Add more hours to your day by giving back to others

Time is free. But it’s priceless. You can’t own it. But you can use it. You can’t keep it but you can spend it.

This quote is a reflection about the nature of time. How important it is to manage your time well. If you don’t you will continue to regret it in the years to come in your life. Don’t we all want more time in life?

“Oh how good life would have been if we had more hours in a day.”

The irony is that this one wish can never come true. No matter how much we want it there are going to be only 24 hours in each day of our life. If we make the most of every moment, these 24 hours are more than enough for everything.

“Want to make the most of every second you spend at work? Start using ProofHub to manage your time.”

But, how can anyone achieve this? The secret to achieving this state in your life lies in giving back to others. Yes, it has been proven scientifically that if you spend time doing something for the others you get the feeling of having an extended time.

In one of the papers published in Association for Psychological Science, titled ‘Giving time gives time’ it was demonstrated that that the subjective sense of people, of time affluence, can be increased by spending time on other people.

I’m going to quote the experiments of the study here -

Wasting your time versus giving your time

In the first experiment, a group of people were asked to devote their time writing a letter to a sick child. While another group were given the task to count the letter ‘E’ in a latin text.

Doing something for yourself versus doing something for others

In the subsequent experiment, the same set of people were asked to do something for themselves that they had not planned for the day. And, the second group was asked to do something for others that they had not planned for the day.

The results

Results of both the studies led to the conclusion that people who were involved in doing something for others felt like they had more time than their counterparts who were given the other task.

Now, the question that you might have in your mind would be — how does this fit in the life of a 9 to 5 working employee? Here’s how -

Brainstorm with a stressed co-worker

Sit with a colleague who seems to be stressed. Talk to him/her and see to it if you could help them destress. Ask if there is something you can take off their platter that would make them stress-free or even a little less stressed out.

Share your words of working wisdom with juniors

There can be nothing better for juniors to have a senior come and share his/her words of working wisdom with them. So, never miss out on the opportunity to sit together or maybe hangout with them after the office. This can prove to be a great learning experience not only for them, but for you as well.

Volunteer for something new that you have not tried

Be part of some volunteer work beyond your office hours. Devote a couple of hours every weekend to work with an NGO or perhaps you can get your team together and involve them in starting something of your own that focuses on helping the needy.

Try out these methods and you are surely going to feel the difference. I can say it because I’ve given them a try myself. I’ve made it a point to invest a little time every day helping people around me. Being a manager I don’t have to look for opportunities to guide someone or help people in my time. There’s always something up in my plate. It has worked quite well for me. I feel more contented, and in better control of the working hours that I have in a day.

“Want to become a leader who gets things done? If yes, then stop using email to manage work and switch to ProofHub.”

Originally published at LinkedIn.

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Vartika Kashyap runs the marketing team at ProofHub — a project management software for teams of all sizes. She is a seasoned marketing professional who is an expert in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. She’s been featured among LinkedIn’s Top Voices for the year 2016. Connect with Vartika on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.

Also follow our company page @ProofHub to get the recent updates about our tool, published articles, motivational quotes & presentations.

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