Self-improvement: Efficient Management of Time

There is a difference between someone being effective and someone being efficient. The former is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. The latter is doing things regardless of their importance in the most economical manner.

For instance, a door-to-door salesperson is very efficient at selling door-to-door but he is utterly ineffective. He could just use email or direct mail.

Two things to keep in mind that might be fairly obvious but often overlooked are:

1. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.

2. Requiring much time does not make a task important.

The key is realizing that WHAT you do is far more important than HOW you do it. Efficiency is only secondary to effectiveness.

How do you become more effective? The key is having more time by doing less. OK. what does that mean? Many people define a to-do list. But how many people also define a not-to-do list? Probably not many do.

A daily to-do list should only have one or two items. Just ask yourself this simple question: "If I can only do one (or two) thing(s) today, what will it be?" How you identify these crucial items is as simple as asking yourself "If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?" Make sure that you accomplish the task listed in your to-do list no matter what by the end of the day. Be realistic with your daily milestones but don't make them too easy to achieve! If you have to sacrifice a social life or a late charge on loans for it so be it.

Just setting one or two tasks a day is already cutting your workload dramatically. But you have to do some them efficiently. This can be forced through using a timer on a stopwatch or this website:

http://e.ggtimer.com/5minutes

(or 1hour or whatever after the second slash)

This is a set limit on the amount of time you have in accomplishing the task. Remember that you're still expected to finish the task by the end of the day so be generous with yourself.

To generate a not-to-do list is almost as easy as generating a to-do list and there will actually be more items. Ah, don't you feel good being lazy? Haha. Simply ask yourself what are the top three activities that I use to fill time to feel as though I've been doing something important. These are aka crutch activities, things that you do to avoid having to do things you really have to do but still have a little value so you don't feel completely bad. You might put things like watching the Discovery channel on TV, reading online news or blogs, and reading random books at a bookstore.

Another thing to note is managing interruptions. You might have the best plan in the world to execute your well-defined goal of the day but then you get that phone call from someone and you end up talking for over close to 2 hours. Then an urgent meeting that you just have to attend. Then some emails to send off. By the time you have lunch and get back, the day is about half over and you haven't even started on your daily goal.

What to do? Actually, it's tips that should go into a general not-to-list:

1. No phone calls while you're working unless it's urgent. Let people know this beforehand by setting a voicemail which tells people when not to bother you. Eventually people will get it.

2. Make business phone calls exactly that. Business phone calls. Do not go off on tangents or letting other people go on tangents by talking about the weather and such. Know beforehand what you're going to talk about.

3. No emails except 2-3 times daily at set times that you check. Recommended is 12PM, 4PM, or 8PM. Do not wake up and check your email immediately. If you do it in the morning, you can get trapped in this email hole which'll take up a good portion of your morning. Also do not check it at night. That will just give you insomnia.

4. No social networking sites, online chatting, watching TV, or any other time wasters except after you've finished your task for the day.

5. No meetings unless absolutely necessary. Meetings for the most part wastes a lot of time. Agree to no meeting where there's no clear agenda and end time. Otherwise, make excuses if you have to for why you bailed a meeting early or why you couldn't make it at all. Of course, always ask someone to email what was talked about at the meeting. Reading the email will take up a fraction of the time of going to the actual meeting. Repeat this enough times and people will get used to your permanent absence. Of course, you have to do actual work. Just make sure you do more work outside of meetings than in them. Let people know what you've done through more efficient means of communications--like talking to them when you actually have a problem or emailing status updates.

There you go. Just follow your to-do-list and not-to-do list (including the general ones listed above) and you should be on your way of using your time much more effectively. With these tips, you'll find that you have more time to do things that are not work. Remember that being overwhelmed is as bad as doing nothing. Having these lists daily will help make sure you fall into neither category.

Self-improvement: Balance of Thoughts on Time

I'm listening to some R&B while sipping on some green tea. My bedroom is tranquil and despite the time of the day has a feeling of permanent lethargy. It is an amazing ambience for reflection or slacking off but a terrible ambience for doing any real work. I use this thought to comfort myself on why I'm writing this instead of doing real work.

When I drive my mind naturally wanders, like yesterday when I daydreamed an epic story in my head for a good hour or so where a god had to do evil to ultimately achieve good but the heroes stayed ignorant of that until the end. There were some amazing graphic scenes and plenty of betrayals and unnecessary deaths. Let me digress no further. Before I jumped into this golden pit of illusions, I thought of an interesting psychological theory:

"Without a balance between thoughts on the past, present, and future, one can never be happy."

The amount of time one's mind dedicates to reflecting on the past, doing the present, and dreaming for the future should be in balance. For instance, if one excessively reflects on the past, one will be stuck in the mentality of past failures or past glories. This will likely cause the person to not like the present either due to regret of events that could not be changed or the seeming reality that the past is much better than the present. They may both be true but dwelling on it too much is harmful to one's mental stability.

Similarly, if one focuses on the present which is the "just do it" mentality, one can lose oneself in the daily reality of life. Where one came from and where one's going should not be ignored since otherwise one can wake up one morning and feel lost in the world. One has lost the meaning of one's life. Lastly, if one dreams too much on the future, one ends up doing nothing useful since the mind consistently dwells on fanciful daydreams.

So how do we find this balance between these thoughts? That depends on the individual since everyone is different. A systematic approach that may work is what I've been doing lately. Simply carry a notebook around with you and carry around a phone with an alarm. Set alarms for random times during the day. When the alarm sounds, write down three things: the time, what you're thinking, and how happy you are. At end of each day, you can take a look at your notebook and see a collage of snapshots of your thoughts during the day. You can repeat this for a week and observe the consistency of your thought inclinations.