Time Paralleling, Multi-Tasking

What is time Paralleling according to my definition?  Time Paralleling is a way of maximizing your time, a form of controlled multi-tasking.  I define Time paralleling as running more than one activity at a time in parallel, so as to maximize your time, and to be efficient.  The most common example I could imagine that the average person would understand is a chef put in a complex cooking situation trying to juggle, or multi-task everything he/she does.  This chef would likely have 4-6 top burners cooking at all times.  The chef would have an oven with 2-3 shelves, and likely counter space with 5-10 different ingredients or foods to prepare.

     This chef, with there 10 different foods, different temperatures, different preparation times, different heating elements, etc all have to multi-task at the same time with everything they are doing.  They are extremely prepared and focused on how long everything takes to complete.  What makes it more challenging is that preparing foods, cooking on the burners, and cooking in the oven all take different amounts of time.  What’s more is each food item is at different stages of being prepared from being frozen to being almost done.  They have to keep everything started and slowed, or sped up so that everything is prepared and comes together at the same time.  This chef does a tremendous job of paralleling the time of each food they are cooking, this is a skill someone would go to school for.

      How would the average person use time paralleling in their average day life?  You would use it with running errands, you would use it at home with chores.  You would use it with the time leverage of other people quite often.  Let me use some basic examples of how someone would use it in their every day life.  Whether you are at a Laundromat, or doing laundry at home, you simply shouldn’t sit in front of a washer and dryer waiting for the load to be done.  Bring an educational book, bring educational MP3 audio.  If you are at home just choose something else to do.  I am sure at home you naturally do something else already, but if you are at a Laundromat than just bring something educational to do.   If you have a large food item in the oven, or even something in the microwave for even as little as 8 minutes, don’t just sit there and stare at it through the window, make sure you are working on other things at all times, your time is valuable.

      I think the above examples are pretty obvious, and I am sure you are already doing these things, so let me discuss some paralleling that’s not as obvious.  When I am talking to others in business, I often talk to them by text message, email, or instant message.  It’s not uncommon for people to take 5-10 minutes to get back to me even when they are engaged in a conversation, just simply get on more conversations, or fill that time with emails.  Don’t get too busy where you aren’t focusing, or giving good answers.   While you are waiting for a 25 minute oil change, make some phone calls, bring a book.  While you are waiting in line at the post office, make some calls.  TV shows and movies often have 5-minute commercial breaks these days.  Waiting 10 minutes for your favorite TV show to start, have something else going.  One of the best examples I can give you is listening to educational tapes or audio while driving.  To maximize this time is simply foolish.

       The reason that time paralleling is so important is that your neighbors, your friends are doing it to some degree, you need to do it more to keep ahead of the rest of the population.  This is not a game of keeping ahead of the jones’. This is not a game of showing off with material things.  95% of the population is broke by retirement.  You can’t afford to spend your time the same way as everyone else, you must be constantly watching it, working on it, and paralleling.  Over the course of a week, you will find that this time paralleling will save you a large amount of time.  You can also be doing something while you are waiting for the fax to go through for 5-10 minutes.

     If you are at a sit down restaurant by yourself and waiting 20 minutes, read a book, make a few important calls.  Even one step better, get a bluetooth hands free phone to use.  You can grocery stop while making calls on your phone. You can walk a mile while making phone calls.  Don’t just lay on the couch cramping your hand holding a phone.  Make yourself active, use your hands free cell phone with bluetooth and do almost any hands on activity at the same time, maximize your time.  Many people call this mutli-tasking.  I am fine with multi-tasking as long as you don’t become inefficient at it, and provide bad service or upset people.

      In closing, I believe time management, and time paralleling will become increasingly important in the future, As everyone has increased access to maximize it through new technologies, we will see who makes the best use of their time over the years.  You are familiar with the famous quote about a penny saved being a penny earned, why not a second saved be a penny earned.  Time is money!

