If you have a business, there are two ways to improve your bottom line. Either you 1) find ways to increase revenue or 2) identify places to cut expenses. Pretty simple, right? If you want to generate more profit, at least one of these will need to occur.
The same principle holds true in other arenas as well, including the use of our time. It’s quite common for people to long for more time. And since we all know that we can’t actually generate more time each day—we each get 24 hours—that leaves us with only one option for creating more margin when it comes to our time: cutting back on what we’re currently spending it on.
Just like having financial margin allows a business to take advantage of unanticipated opportunities or to weather difficult times, so having margin in our schedule allows us to make the most of whatever happens in a given day.
We never know which friend we’ll run into, or what fleeting glimpse of beauty we may encounter. We don’t what our kids may do or say, or which insights will capture our attention. But if we always feel hard-pressed for time, it’s difficult to actually stop and be present in these moment—either because we have to run off to the next thing, or because our mind is preoccupied with everything else we still have to do.
One approach to creating more margin is to try to be more efficient—going faster and doing more in less time. And this works to a certain degree. But even then, if we gain increased efficiency, we still have to be wary of the temptation to take on even more things, which end up only consuming the margin we just created.
The other approach is to reexamine our current commitments, and to actually cut back on some of them as needed.
For a business owner, if there’s no way to increase revenue, the only way to generate additional profit is to cut expenses. And although this may entail looking for better deals on existing expenses, it also may entail completely cutting back on certain expenditures altogether. Similarly, we can look for ways to be more efficient, but sometimes the only way to create the margin we want (and need) is to simply cut back.
The challenge is this process of cutting back can be difficult. There will always be more to do than we actually have time for. There’s no getting around that. But by choosing to leave (or create) a little margin, not only will we be able to better engage in the moments throughout out day, but we’ll also have the space to make the most of any unforeseen events that may come across our path.