Since I had made all those earrings, I have been wearing them like everyday….well, actually I should say different one for different day. Now some people in my office are under an impression that I have a lot of time.

Don’t ask me if this is the truth. Of course it is not if you have a normal functioning brain. This thought is ridiculous if you think about it. I mean, how could one person have more time than another person, as we are all given exactly the same 24 hours a day. I suppose the right way to put it is, some people have “LESS THINGS” to do than others….it’s not “MORE TIME”.

But do I have less things to do than others? I very much doubt it.

I know I don’t have kids, and all my family and relatives live far away which means I don’t need to spend time to look after them. But other than that, I just live as everybody else in this world. I work full time, I am a housewife, I cook, clean, wash, shop, I organise almost most of things for household, and I look after my husband; I participate in social life and keep contact with all my family and friends, I travel, I knit, write, learn new knowledge and try new things, and I do sleep about 8 hours a day…… seriously, I think if I believe that I do LESS things than any others, I must be crazy.

So when the people say “looks like you have more time”, I always said back “I am just an efficient person”. Frankly I don’t find it embarrassing to say that, because I really think I am. If you’d like to know an example, I can tell you I almost did double work of a colleague who works exactly the same days like me, and almost four times of another colleague who works 3 of 5 days, and I am accountable to more than 3/5 of expenditure of the general funding in the past 3 months. But this is not the point. The point is I also had maybe double or triple of their spare time at the work just playing around.

Here are some tips (and my theory) if you are curious about how I did it:

1) Get rid of your kids and pets: if you don’t have one, try not to have one If you have one, get rid of them I can’t tell you what to do, because you are just not able to be told

2) Find a job that you only spend the travel no more than 20minutes: It doesn’t matter you travel by feet, or by train or by bus or by car. Believe me, there is nothing can compare to a job that involves in almost no travel.

3) Never work overtime: walk out of the office at 5pm sharp. Working overtime won’t make you feel any better, it can only makes you miserable. And working extra 30 minutes often costs you slower recovering, and you will notice that it’s not just 30 minutes, maybe you will suffer 3 more hours sequela .

4) Make a plan in the morning: write a list about all you want to do today, tick them off when you finish it. You can only achieve when you have a goal; when you don’t have one, I sugguest you’d better use that time to play.

5) Don’t argue about who is SUPPOSED to do the job, just do it youself: You will find it rather quicker to do the job yourself than fighting over it about who is supposed to do that, which I find probably the most time consuming and such a waste of the energy. Trust me, most of time, it’s really not worth it.

6) Being prompt: If you say you finish this in 20 minutes, don’t do it for 30. Shift the task when you had planned to shift.

7) Do more than one thing at a time: Yes, I am not joking…if you well organise it, you can do more than one thing at a time. Watching television while knitting; cooking while filling up all the empty spicy bottles; Washing while watering the garden; showering when scrubbing bathroom tiles…. Just grow out of what you have been taught when you were 10 years old by your parents or primary teachers, otherwise you probably will find yourself end up like a dummy.There is just no such thing as “一心不可二用”. It’s not wrong, it’s just not real.