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Save Time, Fuel, Money

If you stop to really think about how much time is wasted driving, I believe you will start to realize how much total time adds up over a week, a month, a year. For example, let’s take something as simple as picking up an item from someone, who is in a city that’s 30-45 minutes from you. Could they meet you half way? Could you meet them at a place on their end of town? How much does this 45 minutes really cost you in your life? Actually much more than you think, let me explain.

Let’s look at a simple component of driving 45 minutes to a place, and 45 minutes back. Some people will say, it’s their lunch hour, so they have time. You need to think of every aspect. If Fuel is near $4/gallon, and you spend 90 minutes on the road, let’s assume you are driving 80 miles for that trip in total. If your vehicle gets 20 miles per gallon, that’s 4 gallons of gas consumed for that trip, that’s $16. For someone that makes $10-$12/hr that’s well over 1 hour of additional overtime needed this week to make up for that. In fact you will have to work as long in hours as the trip itself just to pay for it, actually much more, keep reading. Also when you learn later to make your time valuable, you could have done something else with that 90 minutes, so that opportunity cost was lost.

I will explain opportunity cost more in future writings. $16 only is the cost of the fuel itself, if you take possibly another 25 cents per gallon for wear and tear, or in other words, you are using up your vehicle and can expect car repairs later, so 80 miles x 25 cents per mile=$20. Are you adding this up? We have $16 for fuel+$20 for vehicle usage(future car repairs) and also opportunity cost where you could have done something else. We still haven’t counted time spent on getting lost at least a little, you may not get lost this time, but maybe you will detour slightly 1 time every 10 trips you make on average. We have not talked about the time it takes to sit down and type out an address and write down, or print directions on the computer from a mapping website like mapquest.com

So what’s the alternative to this $36 up to an unlimited amount of lost money for this simple trip? How about a 41 cent USPS stamp to have it mailed to you. Which they may pay for anyways. Yes, I know that takes a few days by mail, it takes time, but in most cases this is time that shouldn’t affect your life too much. How about if someone faxes you what you need? Buy a fax machine, they cost very little these days. If you don’t have a fax machine, go to Kinko’s, or a local similar office supply store, even that trip isn’t nearly half the price. How about if someone emails you what you need? These days there are so many alternatives to driving so far away. Also filling your day with busy activities like this only stresses you out over time, if you have enough errands to do, stress as you know causes various health issues later in life after a period of time. Don’t just always feel rushed, don’t just fill your day with busy work.

By having someone mail you, email you, or fax you instead of going to pick up whatever you wanted, you have now just saved a minimum of 90 minutes. I would guess this one time saving tip could be used 3 times per week on average at a minimum of 1 hour per trip, so that’s probably 3 hours per week saved per person for this idea alone. In the example above someone that makes $12/hr just spent $36 for making that 90 minute trip based on the example above and that doesn’t even include lost pay of $18 if they had to punch out, off the time clock, for 90 minutes. Is it any wonder now why the middle class never seem to catch up with their lives, and are frantic and far too busy in life.

The Middle class feels like they are on a treadmill their entire life and never seem to be able to catch up. That person that just punched out, off the time clock, and drove that trip spent $36 + $18 in lost pay, that’s $54 in money spent because of that one trip that could have been done for 41 cents or zero to you, free by email, fax, or other sources. Maybe even something that can be done the next time you are in the area. $54 total for someone who probably makes $80 in an entire day after taxes?

You can see how time choices and wasting your time would be the equivalent of taking 3 steps backwards and 1 step forward. You can’t catch up, you will just keep getting more and more behind in life. Eventually this leads to going to seminars and spending big money on get rich quick type of stuff because you figure that’s all you have time for. Seminars and trainers themselves are fine, just don’t get in the get rich quick trap. Don’t be as concerned about getting rich quick, be more focused about going in the right direction, even if it’s a little slower because we all know that going quickly full steam ahead in the wrong direction can be disasterous.

