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Time Management: The Trick and the Trap || Acharya Prashant, with Delhi University (2023)
23.5K views
2 years ago
Time Management
Value Management
Priorities
Extracurricular Activities
Self-Development
Student Life
Social Media
Values
Description

Acharya Prashant responds to a student's concern about not having enough time for extracurricular activities. He expresses surprise, stating he thought schools and colleges now focus much more on extracurriculars than they did in his time. He recalls that during his college days in the late 90s, facilities like squash courts or swimming pools were rare and inaccessible outside premier campuses. Today, these amenities are more common, and the funds for them are bigger. Therefore, he suggests the problem is not a lack of resources or time, but a matter of the priorities that students set for themselves. He illustrates this by pointing out that even when facilities are available, most students do not use them. For example, in a batch of 350, perhaps only 25 would ever step on the tennis court. This is a choice. The real issue, he explains, is how students spend their free time. He highlights that many students waste hours on social media, staying up late scrolling through reels. This wasted time could have been used for productive activities. He argues that the feeling of being under time pressure is a deception, as a lot of time is frittered away on unproductive things. Acharya Prashant concludes that time management is actually value management. Your time flows towards what you truly value. If you are not giving time to something, it simply means you do not consider it important, regardless of what you might say. He advises that to truly know yourself, you should objectively track where your time goes. This time profile is a clear representation of your mental and value profile. The cumulative time spent on wasteful activities, like social media, is a huge loss. If you find you are short of time for important things, it is because you are giving a higher value to something else, often something wasteful.