Summary: “Life is just too hectic every single day.” Does this sound like something you’ve said about your life? If it does, then I have something different for you to try. I know you have tried managing your time better, because that is our first response to feeling that there isn’t enough time in a day, but have you given any thought to increasing your capacity? What could you do if you had more focus? Could you handle your amount of focus better than the amount of time you have in your current season of life?<br> <br> Too many times, people focus on the fact that they have so little time left in the day to accomplish what they want to after meeting all of their necessities. This amount of time may be thirty minutes, one hour, four hours, or anything in-between, but the <a href="http://asmithblog.com/most-important/">most important</a> thing to remember is that it isn’t about how much time you have in your day, but it’s what you do with it that counts. This means that whatever amount of time you have in your day to work on the most important things in life, it is more about the amount of focus you put into it, rather than the amount of time you have. When we are able to find our best focus we can do more with one hour than most can do with four. We all know people who seem to be able to accomplish more with their time than anyone else. Focus, not time, is the one thing that those same people understand more than anyone else. Focus increases productivity, which leads to better time management. When I began to see how managing focus rather than time worked in my own life, I began accomplishing more than ever before, and it can do the same for you.<br> Very rarely are any of us able to increase the amount of time we have in a day, but we have all tried to find more of it. Instead of heightening our focus, we try to add time so we can take longer to do tasks that should take days, not weeks. This, of course, is procrastination. Putting things off until the last second then is not a time issue, but an issue with focus. And the first place to look at when needing to increase focus is the amount of things we have going on in our lives.<br> Is your plate too full?<br> As our lives continue, we tend to add more things. It’s only natural. But, the one thing we tend to forget is the need to quit things. For many of us, the easy thing to do is to add, but the much more difficult task is to quit. Never forget the need for both as you strive to live a balanced life.<br> So, now that you understand the need for adding more to you life, while quitting things along the way, you are now ready to understand how you can apply a larger amount of focus to your own life. I have already done podcasts about the importance of getting the correct amounts of sleep for your individual needs, exercising, eating the right foods, and quitting the right things, but maybe you have tried all of these things and need something more to work with. If things just aren’t working the way you want them to in the area of time management, the issue may be that you aren’t asking the right questions yet.<br> Here are the four questions you need to ask yourself to see if you can increase the amount of focus in your life:<br> <br> Who is influencing me? <br> Notice that I did not ask you who the people are that are around you, because some people don’t have control over who they are around, especially at work. (No, my advice to you will never be to run away from every job where you don’t like someone. If that was my advice, then it would be very difficult for you to ever find a job. I can guarantee you that at one job or another in your lifetime, you will work with someone who you don’t perfectly see eye-to-eye with in some way. People are different, and that’s a beautiful thing.) However, it is important to take notice of the people you allow to influence you and speak into your life.<br>