Think of this scenario, let’s say you were so rushed, that you didn’t pay attention to your directions or didn’t look at a highway sign. Let’s say you drove 60 minutes North which was the wrong way on the highway. The question is how much time did this mistake cost you? If your answer is 60 minutes, then you’ll like this blog, I have some great time ideas to teach you J. The answer is 2 hours (120 minutes) because had you been traveling South is the correct direction, you’d already be 60 minutes south, but having made the mistake, you now have to backtrack 60 minutes to get back to your starting point, then travel an additional 60 minutes to get back to where you would have been, you just lost a minimum of 2 hours you can’t make up, unless you speed, and that will be another writing J.

All this talk about fuel prices, and time has got me now thinking about how much our choices may now change from Flying on a plane vs. traveling by vehicle. No question that airline prices have gone up some because of fuel, but Fuel for cars are up about 100% over the past 12-18 months. If the trip is long enough, it may just make sense to take a plane. For example I am in Minneapolis and have driven one time to Chicago, and I can tell you I will likely always fly in the future. This flying vs. driving concept I will explore in my future writings, so stay tuned. Remember Time is Money!

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Time Choices

Time choices is not so much about somebody looking over your shoulder every day and telling you what to spend your time on is either right or wrong. It’s not about how exactly you allocate each minute with each activity. Time Choices is the idea that at any given moment in time, you have a choice in which direction to go with what you are doing. This concept in itself can get quite big, and have dramatic effects, but for right now I would like to break it down to it’s most simple form, a 24 hour, 86,400 seconds average day.

First let me give away now, why this idea of daily choices with what you do with your time is so important. The reason it’s so important is each tiny decision shapes who you become in the future. It shapes and defines through a journey of steps who you someday will become, or strive to be. Here is how I want to be a little different than everything else you read. I don’t want to be the person you have heard over and over talk about how to clip coupons, or save $2 on some item, and after you save $1 here and $5 there, you will save $500,000 someday many years from now and be able to retire on that.

Please understand me when I tell you, that saving money with your time is better than doing absolutely nothing, but that’s all it is, it’s 1 step up from nothing. Time, and nothing returns on money will eat up your savings faster than you can save it, or make it. You must understand that over time by simply saving and having inflation go up at rates of 5-6% or more every year (it’s probably much more) you will absolutely burn away your 0% return or 1% return you are getting annually on your money while it sits idle.

What I need to teach you is that it’s not just about the money, it’s about how you spend your time. Someday, if your time is wasted, or you make the wrong choices, no amount of money can be thrown to solve your poor choices and deferred way of living. Time is even more of a scarce commodity than you realize. My job will be to prove this to you, no matter how much “time” it takes.

We are all presented with choices every given day, and it’s up to us, not anyone else which direction to go, which road to take, which choice we believe we should go with. One audio CD I would highly suggest on this concept is “The Slight Edge” by Jeff Olson. The idea is that everything we do in life day to day is easy to do, and easy not to do. This theme is repeated over and over, is well presented, easy to follow, and really sinks in. This is a 3-CD set, and I would recommend you to listen to it repeatedly because I think it’s easy to forget, and I believe it’s important to condition your mind, and to create habits based on the concepts taught on this audio.

This CD set leads me to my question for my readers, Is having habits a good thing or a bad thing? The answer is, that it depends on if they are good habits or bad habits. The reasons are obvious, but I think anyone can realize that, good habits done successfully for a long period of time, actually snowball and create momentum. What do I mean by momentum? Momentum means it speeds up, it means that a simple 10 days of successful habits in a row, it does not mean simply 1+1 for 10 days in a row until it equals 10. It’s not just the sum, it’s more of a compounding effect. In other words, it’s contagious. Let me ask you another question. Are things that are contagious good or bad? Again, we are use to hearing contagious being used in the context of being a bad thing, but good things can be contagious as well. We should only be so lucky to be presented with opportunities and to ride the wave of a positive contagious ideas.

It’s time I start to give examples of choices of how you spend your time on a daily basis. Every time you sit down to eat, you can eat vegetables and fruits, or you can eat a well-rounded meal, or you can choose to eat fast food. Why do we eat fast food when we know it’s so bad? Are we rushed? Are we out of time? If that is the case, hopefully I can find you more time in a given day with my writings, so that you don’t feel forced to eat something so bad for you.

