Like most of us, you probably answered “yes” to this question. With the same probability, your mind began to chat with a series of excuses about why you simply can not do more than you already are.

I’m not a time traveler.

But the simple fact is that if you are not focusing your time and energy on the important things, instead of the seemingly urgent things, then you are literally wasting your life.

We are all in some degree, actually. Every time we do meaningless, useless tasks, we are wasting our life. Those moments are irretrievable, disappeared, disappeared, disappeared forever in the emptiness of the past.

Television loses time. The World Wide Web wastes time. The phone and email lose time. Gossip wastes time. You just lost 10 seconds reading about useless ways of using time.

Yes really.

How many times have you said or heard someone else say something like, “Well, I’d love to do that [exercise, hobby, volunteering, etc.] if I had more time.

The problem is this: busy activity is rarely if time is well spent. It is not productive. Being busy is being out of focus and being out of focus makes you spend more time and energy than you really need when you try to do something.

I would like to share an interesting exercise that can prove my point.

Get a sharp knife, a spoon and a cardboard box. Take the spoon and try to make a hole in the cardboard box. Try it a few times and you’ll see how you do it. If you do not make a hole in the box, it’s fine. Now take the sharp knife and try to make a hole in the box. Pretty easy, right?

Busy is being the spoon. The productive thing is to be the knife.

So how are you going about this? The first thing is to look carefully at the things you do and those that are often rejected (probably because you are “too busy”).

Do you love playing the guitar, but never get to it?

Maybe he always wanted to spend more time with his children, but does work keep him so busy?

It is possible that donating your time in a local shelter has been something you have wanted to do throughout your life.

At the top of the left side, write the word “Important” and at the top of the right side, write the word “Unimportant”. Now dedicate yourself to writing all the things you currently do and those you want to do and classify them as one or the other.

Next, identify which of the items in both lists you consider urgent by putting a capital ‘U’ next to it. When you have finished, you will have the principles of a system to prioritize the way you spend your time.

The most important time that will pass will be in the things that are important but not urgent. These are the things you do because you love them. They are the things you do, which are perspective and strategic, either in your life or in your business.

Anything that is not important and not urgent must, for the most part, be removed from your life.

Then, concentrate on the important tasks. Stop wasting time (and your life).

I know the knife.