Time(?) Management. credit: geralt
We all know that proper time management is key to getting things done.
Hmm... Is it?
We have all tried at some point in life to find out the best time management tips and incorporate them in our time.
Hmm... Are there any best tips that fit everyone?
With time, I've realized that most of those tips have been chewed, swallowed, regurgitated and recycled countless times, by various people in hundreds of articles, programs and in every way possible...
Moreover, most of those tips have been referencing the very same result oriented originators - the good guys who shared their best practices, that apparently suited their personalities and were not intended to be taken word for word in the first place, or even to work for anyone that would adopt them.
However that's exactly what we usually tend to do, reasoning that whatever advice come from highly successful, respected human beings, should be immediately adopted and treated like gospel. (Authority bias).
In reality, it is not exactly so, as not everything suits everyone - so whatever works for you, great! Embrace it! Whatever does not (and no matter who shared the tip with you), just throw it away; or, if you feel it is a really good one that simply does not suit you right now, put it aside for later reassessment.
In my personal case, I found that managing time should come hand in hand with managing one's energy, as without that, you can become a very efficient robot thanks to the "super cool tips", but progressively unhappy too, which I guess is not a goal for any of us.
How come we all fall into that "efficiency above all" trap someday?
You see:
"10 ways of improving your productivity"
or
"7 keys to getting things done"
sound sexy and appeal to our imagination. We love clicking titles of that sort and getting some partial, out of context random tips for how to get more done in less time. Even if they make us unhappy!
But wait a minute...
How about:
"Getting only the right things done"?
Or, how about:
"Getting things done and not hating life at the end of the day"?
Hmm... I think those sound pretty sexy too, don't they :)
That's why I love handling things with an integrated approach - no area of live is more important than any other area. You should always strive to be as balanced as possible, because otherwise every technical improvement you introduce to one area of your life, will be short lived and will not bring peace of mind or a sense of living a better life - which I regard as a better gauge for advancement, rather than a simple "I have more of" whatever.
In other words, overall quality of life is the best indicator of how well you are doing, and how good whatever you are doing benefits your life quality - health, wealth, happiness, love etc.
Although everyone can benefit from best practices of highly effective people, you should never disregard your own preferences and personalty, and actually test what works best for you.
With this in mind, let me share with you, what I've chosen to adopt as some of my methods for being effective and getting more done in less time:
(1) Wipe out bullshit items
Bullshit!. credit: geralt
Always have a clear, beneficial reason for doing whatever you want to do - if you don't have a good reason, find one. If you can not find a good reason that is going to serve you in the long run, then it probably is an addiction or something you do as a way to escape from what you really should be doing.
This probably is a bullshit item.
You can safely remove this one from your list and lose nothing. You can only gain from dropping bullshit items.
(2) Do NOT Multi Task!
(or rather, multi-task correctly)
Unless you really have to - and I know that sometimes you simply can't escape that.
Time and time again, scientific evidence has shown that humans can not operate in parallel mode. Whether you are a man or a woman, you can only switch between tasks really fast, creating an illusion of parallel multi tasking. In reality, you are just shifting your focus from A to B, B to C, C to D or randomly jumping between A, B, C, D etc.
This is a practice that is very expensive attention-wise, and you lose energy while performing those switching acrobatics. Now, I realize sometimes you have to do this - I myself do it more than I probably should be, because the switches provide a sense of distraction and it is kind of fun, but there are better ways for getting the required fun element than by wasting your time and energy - we'll talk about that a bit later.
Just realize that if you give undivided attention to something for 10-15 minutes, you can get it done straight away, rather than carrying it with you for hours as you erratically switch between the different tasks; those very same tasks, If done correctly, with dedicated, undivided attention, could have been completed in an hour or 2 instead of taking 4 or 5 hours of your precious time and energy!
In his amazing book "Pre-suasion" (a sequel to "Persuasion"), Robert Chialdini shows (based off scientific social research, obviously), how influencers actually utilize this human inability to significantly increase their chances of influencing you. How?
By applying 2 principles which are inbuilt in your mind:
- Leaving a loophole, a mystery
- Channeling your attention
1. Leaving a loophole, a mystery
That's when you hear/see something so interesting, that makes you so curious, that you simply can not help but keep on doing whatever will get you closer to "closing that open hole", or "finding out that mystery".And it has been shown, that every open hole, or the so called "mystery", makes you cognitively crave to ״get done with it״ so powerfully, that it causes you discomfort as long as it is open.
Now, suppose that you multi task between 3 or more tasks, progress with them "in parallel", and you deliberately leave "open holes" in all of them because you enjoy multi tasking or thinking you are good at it.
Realize, you might be enjoying multi-tasking because of the anticipation for "figuring out the mystery" of every task, causing yourself unnecessary discomfort and stress at the same time. You waste more energy and it all takes you more time, so reconsider your liking for multi tasking - is it worth it?
Instead of cluttering your consciousness with several tasks simultaneously, consciously keeping them open in parallel, you could have opened and closed them one by one.
There is a small chance that you are one of the lucky few "super taskers" that have shown extraordinary ability to multitask, but it is pretty unlikely. In any case, multitasking has an additional toll on your energy and peace of mind, so take that into account.
