It’s great that you’ve recognized the impact of spending excessive time on mobile devices and the value of engaging in more meaningful activities. The shift towards spending time with family and engaging in creative pursuits can significantly enhance your personal growth and well-being. Recognizing that excessive mobile use is a problem is the first step. Understanding how it impacts your productivity and relationships can motivate you to make changes. Whether it’s improving your writing skills, learning a new hobby, or simply spending quality time with loved ones and having clear goals can guide your actions. By shifting your focus from passive consumption on mobile devices to active engagement in creative and meaningful activities, you’ll likely find greater satisfaction and personal growth. Keep exploring new interests and cherish the time spent with your family and on your creative pursuits.

The post What are your thoughts on wasting time on our mobiles? appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Today, it seems that one does not have enough time for all the things one wants to do. Twenty-four hours a day is simply inadequate for school/college, study, sleep, time with family and friends, play and exercise, TV, WhatsApp/Facebook/Instagram — and, of course, one needs to set aside a little time for daydreaming, too. There is only one way out: we must plan ahead, decide our priorities, and make a time schedule in which we include all important activities. We must prioritize the important task over the trivial, and balance immediate fun activities against those that are less interesting but beneficial in the long run.

What Is Time Management?

This is ultimately about making intelligent decisions about what are our most important priorities, and then using our will-power to do those activities first. When we are short of time, we may need to ignore activities that are less important, no matter how interesting and enjoyable they are.

a. Activities that are both Urgent and Important: Activities like preparing for the next day’s exam, should receive first priority.

b. Activities that are Urgent but Not Important: Yes, it’s good fun to spend a lot of time reading humorous forwards on WhatsApp. We get frequent notifications of our friends’ Facebook and Instagram posts. We receive phone calls while we are studying or even sleeping. Though most of these calls, messages and notifications are inconsequential, we feel compelled to read them and respond immediately, due to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). The truth is that these are major distractions. We should silence notifications, but keep aside a little time every evening for WhatsApp and social media. This is the only way we will find time for the next set of activities.

Subscribe to The Teenager Today print / digital editions to read the full article.

The post Do You Have the Time? appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Unpluq helps you reduce your screen time by breaking your habit of picking up your phone and endlessly scrolling. Recover your time and focus by making a conscious choice every time you want to access an app. Select the apps you don’t want to use and create a Schedule to automatically block them by day of the week and time. E.g. create a Productivity schedule wherein you block social media apps during study hours. Open blocked apps with a Distraction Barrier – a digital key that makes you think twice and ensures you really do want to open that app. E.g. take a walk, shake your phone, follow a random pattern by tapping, charge your phone, or use the NFC-powered Unpluq Tag physical key. Emergency Mode allows you access to apps in an emergency, and you can whitelist contacts, so notifications from them always get through.

The post Unpluq: Control Your Time appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright, the famously-known Wright brothers, decided to try something different during their school vacations. After several attempts over the years, they finally succeeded in making the world’s first air-controlled and powered flight aircraft at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, USA, on 17 December 1903. It marked the era of aviation. Likewise, many artists, sports personalities and writers have begun their journeys to renown from doing something in their leisure or holiday time.

Your holidays could be a time to explore some creative things that you always wanted to try. You could use this time to explore some new places, to read some books you always wanted to read, try some new hobbies like painting, cooking, knitting, dancing,or learning some musical instruments and thereby discover and develop your hidden talents. Most of these hobbies can greatly increase your self-esteem and enthusiasm in life. Most successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Sundar Pichai recharge their lives by leveraging something they are already very passionate about. It increases the level of success and provides potential to improve their skills.

An excellent way to relax and regain your physical and mental energy is to initiate yourself into yoga and meditation during this vacation. Yoga is an exercise focused on your body’s natural resources for health and self-healing. It is designed to create strength, awareness and harmony within both the body and the mind.
Meditation is a process of training your mind to focus. It helps to reduce stress and to increase concentration. People who do meditation can often remember detailed tasks more accurately and it may even reverse patterns in the brain that contribute to mind-wandering and poor attention. Meditation can also lead to an improved self-image with a more general outlook increasing positive feelings, which then come out in our actions.

