It’s pretty strange that employed people look down many times upon those who are self-employed, entrepreneurs in the making and even established Entrepreneurs. Many a time, they quip “You don’t have a full time job like us, so what’s the big fuss about?”. Somewhat true. Many self-employed persons do not have a fixed regimen for their daily routines (such a contradiction!). They sleep late, wake up late or early, depending on their schedules the next day. Unlike the employed rats (haha!), the self employed mostly do not have to punch their ID cards or report on time, save for people like me who keep the Office keys with myself so I reach before my team does. 

In a recent spiritual discourse, a pandit was referring to how mechanical lives are today, thanks to so many gadgets. No cooking with coal, so the food takes lesser time using LPG. And with a microwave, it’s even faster should one prefer the ready-to-eat stuff which takes 2 minutes to cook (btw, I have never ever made Maggi in 2 mins in 2.5 decades!). My dad would cycle to Madras Central Station to 25 mins and then take a suburban train to his ITC Factory where he worked for 33 years. I drive down in my SUV and reach Office in less than 15 mins. And many such daily chores where we have learned to save time. So where did all these so called “saved time” go? How do we end up using the saved time?

Interesting perspective indeed. While I woke up this morning to catch up a 7.20am flight, I was wondering why couldn’t I wake up everyday at the same 4am (have been a rising star at 5am for a few years now). An elaborate lunch at home takes 30-40 mins, chatting with family while a working lunch takes less than 15. By taking an Ola ride for a meeting which could take a long time, one saves the time and effort of driving down, Saving precious time to read or prepare for the meeting ahead. 

I added my time saved for the day over a period of time and figured out that I actually had 25 hours on an average in a day compared to others who had only 24. A Gujju businessman once said, “Money saved is Money earned”. Cannot be more appropriate than with “time” as well. In fact, Time saved is actually more money than money earned or even saved.

 Some quick tips – but it could work differently for you. 

Completely avoid Mobile usage for the last 1 hour of your working day, no matter when you hit the sack. Thanks to constant communication and irrelevant social media, we are made to be awake and keep responding to someone or the other. Similarly, stay off the Mobile for the first 1 hour of the day. Yes, their would be a lot to catch up for the 7-9 hours you’d been away (hopefully on to sleep). But by not getting distracted to the vicious cycle of responding, you could save a lot of time. Between the two, you have already saved at least 30 mins of wasted time. 

Calls. There are pesky calls, and some important ones. No matter who it is, save for your immediate family, propose the call for a scheduled time. In fact, postpone any such call and for all you know, the call may never take place. Say 5 such calls a day with business associates, your own staff or second degree connections, especially your personal banker who wants to introduce a new Savings or MF plan that you avoid, you have already saved another 30 minutes to the day. And for all business calls, schedule a time with the other person. It builds a bit of respect for each other’s time for both parties. 

Social Media – I think enough has been said about this. Let me tell you my own experience. I bought an Android Mobile for the first time in my life last year just to understand how it works (I moved from BlackBerry to Apple a decade back) and shifted all social media apps to this device, cleaning up the iPhone 7 128 GB so much so that I have only 40 Apps across Music, Banking, Travel and Utilities and consume less than 25GB over all. And my Android Mobile phone is always in my bag, so I don’t see, hear or get delighted (sic) by notifications. The amount of time this saved remains unexplained and uncounted for. Trust me. And these are just few methods. Work out yourself and see how many hours you added to your day. Use time wisely.