Many of us manage to stay ‘busy’ throughout the day.  We’re running here, going there, stopping at this place, and going to that place.  Our days are full, packed with this activity or that activity: you have a full time job, you’re a full time student, a full time parent, and/or a full time member of X club or activity.    Between our professional, academic, and social pursuits we’re much occupied.  But have you ever stopped to ask yourself, “Am I working full time or fool time?

Working Fool Time???

Yes.  You’ve read that correctly…fool time. You are working fool time when you falsely believe that since you allot a certain amount of time for an activity that you are actually engaged in that activity for the entire amount of time you allotted.  Basically, if you are fooling yourself into believing that allotted time equals productive time you are probably working fool time.

Time is one resource that we all have in common.

If your clock is anything like mine, it’s got 12 numbers on it.  And when the hour hand takes two laps you’ve completed an entire day.  Twenty-four hours comes and goes.  Now, here’s the really important question: have you ever set aside the time to reflect on how effectively you used your last 24 hours?  Most people haven’t.  I strongly advise you to give this a try.  Take a moment to think about some activities you did yesterday, how much time you set aside for them, and how much of that time you wasted.  Perhaps, instead of analyzing a few activities, you could just pick out one or two.  This will enable you to tell whether or not you are working fool time.

Running My Mouth

I gave myself this same analysis a while back when looking at my exercise routine.  I found that I was spending a little over an hour and a half (1.5 hours) in the gym.  I’m a huge advocate of physical fitness and I love to exercise.  Still, the question I asked myself was, am I truly exercising 1.5 hours in the gym or simply spending 1.5 hours in the gym? How much of that time is productive?  Am I working out fool time?

I knew I needed to be more efficient, so I bought a stop watch and began to time myself.  Every time I finished an exercise I took note of the time and how long it took me to complete what I did.  Not long after doing this, I found that I was:

(1) Sluggish moving from one exercise to the next, and

(2) Running my mouth too much instead of working out

I wasn’t really working out for a full 1.5 hours.  What I was really doing was working out fool time!  I decided I needed to stop fooling myself.  I pity the fool.  So I developed three goals, which were to:

(1) Immediately move from one exercise to the next with no delay

(2) Focus on my exercises and minimize the socializing, and

(3) Maintain the quality of my exercise routine.

How long did it take to see results?

In only five days, I had amazing results. Each day, I decreased my exercise time and still completed all of my workouts. On day one, it still took me 1.5 hours to finish my workout… no improvement. But after that, the results poured in. On the second day I decreased by time to 1hr and 10 minutes; the third day was just over an hour; the fourth day was just under an hour.  I was pumped! Each day I was making progress.  Eventually, I was able to get my exercise routine cut down from 1.5 hours (90 minutes) to 50 minutes on the fifth day!  Wow.  I practically cut my workout time in half!  I added 40 more minutes to my day by simply being proactive about the answer to this question: Am I working fool time?

You can apply this same concept to virtually any activity in your life and you will see remarkable results. I guarantee it!

What’s the big deal about 40 minutes?

What could you do with 40 minutes more a day?  You could use that time to take a nap, beat the rush hour traffic, pick the kids up from school, read a book, etc.  And if 40 minutes a day doesn’t mean much to you, how about almost 5 hours more per week (40 minutes x 7 days)?  You could use that time to go on a date, have a dinner party, take an evening course, or make some extra money.

How to Stop Working Fool Time

(1) Pick one activity that you do, preferably at least every week or most days of the week.

(2) Time how long you are engaged in that activity

(3) Complete this same activity in the least amount of time possible and record how long it takes you.  Keep doing this until you feel you have minimized the time as much as possible without sacrificing the quality of the activity.

(4) This amount of time will be used as your baseline.  Your goal is to conduct this activity in this amount of time, every time, without reducing the quality of the activity

Once you have completed this successfully on one activity, select another activity and apply the same four steps.  I guarantee that you will find yourself completing activities more efficiently and will have more time to do other things that are important to you.

What are you waiting for?  Stop fooling yourself and give it a try!