In the present issue of The Teenager Today, you will find the inspiring story of a young Mumbai boy, Prabhat Kohli, who started with a childhood hobby of swimming which eventually took him to the height of creating a world record on 3 March 2023 at the age of 23. This issue also narrates the exciting story of Vijay Luiz, swimming with orcas during his holidays. Other articles on the good habit of reading are meant to enrich your vacation in the coming weeks. Wish you a rejuvenating and exciting vacation!

The post Making your vacation creative appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Author: Jan Yager
Publisher: Better Yourself Books Pvt. Ltd.
Publication year: 2019
Pages: 237; Price: Rs 280

The time management books of the 20th century are outdated in this advanced digital age. That is why Jan Yager, an eminent sociologist, time-management and productivity guru, penned the bestseller Put More Time On Your Side to aid the youth of the AI technology age in using time-management skills to better their prospects of getting more work done on an everyday basis.

This is a concise book that does not skip the important aspects of living in a heightened technological age, especially meant for those who have to read their emails on a daily basis, and for students who are addicted to social networking sites. The book is relevant, well-crafted and presented, and it can be applied to your life immediately, whether you are studying, working or doing both.

“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” — Jim Rohn (American entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker)

After studying time-management for several years, including books by motivational speakers like Jim Rohn, Jan Yager wants to tell the youth of today to stop smartphones from turning them into slaves for short-term fame or as compulsive work machines. With the ability to have 24/7 online communications, constant compulsive texting and long hours of useless scrolling are the issues facing the young today. Through inspirational quotes, journal entries, personal anecdotes, and time-management charts, Yager helps the young to clarify their priorities in life and avoid any ‘time-wasters’, which are habits that stop them from getting done what they truly want to do.

With the help of this book, young entrepreneurs, high school and college students can apply laser-sharp focus to what they set out to do every day. Yager mentions excellent ways of using technology to aid in time-management rather than it being detrimental to overall productivity. She especially focuses on how to avoid wasting time by mindless multi-tasking and switching back and forth between checking statuses on social media sites and WhatsApp messages. It is also innovative in being one of the first self-help books in the market that discusses the new age ‘internet’ psychological diseases like fragmentation and distractionism and how to overcome them.

A mix of traditional-classic time management skills and a new outlook is what Put More Time On Your Side is all about. It has minimal quotations, but more useful tips to help change your life, along with an excellent bibliography to follow up on. You only need to realize which technology can help you and which one will bring you down completely, especially when you have an urgent deadline or board exam.

Let’s learn how to prioritise, initiate and evaluate our actions for better time-management by reading Jan Yager’s valuable and timely book. Get your copy of this book today and change your time-management skills for productivity, happiness and success.

Available at Better Yourself Books and all St Paul Book Centres in India

The post Put More Time on Your Side appeared first on The Teenager Today.

As Marc Levy, a French writer, said, “If you want to know the value of one hour, ask the lovers waiting to meet. If you want to know the value of one minute, ask the person who just missed the train. If you want to know the value of one second, ask the person who just escaped death in a car accident. And if you want to know the value of one-hundredth of a second, ask the athlete who won a silver medal in the Olympics.” The time given to you is like a kite (this being the kite-flying season in India) in the sky. To take the kite to greater heights, the kite-flyer has to take charge of the thread and guide it according to the direction of the wind. Every person is given the same 24 hours every day. But we find that some people manage this time well and become successful, while others fret and sweat, feeling that they don’t have enough time.

Time is the most valuable gift and the key is not spending it somehow, but investing it intelligently. Shiv Khera, in his famous book You Can Win, explains this through the story of two woodcutters who went to the forest to cut trees. The first one cut, day after day, lesser and lesser number of trees, while the second was successful in cutting the same number every day because he spent daily some time to sharpen his axe. Sharpening the axe is synonymous to investing your time to care for your body, mind, heart and soul so that you are prepared to face your future tasks.

Besides your studies, work or daily life chores, invest your time in doing regular meditation, spending time with your family, reading good books, attending seminars or talks and doing physical exercises. This will bring long-term results in your life. Therefore, manage your time well by prioritising your tasks, and writing them down according to their importance. Hack away the non-essentials from your life. Concentrate on one task at a time. Develop the habit of good Time Management. Take care of your time, and time will take care of you! Wish you a joyful and successful New Year!

