Time, Focus, Schedule

I organized a Mastermind group last summer with a couple of coworkers. We met each week to help and discus our plans with one another. During one of our meetings the problem of "not enough time" came up. I'd been reading a ton of self-help books and taking copius notes, so I offered to type up a summary of some of the best advice I'd come across and share it.

Here are those notes.

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Matt,

You mentioned “time, focus, and schedule” several times as the thing blocking your progress, so I’ve advice for you below regarding each of those points. Most of it comes from notes I’ve taken from books, but there are also some links to web articles, and a little bit of my own philosophizing. Let me know if you need anything else.

~ Justin

Time

• In training and coaching thousands of professionals, I have found that lack of time is not the major issue for them (though they themselves may think it is); the real problem is a lack of clarity and definition about what a project really is, and what the associated next-action steps required are.
• Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.
• Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness--lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.
• You feel overwhelmed because (A) you have agreed to/taken on/planned to do too many things, and (B) you’re not making progress on the things that matter to you.
• The solution to A
• “It is not daily increase, but daily decrease. Hack away the unessential.” -- Bruce Lee
• Learn to say “no”. This should be your default response to all requests. It’s stops new things from coming in.
• Cut out the things you’re doing that aren’t important. Use the Eisenhower Decision Matrix to evaluate things.
• The key to having more time is doing less, and there are two paths to getting there, both of which should be used together: define a to-do list and define a not-to-do list.
• The solution to B
• You don’t actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it.
• Break large tasks down into chunks that you can actually complete in a single pomodoro (or under 1 hour).
• Consider the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) to identify and focus on those tasks that give you the most “bang for the buck”. Go for the “big ticket” tasks that will actually move you closer to your goal.
• Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion, so put time limits on everything.
• It’s easy to get caught in a flood of minutiae, and the key to not feeling rushed is remembering that lack of time is actually lack of priorities.

Focus

• Don’t ever arrive at the office or in front of your computer without a clear list of priorities.
• If you don’t prioritize, everything seems urgent and important. If you define the single most important task for each day, almost nothing seems urgent or important.
• Being busy is not the same thing as being productive.
• Use the Pomodoro Technique to knock out your tasks.
• Do not multitask. If you prioritize properly, there is no need to multitask.
• Separate your working space from your living space and eliminate distractions (phone, email, tv, etc.). Despite popular opinion, the human mind really can’t multitask.
• Don’t confuse the complex with the difficult. Most situations are simple--many are just emotionally difficult to act upon.

Schedule

• Choose three tasks for each day -- really important, high-impact tasks. These three Most Important Tasks (MITs) should be your focus each day, and ideally you should do them before working on any tasks of lower importance.
• If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it is defined.
• Batching is the solution to our distracting but necessary time consumers, those repetitive tasks that interrupt the most important.
• Example: email. Stop constantly monitoring and responding to email throughout the day. These interruptions and context switches kill your productivity. Instead, only check email once per day, set a time limit and respond to everything at once. Process your inbox to zero, then move on.
• Find a scheduling/planning system that works for you. Check out Zen to Done.