What makes effektive people so effective? Why do some people succeed in getting every amout of work done, whereas others have trouble getting through their day? Do productive people posess something we don’t have?
I don’t think so. It’s more likely the other way round: we have something that stops us from being productive. A kind of barrier or wall that stops us. Our goal for today is shattering this wall piece by piece.
If something is in our head, we can change it. That may not be easy all the time, but we do have a goal that is worth the effort.
The basic problem is that there is an infinite amount of things out there, waiting to be done. An infinite amount of things wanting our time and our attention. On the other hand is our time finite. Just like a box, only having room for a finite content. So we can put only a fraction of all possible things in our box. Which one?
Mostly, we spend our time in a sloppy way. Everyone nows how it feels to spend 100 €. But how does it feel to spend one hour? I won’t equate time and money, but maybe we should spend our time like we spend money: more carefully!
The first step of solving our time problem is therefore to find out what we want to do in the first place. We can ask ourselves with everything we do: What is the goal of this? Why should I do it? What happens when I don’t to it?
To find our greater goal, it might be helpful to use a map. A mindmap, with onesself in the center. And around it everything that matters to us. Now compare that mindmap to your calendar. What are we doing right now to reach our goal? Is what we spend our time on really what brings us towards our goals?
Using red ink can really help. Many activities througout our day turn out to be superfluous when we ask why we do it in the first place. Economists might know the 80/20 rule, the Pareto-principle. 20% of the customers produce 80% of revenue. With our activities it is quite similarly: 20% of the time is good for 80% of the result. Now the big question: which are those 20%?
To find those 20%, we could for example sort our tasks into the following grid:
| Urgent | Not urgent | |
|---|---|---|
| Important | 1 | 2 |
| Unimportant | 3 | 4 |
If we test this against our daily activities, we usually find that we spend a lot of time with things from field 3, unimportant but urgent stuff. Tasks from field 2 however often stay undone. In other words: we care a lot about doing things right, but forget to do the right things!
We are knowledge-workers, people that mainly do nothing but add value to information. Nobody cares how exactly we reach our goal. We get a task and all that matters is the result. In between lies a black box, the content of which we define ourselves. But instead of working straight towards our goal, we let ourselves be distracted all the time and go an indirect way towards our goal. We get interrupted by emails, instant messages, tweets and switch between tasks all the time. And we try all that, although we are biologically incapable of splitting our attention to multiple tasks, we try consequently to do just that: multitasking.
In my CV I list a different qualification: monotasking. If we recognize what our brain is able to do and focus on just one task at a time, we reach better results faster.
Why should we minimize external distractions? Simply because we can’t think straight even without them. All the time our mind wanders off, thinking “Oh, I’ve still got to call X!” or “Oh and I have to mail document Y to Z!” How can that be effective?
The “Getting Things Done” approach of David Allen and others offer a solution: outsourcing. This means that we try to move everything that whir around in our head to a simple, external and trustworthy system. The problem is a systemic one, so we need a systemic solution! Having your head free can actually be accomplished. In Karate, we call that a “mind like water”. Many other sports people might know it as the “flow”. Maximum focus.
A system like the one I spoke of consists mainly of two parts: first you need one place for everything, a planner or piece of software where we can put everything. The second thing is a set of good habits:
Even if we are perfectly organized, that does not mean we really complete our tasks. One big problem facing many of us is procrastination. Procrastination is not exactly doing nothing, but doing the wrong thing and feeling shitty about it.
So, how to I motivate myself to start a task? We are great in negotiating with ourself: “Not today, tomorrow will be enough!” or “I don’t have enough energy to do that now!” As sciencists, we question everything … so why not ourselves as well? If we stop talking crap at ourselves, we can get on. It is enourmously helpful to know your goal. If I don’t know where I want to go, how can I motivate myself to make the first step?
You can proceed just like you would make a child clean up it’s room: “Clean up!” – “I’m not in the mood.” – “Mh, can you do your bed?” – “Yes.” – “And can you sort your desk?” – “Yeah.” … so: step after step, managing one small task at a time.
Starting with the hardest on is worth the trouble. If you have done the most difficult task of the day, it’s all downhill from there.
To summarize that: If you have to eat a frog, don’t waste a lot of time looking at it first! If you have to eat three frogs, don’t start with the small one!
Have fun!