2. Channeling your attention
By channeling your attention to something specific, you actually focus better, and whatever you are focused on grows in your consciousness - it seems more important, more relevant and your mind is totally in the context of that specific something, making your brain, better fitted to that specific task - for better or worse. Obviously any feature of the human brain can be used wisely or abused.
Once channeled to something specific and engrossed in it, you can actually enjoy doing it (even if it seemed to you totally unappealing prior to getting started), which is another added benefit of getting really immersed into something, rather than skimming the surface of multiple tasks at a time.
When you have awareness of this principle, you will use it intelligently to get absorbed in the present task, summon all your resources to your aid, get done with it, and "flush your memory" without needing to "reload" all that data into your brain at a later time. Plus? Enjoy the process as you do so - because making every task as enjoyable as possible, is just as important as getting things done.
Why?
Because if you suffer in the process, you are burning yourself out - your desire, your energy and your excitement will wane away, leaving you a little less enthusiastic about life with every task that you cross out by suffering through it.
(3) Diversify
Go play an instrument or talk to someone! credit: langll
Tired from the current task? Stop!
Forcing yourself to go on (unless you have a deadline that can't be ignored), will drain your energy, exhaust your will power and make you feel irritated. When you force yourself to do something against your will, you actually are consuming your will power (makes sense, doesn't it - you go against your will!) as was demonstrated in an experiment that I first read about in Charles Duhigg's amazing book The Power Of Habit.
You can read about the experiment in short here, but definitely add the above book to your must read list - knowing how habits work, are created and can be changed, will literally transform your life.
(4) Do not eat the frog first thing in the morning!
A normal frog! credit: zdenet
"Eating a frog" is a metaphor in time-management for a most dreaded task that you must accomplish.
I personally find it rather distasteful to start my day with "eating the frog".
However, this practice is regarded, supposedly, as one of the best, or at least one of the most common advice on time management...
Well, maybe be, for some - not for me for sure.
I find that for me it is most effective to get into a momentum of accomplishing things by first doing a "warm-up" task or 2 - like with working out; you don't get up in the morning, run to the gym and yank the heaviest weight for a perfect start.
Usually, you wake up, hopefully perform one or two actions from your daily routine, maybe eat something small and sweet like an apple or a banana, and then go out for a warm up / run / stretching before you start with the heavy lifting. I approach my time management the same way.
I get going with a short sweet task that I know I can finish in 10-20 minutes. Once I put a green check on it and get the initial pheromone flow, I get to my "frog" with anticipation. If the frog feels to heavy on me, I might accomplish one or two more lightweight tasks, get that good feeling about myself accomplishing things, and then jump on the monster frog and "kill" it! (No real killing, no worries - I'm vegan hehe)
More often than not, by the time I reach the "frog", having prepared myself mentally and emotionally, I even don't see a "frog" anymore - it is more of a "princess" that brings with it enjoyment and growth.
This way, it all flows very naturally and I do not have to struggle with myself for an inappropriate warmup. task(the frog). I warmup properly and then get things done. Makes more sense to me and feels much better too.
Obviously, shit happens, and sometimes you will have to deal with the "monster frog" straight out of the bed - and that's OK. When you have to, just do it ✓.
But no need to live your whole life life as if you "have to".
Like, if a crazy psych serial killer is after you - RUN as fast as you can and do the heavy lifting if needed!
That's emergency.
Normally, warm-up and train yourself so that when emergency occurs, you have the mental and physical capacity to deal with the occasional shit. Whereas, if you live your whole life as if you were running from a psycho killer, when the psycho comes you might be so exhausted or indifferent, that you will not mind getting killed. No need to be at war, when there is peace outside.
(5) Minimize urgent things by proper planning
If you plan ahead, you will have less and less "frogs" to it.
"Monster frogs" usually exist because you have probably been procrastinating something for too long.
If you kill the monster when it's too small, it won't even feel like a monster or too big a challenge, yet you will save yourself a ton of time, nerves and suffering in the long run. In other words, as Lao Tzu put it:
"Do the difficult things while they are easy".
Do not wait while you don't have a choice. Do those things in anticipation of what will probably happen, simulating the future outcome and avoiding it before it actually occurs - especially if it is mostly likely to become a distasteful one.
(6) Nothing is urgent - Either it's Important or it's not
This is something I first heard from my mentor Abraham Nov, and I was rather resistant to accept it.
"But how, how can you say that?!?" - I insisted. "There are things that are urgent!"
That's what he told me:
They might be urgent, but what does it have to do with you?
You decide whether they are important to you or not; no matter how urgent something is - It's either important to you or it's not. If it is important, find a place for it in your calendar. If it's not important?
Ignore it. No matter how loud or flashy. It might not be worth your time and energy.
Thanks for reading! Hopefully you got a thought or 2 that you are going to apply in your everyday life :)
Before you go, what are your 2-3 best practices in effective time/energy management that you find particularly useful in your day to day life?
Please share them in the comment - I'd love to hear your thoughts and keep on improving myself.
P.S. Check out this post with 3 awesome (proper) multitasking guidelines that I use almost everyday, almost in everything I do.
They might not only make you more efficient in the long run, but add to your self confidence and overall happiness as well >>
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