find the time for getting things done

I'm a fan of Jennifer Derrick's writing over at Savingadvice.com

In this oddly-titled piece (well, you can't really capture wasted time), she lays out 3 basic ways to avoid wasting time. It starts by being mindful of our choices.

Here are some excerpts providing a gist of the article:

"I finally had to determine that the novel was more important to me than some other things. Once I made that decision, time miraculously appeared."

So the first step is to decide for yourself what is important for you. I'd add that it is also important to write this down on a piece of paper and stick it up where you can see it everyday. The act of writing (physically putting pen to paper) is vastly underrated.

"I decided that my project was more important to me than TV, mindless Internet surfing, sleeping in on Saturdays, and even some household chores. It required some conscious thought on my part. Whenever I sit down to watch TV, I ask myself which is more important: The show, or the book. The book almost always wins. Whenever I find myself mindlessly clicking links on websites, I ask myself which is more important: The newest stupid viral video, or the book. Again, the book wins. Can the dusting wait one more day while I finish a chapter? Of course it can. Suddenly all kinds of time became available once I stopped wasting so much of it."

 The second step is to apply that decision before every act one chooses to do during the day. The key here is 'conscious thought'. In my opinion, this is very tough and she covers that later in the article. I'd highlight the part about one's project being more important than 'even some household chores'. Household chores are one of the most common ways to procrastinate. I am guilty of this way more than I'd like to admit. Although this flies in the face of theories like structured procrastination, I prefer Derrick's way of giving up some chores in favor of the project at hand.

 "Wasted time is time spent doing something that isn’t important to me or fails to move me forward.....While sometimes it seems like time is limitless, the truth is that it isn’t. I’ve started asking myself if whatever action I’m about to take is important or something that will get me closer to my goals. If the answer is no and I have a choice, I don’t do the activity."

Can't emphasize this enough. The third step is to remind yourself again and again of your mortality and the limited time you have available. This is not a morose way of going about your life. Instead it is empowering, as Steve Jobs pointed out in his famous commencement speech. Again, a conflict arises here - if my time is limited why not spend it in doing things I love rather than on some activities which I need to do (say, for a living) but which I do not enjoy. The answer to that are beyond the scope of this post but some people have tried writing about it. The answer is more nuanced than simply finding work that you are passionate about and love to do. Of course, if you do have work that you really love, that's great.

"Paying attention only to what is important requires conscious thought on your part, at least until you get the hang of it. You have to constantly evaluate everything you do to see if it represents wasted time and attention."

This is where mindfulness comes in. It is a fascinating concept that I'm still exploring as yet but Leo Babauta has written extensively about it. i particularly like his concept of pausing just for a second before giving in to the next temptation. If you have given thought to what is important to you and why, this pause should serve as the moment when those reasons come back to you and prevent a slide into another bout of wasted time.

"I thought I’d be more tired from keeping so active, but I’ve found the opposite to be true. The more I do each day that is important to me, the better I feel."

This is my favorite part  of the article because it clears away one persistent doubt I've had. It seems like a fallacy now, but I'd always had this idea that working with intense focus will drain you out and you will need to take frequent breaks. and if you keep taking breaks, won't that affect your focus? So, those two concepts seemed to contradict each other. I now realize that breaks are needed, but it's equally true that getting work done (the real work which is important to you) will make you more energetic. It is like a positive feedback cycle. Reminds me of Zig Ziglar's concept that action creates motivation and motivation creates energy (which in turns feed action). So, you will need breaks but less and less frequently.

In summary, decide what is important for you (and write it down), remind yourself of your limited time and consciously apply that decision by taking a pause before every time-wasting opportunity that comes up during your day. There are more ways to do each of these basic steps effctively and I'll write about them in the coming posts.

Any other ways that have been beneficial to you in getting things done?