This time of year, most of us reflect and ask ourselves if we have accomplished what we wanted to for the year. As I have addressed this, I have realized that I allowed myself to be a victim of time-suckers too often this year.
And, yes, I know better. We all know the techniques for avoiding having our precious time sucked away from us, without our using it as we should have. But, knowing the techniques and living them are not always the same, are they?
When I saw two posts today that dealt with this subject, it seemed to be an omen. So, I thought I’d link to those posts and discuss each briefly.
The first post, and the most important tip, comes from Seth Godin:
Zig taught me this twenty years ago. Make your schedule before you start. Don’t allow setbacks or blocks or anxiety to push you to say, “hey, maybe I should check my email for a while, or you know, I could use a nap.” If you do that, the lizard brain is quickly trained to use that escape hatch again and again.
Isaac Asimov wrote and published 400 (!) books using this technique.
The better you plan your day, the more you can get done. Specifically, you can get more of the important things done by planning your day.
The second article comes from Paul Stamatiou. It specifically address startup funding, but it is an excellent discussion of how some activities can almost suck the life out of you, and can certainly eat up time.
In reading Paul’s fascinating account of the difficulties of getting funding, it is clear to me that one of the best things he did was to thoroughly research the area. This sort of gets back to my previous post about what we can learn from Google about managing time: it pays to research an area before wading into it.
You may be thinking that this sounds too obvious to mention. But, again, do we really do it every time we should? I haven’t.
There have been times when I have done my homework before taking something on, but there have been times when I haven’t done it and paid for it.
Anyway, these tips really hit home with me, so I thought I’d share them with you.