This is a piece of advice from The Four Hour Work Week that I need to re-learn and re-apply on a regular basis: Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness…
Tag: time management
You make a bad decision (because everybody does).* You get busy fixing it – on top of all the other things you were already doing. You get tired and distracted. You start doing less of the right things, less well,…
… is great when you’re working on your own, bashing through emails or making something. It’s less good when you’re making important decisions, working with groups of people or dealing with situations that require listening, sensitivity and thoughtfulness. Whether it’s…
Back to back meetings are a bad idea: Unless you or the chairperson is really good, you’re almost certain to be running late at the end of the first meeting. You need time – at least half an hour –…
What would happen if you made a 30/90 rule? It looks like this. 30 For every “ten minute job” that isn’t completely routine – an email, a payment, a quick call – allow 30 minutes in your schedule. Then you’ve…
No doubt about it: a sense of urgency helps us make get things happen and get stuff done. The problems come when we’re urgent about the wrong things: We’re urgent as we approach big deadlines, but not about early thinking,…
The idea is really just this: time on a watch is not the same as time in your head. An hour can fly by or seemingly drag for eternity. Time as we actually experience it, rather than as we measure…
… isn’t the push to meet a tight deadline, or what you do under pressure. Crunch time is when you have a bit of time, space and discretion about what to do, and you don’t really feel like showing up.…
As in, “I don’t know where you get them.” I can’t make more time*, and you almost certainly know more than I do about managing your energy. But here are a couple of thoughts about doing stuff – and having…
There is never enough time. There are theories about why we’re so bad at predicting how long things will take: the planning fallacy, Brooke’s law (admittedly a variation on the theme), and my personal favourite, Hofstadter’s law: It always takes…