The post Making the best use of the New Year gift appeared first on The Teenager Today.

A new academic year or semester is like the sun that shines brightly in the sky after a long night. It carries the dawn of new beginnings. It brings with it a fresh opportunity to accomplish goals that were not. It gives you another chance to evaluate yourself, and brings with it another opening to start anew.

It is crucial to know ‘how’ you could make the most of what is given to you as another chance. The foremost thing to do is to identify your goals. But you also need to create a precise roadmap that would lead to the achievement of those goals, just like the treasure hunter in your favourite adventure stories creates a plan and follows his roadmap to reach his treasure in the cave that is hidden in faraway isolated mountains.

5 roadblocks on your roadmap to success this academic year

Roadblock 1: Goal Setting

“Your dreams are your dreams until you write them down.” ~ Anonymous

Yes, you must write your dreams down. This practice will turn your dreams into goals which will entice you into taking actions that you would need to achieve those goals. Give each goal a time limit within which they should be achieved. Everyday take long strides or tiny actions towards fulfilling your dreams.

★ Set a positive momentum. If you want to achieve good grades this academic year, don’t tell yourself, “I will stop going out, playing or doing anything else till I achieve my goals.” Saying this makes you a prisoner in your mind. Instead try this: “I will dedicate hours in the day or night every day as serious study hours, and will also accomplish every other task/s before or after my serious study hour.”

★ Keep a list of your goals in a place that you frequent often. Doing this will remind you each day of what you have achieved and what is yet to be achieved. This will not only act as a reminder but will also be a great motivator in achieving pending goals.

★ Set goals that are achievable. It takes practice, patience, discipline and consistency to be able to achieve a goal.
Set goals that you could achieve as short-term goals and long-term goals. For example, completing assignments on time is a short-term goal. A long-term goal could be losing weight. Identify time limits to completing each of those tasks in your day or throughout the year.

Roadblock 2: Time Management

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, over-whelming tasks into manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
~ Mark Twain

A new academic session/semester is the best time to kick that procrastination, and jumpstart your engine to life. On your roadmap to success you cannot have obstacles like procrastination acting as a barricade to achieving your dreams/goals. You often don’t realize how much time you lose by just sitting there and daydreaming or pushing off tasks to do till the last minute. Maybe you should consider telling yourself that in the holidays you did away with time as you wanted, and now you got to make a timetable and manage your time effectively.

Successful time management techniques:

• Once you have clear goals to achieve, identify which of these goals fall under short-term and long-term goals.
• Setting goals will help you prioritize and identify which of those tasks fall under the “important” or “urgent” categories throughout the day and the week.
• Make weekly maps to understand the school/college tasks to complete, studying to do, and extra-curricular activities to accomplish. These maps will help you analyze your tasks that fall in the urgent or important category.
• Make a daily schedule that is flexible, and that prioritizes tasks that need to be accomplished urgently from tasks that are important. The schedule will also help in assigning time limits within which each of those tasks needs to be achieved.

Read the full article by subscribing to the print magazine or the digital edition.

The post Gearing up for the new academic year appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Does it not feel that time is always running out? There is eternally so much to do and so little time to do it? And the entire math about time just doesn’t seem to add up? How can we multiply, divide, add or subtract time when truly the wall clock listens to nobody? And even when you remove its battery, the clock might not tick, but time still doesn’t come to a standstill. Time is something personal to you. Nobody can take your time away from you. You keep it, use it, waste it or lose it; it’s always in your hands. It’s yours. Time is subjective. And yet, time is malleable.

Real versus Personal time

Real time is also understood to be instrumental time, which is available for you to do what you must. And this is universally constant; we all have 24 hours in a given day. Some spare 5 minutes for a brisk shower while others make the luxury of 45; many go for a good workout at the crack of dawn while others want to use that time to sleep; some need to clear their room and perform daily chores themselves and use the pending time for homework while others use it for sport simply because they have the time and facility in excess.

Personal time, on the other hand, is your distinctive awareness of what is happening around you, how much headspace you are saving for tasks that are meaningful to you as well as for other tasks that you might find boring. Personal time feels different to two people even though the duration of that time is exactly the same. Like you loving the cookery class and hoping it would last forever versus your not-so-creative friend who says that it was so long and tedious it looked like the hour would never end!

