If you Google time management you will get a million results. Apparently a lot of people are searching for a way to manage time and a lot are writing about it. A lot revolves around a To Do list and thus ways of managing those. Some others talk of managing your energy and not time. Jeremiah Dillon, now head of Insights and Strategy at Google Cloud Marketing had a take that is easy to understand and apply. Think of yourself as a Maker and not a manager. According to him Managers typically divide their days in to 30 min chunks while the maker designs his work in half or full day chunks. Working without disruption is one of the most referred method for productive output. Deep Work by Cal Newport, the seminal book on working in a highly distracting world shows that shutting off the noise for prolonged period helps you think and do. The key in all this is an uninterrupted block of time that helps thoughts flow.
The way to do it, according to Jeremiah is scheduling “Establish an implementation intention”. Several other studies show that committing fixed time to specific work – i.e. scheduling everything in detail – this applies even to allocating personal time. That way you will start saying No to things and stop over scheduling your day or weeks. Dave Gerhardt posted a few weeks back on how slotting everything in his calendar including time to check mails have made his productivity shoot through the roof. If you follow Dave on LinkedIn he is a very high output person even without that. Jeremiah cites a study with would be exercising groups and the group that was asked to “commit to exercising at a specific place, on a specific day at a specific time of their choosing” ended up exercising 91% of the time.
Jeremiah also points to another interesting fact – that of energy levels across the week referring to the book by Tony Schwrtz, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working ( not surprisingly the subtitle reads “ The power of full engagement”). With a slow start on Mondays you are at Peak Energy on Tuesday and Wednesday (get the most critical stuff for the week done then) and by Friday afternoon your energy levels are at the lowest – so spend time on long erm planning and stuff. On regular days “Always bias your Make Time toward the morning, before you hit a cycle of afternoon decision fatigue. Hold the late afternoon for more mechanical tasks.” – writes Jeremiah
At Pitch.Link we experimented with ‘first half-Zero interruption’ policy. Here we do our own uninterrupted work in the first half of the day and keep all meetings, clarifications etc for the 2nd half. In emergencies we pick up the phone and talk as we may not be looking at our Slack or mails. This has definitely helped us be more focused, significantly boosted productivity, made us appreciative of others need for uninterrupted work. Most importantly it forced us to look for ways to think ahead and clarify thoughts and ideas that we would be working on the next morning.
There is no silver bullet to loose weight. Or to manage time and output. But what helps is a perspective that is easy to fit into your work life.
Try and be in the Maker mindset and see if works for you.
Create and protect your Make Time, people: https://bit.ly/2JGjJ6i
One Googler’s take on managing your time:
Implementation intention: Wikipedia https://bit.ly/2Hp97G9
