How to take ownership of your time
hi my name is nasra karma and i’m a
fourth year medical student studying at
king’s college london as someone who
gets bored quite easily i find myself
taking on as many projects as i can
challenging myself to be as productive
as possible in the 24 hours we have each
day that’s why i go to the gym two to
three times a week i also run and play
basketball i have a successful youtube
channel with over 650 000 subscribers
i regularly socialize and hang out with
my friends and do all this while being a
full-time medical student
going to the hospital on most days and
then spending multiple hours studying at
home
as a result of this i often get asked
hey nasser where do you find the time to
do all these things and that’s what i
want to share with you in this talk the
theme of this tedx event is mirrors and
immediately when i heard this what came
to mind is standing in front of the
mirror and looking at the best version
of you
who you want to be in the future the you
that started going to the gym and is now
a happier
and healthier person the you that
started that side hustle with your
friend and now earns extra income each
week the you that took 30 minutes each
day to practice a new skill
like yoga or coding or public speaking
and is now feeling accomplished because
you’ve become good at something new in
this talk i want to share with you the
basic building blocks that i use
every day to fit in absolutely
everything that i want to do in my life
taking ownership of your time making
promises to yourself and visualizing
accomplishments
i think the first and most important
step in taking ownership of your time is
realizing that you
and only you are in control of your own
time i really don’t like the phrases i
don’t have time or i wish i had more
time because i
truly truly believe that everybody has
enough time to do what they want in
their day
it’s about realizing where that time is
taking ownership and control of it and
using it effectively
and the reason that i say this is
because i know that the vast majority of
us whether we realize it or not whether
we want to believe it or not
spend around an hour of the day probably
in the best case scenario just
wasting time and when i say wasting time
i’m referring to activities that bring
us little or no value to our life
a great example of this that i think a
lot of us can relate to is endlessly
scrolling through social media on our
phone
now i don’t think using social media is
inherently bad in fact i get a ton of
value from watching other things that
people put out on social media
i’m just saying that once we pass that
point and we’re sitting down endlessly
and mindlessly scrolling through our
phone
that’s when we’re wasting time now if we
take that example and we look at it as a
single event
maybe you’ve spent an extra five minutes
10 minutes scrolling through your phone
mindlessly it’s not really that big of a
deal but if you do that multiple times a
day
every single day then you’ll find that
over the course of a week this obviously
adds up to a substantial amount of time
and if that time adds up to something
like two or three hours then just
imagine what you could be doing with an
extra two
or three hours in your week you would
never say the phrase i don’t have time
or i wish i had more time again and
that’s
just one example we haven’t even talked
about going down a youtube rabbit hole
or calling or texting your friends
endlessly binge watching tv shows we
haven’t even touched those uses of time
now all those things do have their own
value and they are useful it’s just when
you do them in excess and you’re
mindlessly doing those things that’s
when it becomes a waste of time the
point that i’m making is that every
single one of us has within our day
probably around an hour of time where
we’re not doing something that’s
bringing us as much happiness or
fulfillment or accomplishment as it
could be we can take that time repurpose
it mold it shift it and put it into
something else that we actually care
about
a passion project playing a new
instrument learning a skill whatever it
is that you want to do
so i think this first step is to realize
that the time that you’re looking for
that you wish you had in order to do the
things that you want to do
it actually does exist in your day you
just have to identify it realize where
it is
and then take it and use it to do
something else that you actually care
about
the second building block that i use is
that i make promises to myself that i
can actually keep we’ve all been in
these situations where we tell ourselves
that we’re gonna do that thing tomorrow
or we’re gonna start our new project
i don’t know when the clock turns to the
hour or i’m gonna get off this couch
after watching one more youtube video
we’ve all been there
and one thing that i find really helps
me break out of a situation like that
is that i make a promise to myself i
very truly believe that if i’m not gonna
hold myself
accountable if i’m not gonna be my own
hype man if i’m not gonna make sure that
i get things done then who is
who else is looking out for me it’s this
whole idea of shifting my thinking from
relying on
external factors for motivation to
relying on internal factors for
motivation i don’t want to be reliant on
anybody else or any external factor
that’s outside of my own control
in order to make sure that things get
done which are relevant to me
if i tell myself that i’m going to start
studying tomorrow at 9 00 am
then at 8 55 you will find me on the
desk with my coffee and with my snacks
ready to start the day and the reason
that i start working at nine if i’ve
told myself that i’m gonna start working
at nine
is that over the last couple of years
i’ve made thousands and thousands of
these deals or promises to myself
and i’ve delivered on them every single
time if i tell myself i’m gonna go for a
run in the evening despite what the
weather is like despite whether i’m
tired or not
i have to go on that run in the evening
because i told myself i was going to
same goes for meeting up with a friend
or completing a project on time or
whatever it is in your life that you
need to do
if you tell yourself you’re going to do
something then stick to it
show up deliver on your own promise no
one in this life cares about you
more than you and nobody has more to
gain or more to lose as a consequence of
your actions than you
and when you identify with a person who
is always punctual who always gets
things done
who delivers on time who sticks to their
promises you will become that person and
you are that person
so you take accountability of yourself
and your own actions
and do what you promise yourself that
you’re going to do
the last building block that i want to
talk about is visualizing your
accomplishments
i love the nature of routines because i
feel like it holds a power over us as
humans like pretty much nothing else
does once you’ve done something a couple
of times in a row or for a couple of
days in a row
you have this sort of internal motivator
that pushes you to continue doing that
thing
humans really don’t like to break
routine so i think harnessing the power
of routines and using them to our
advantage
is a very very good way to extract as
much value as we can from our time
and do all the things that we actually
want to do and the best way that i find
to maintain a routine is to visualize
your progress and visualize your
accomplishment of doing that activity so
let’s say for example that you’ve gone
to the gym three days in a row
or you’ve avoided eating sugary foods
two times in a row
or maybe you made a smart spending
decision that you otherwise wouldn’t
have done
make sure that you reward yourself
anything that you’re proud of make sure
that you visualize it in some way shape
or form
write it down on a piece of paper or a
sticky note and put it on your fridge or
maybe on your desk in front of your
monitors that you can see
every single day write it down on a
whiteboard in your room or you can put
it in the notes app on your phone
you can even download all kinds of apps
in order to keep track of habits and
track your progress every single day
whatever it is that you choose to do
make your accomplishments easily visible
and easily trackable the more easy it is
to track your progress or your routine
or your habit then the more likely you
are to do it and the more likely you are
to get that positive feedback loop from
seeing your progress and encouraging you
to do that thing more and more
before you know it completing your tasks
tracking them and seeing your progress
is going to become second nature
and when you build that routine you’ll
have the opposite problem that you had
before
instead of finding it difficult to get
started with a habit you will find it
difficult to break that habit because
you’ve been doing it for so long and you
have that internal motivator
to keep the gears going
if you’re skeptical or apprehensive
about these building blocks that i use
to take control and ownership of my time
just try this make one promise to
yourself of something that you want to
do whatever that thing is
one time specify a date and time in
which you’re going to do that thing
write it down on a piece of paper and
place it somewhere where it’s visible
and lastly walk into your living room
and say that thing
out loud you’ve just made a promise to
yourself now keep
that promise thank you for listening