When time flies… or drags

The way you organize information in your brain alters your perception of time. Research shows that when you record more of your surrounding experiences and pay greater attention to retain what is going on, you tend to remember them more, and slow down time. But then ironically, the things we enjoy seem to make time pass by faster. How might that be happening? Do we not want to retain the best moments?

If you really step back and think about the time you were watching your favourite movie or enjoying your favourite game, having fun at your birthday bash or enjoying the cookery class we spoke about; do you think you had too much going on? There may have been music, friends, chattering, eating, socializing, enjoying and gossiping; and you were not able to focus on any one thing in particular. Which means your brain did not retain all of those fun moments long enough. And time seemed to fly by you. And you wish the party had lasted longer. Or the game had yet another round for you to devour. And then on another day when exams were nearing and your mother asked you to study, nobody else was around. There was no television, no gossip, no music, no limitless food, nothing innovative to excite your enthusiasm, and no actively engaging distractions. That evening you thought that the dinner break and your night’s sleep seemed light years away. Time really appeared to be slow then.

Read the full article by subscribing to the print magazine or the digital edition.

The post How do I make the most of my day? appeared first on The Teenager Today.

→ No!
→ Not now!
→ It’s too early!
→ I’m not just ready!
→ I haven’t completed it yet!
→ I’m not geared to start as of now!
→ I haven’t made up my mind about this!
→ I’m still thinking and I guess I will decide soon!

When is the right time?

Learning to prioritize, i.e., filtering essential tasks from the trivial ones isn’t easy. It is human nature to second guess, procrastinate, postpone, reschedule and yet again, adjourn. It just seems like it’s never the right time, doesn’t it? Never right enough to follow a healthy diet or exercise, or sort the desk, complete your homework, or spend time with family? And then where is the time to speak the truth, to own up, to apologize and mend broken friendships and relationships? But if not for all this, what do we have the time for right now? There are big things in life and then there are little things. And we need to accomplish everything in this one lifetime. Prioritizing is hence very important.

Sort yourself

Usually the muddle is not in the room or desk or school bag. It’s in the mind. What you see around you is a reflection of what goes on within you. It is very likely that you know what you must do and when you have to do it. You don’t need anyone else to make timetables for you. It is important to go to the craft store to pick collectibles and make a birthday card for a close friend because it’s his birthday tomorrow. This may not be as important two weeks from now. But homework, class assignments, studies, exercise and family are always important. These are the big things that you ideally should always budget for. The little things can always be squeezed in once the big ones are sorted.

The clock won’t stop ticking

You can, of course, remove the battery of the clock and stop its ticking, but time still won’t wait for you. We don’t have to work like robots with every minute of our day timed and dedicated to a specific task; however, the clock does exist to remind us that time is always passing and there are things to be done. And in our life, we are the only ones who can do them. Everyone has their own preferences on how they use or misuse their time.

Read the full article by subscribing to the print magazine or the digital edition.

The post What time is it? appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Most of us have known the horrors of procrastination. We think we will get to a task and keep postponing it till the deadline is upon us and there is just not enough time to complete the task at hand. Somehow the activities I need to do seem like work and my brain attaches all kinds of negative feelings around it making the activity even less pleasurable. My mind which is always in a buzz therefore seeks distractions which will give me a greater sense of pleasure and maybe happiness. But in reality I end up feeling guilty, bad about myself and unaccomplished as I have not fulfilled the task at hand. So here are some tricks that I have learned which make me manage procrastination rather than battle it.

Time as your friend

When I have a hard task to accomplish I attempt the Pomodoro Technique, developed by Francesco Cirillo, where we take a timer and only attempt the task for 25 minutes and then take a scheduled break. Since 25 minutes is a short period of time it makes it easy to start the task. Plus the scheduled break or a scheduled quitting time can make focusing a lot easier as there is a 5 minute break just round the corner.

Reward cycle

To manage procrastination well it is important that we replace the negative feelings towards work with anticipation and pleasure. Thus, till you reach the stage where you yearn for the sheer joy of learning (yes that can happen too…) it is really useful to intersperse your focused time of study with simple rewards.

Read the full article by subscribing to the print magazine or the digital edition.

The post Tactfully managing procrastination appeared first on The Teenager Today.