Do I myself eat fast food? Sure I do, but far less than I use to, I am not saying you have to quit eating fast food entirely, I am just saying think about it before you do, it’s just as easy to go down a few doors to choose something a little more healthy, you won’t notice enough of a difference today, but over a period of time obviously you will.

How about the example of when you drive to work 5 days per week. Let’s use an average of 45 minutes each way, which is 90 minutes per day, which adds up to 7 ½ hours per week in your car or truck. If you vacation 2 hours per week, then you drive 50 weeks per year. That is 375 hours per year of driving during a regular work week. That doesn’t even include driving for errands, or at night, or on the weekends. Let’s call it an even 500 hours per year for my next example. Many of you drive up to a cabin often, or travel hundreds of miles every year on mini vacations, so 500 hours per year is probably pretty accurate.

What choices are you making with those 500 hours every year you have? Are you talking on the phone about nothing important? Are you listening to gossip on the radio? Are you listening to music from 30 years ago? Are you listening to people on the radio complaining about their lives? Why are you doing any of these things? Why not put in some tapes or CD’s training you to be a more well-rounded person? why not get educated in a few areas of your life? I don’t just mean listen to something boring that makes you hate the entire drive. Mix it up some, listen to some about health, some about investing, some about getting better about your business, learning family values, learning home budgeting. Listening to educational info for your mind 500 hours per year create a huge impact, it’s like getting a degree, or taking college classes.

Many people are already doing this every day, every week, every month, every year, and if you aren’t, and you are listening to gossip radio, you are becoming “dumber” every day. The gap between others and yourself is widening every single day right now as we speak. That’s why the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. It’s because sometimes they are both going in complete opposite directions with their daily choices. I realize poor and middle class people are not able to have access to some things because they don’t have money. Do what you can, and make sure you are at least going in the right direction, make those right choices, hour by hour, day by day. One day the sum of all of those choices, or should I say the compound effect of all of those choices, defines who you will become. It’s a challenging journey, but it’s a journey you’ll be glad you made, when you reflect back.

Are you eating out of a carton of ice cream watching Jerry Springer on television, or are you eating fruits and vegetables, while watching something educational, maybe like “The Big Idea” on CNBC. Are you sitting down eating fatty chips watching gossipy celebrity shows, or are you stretching and doing very easy activity for 25 minutes while you are watching something rewarding.

The choice is yours to make, both are easy to do. If your momentum goes in the wrong direction, the wind is against you, it creates friction, and life gets tougher every single day you wake up. This is the part that amazes me about people about their actions and choices, why would you make daily instant gratification choices, defer what’s most important, when all it will do is just haunt you someday. It’s not like years later when the going gets tough you can step out of your shoes and detach yourself from the ball and chain you have created. At that point, you are now stuck, you are in a ditch that is extremely tough to dig your way out of. In fact it’s the deepest ditch you have ever found yourself in, in your entire life, most likely. For example, why would you smoke when it has been proven to shorten ones life, and increases many health related illnesses. I think people should spend their life’s choices and their time, with the idea in mind that they have something to look forward to someday.

Another very important point about listening to these educational audios on television and in your car, and I can’t emphasize this often enough, this is the ultimate time leverage. You are taking what is a lifetime, or a career of mistakes that others have made before you, and you are getting trained, and getting the highlights of the right things to do, lessening the chance for future mistakes. Other teachers have made it a mission in life to teach you how not to make the mistakes that they have made in the past. Take advantage of this great opportunity, and listen every moment you get. $8 for a used book, or audio, is a small price to pay for this education.

I will have future posts about choices we make in our lives, and our choice on how we spend our time every given day. I would appreciate if you keep reading for many weeks and months to condition yourself towards the goal of bettering yourself, with the idea in mind that someday you can take what you have learned and make that contagious towards others, so that they to can benefit from your education through time leverage.

We need to be very decisive about our selves, our goals, our purpose, and what we really want in life. Don’t waste your life doing nothing at all. We ultimately write the story of our life. We act in our own play as the lead actor. We can choose to be our own hero, or we can be our own worst enemy. It’s up to us to decide who we believe we can truly be!