5 posts tagged with "time management"

A brief recap of previous lessons we learned from Thomas Limoncelli:

1. Time Management Principles tells us not to trust our brains for remembering things; our brain power should be conserved for doing things.
2. Keep Focus and Handle Interruptions identifies the archenemy of productivity - interruptions. Fortunately, we can handle them with certain techniques.
3. Radical Automation with Routines let us know that the best way of not thinking is to develop good mantras, routines, habits. The so-called ==radical automation==.
4. Introducing the Cycle System is unveiling his secret sauce to the “perfect-through” by using the cycle system that contains to-do list, schedule, calendar, and life goals.

Today, let us focus on how to operate the cycle system.

To Do Lists and Schedule​

Everyday, repeat the following process.

1. Start a new day with planning.

2. Create a schedule. Fill in with meetings and appointments. So we can estimate the time left for working on tasks.

   1. Schedule one hour per day for interruptions

3. Create to-do list. Remember to count the hours in those tasks because this helps you estimate the workload.

4. Prioritize and Reschedule.

   1. Too often people are too optimistic about the tasks they can finish in one day, so please ==deal with overflow carefully==.
      1. move low priority tasks to the next day
      2. break up a large chunk into small pieces
      3. reduce the task’s scope
      4. delegate
      5. your boss might feel impressed by your to-do list (wow, it's full!), and they will be glad to help you prioritize those tasks. (Let bosses feel in control.)
      6. postpone the meeting if you really have to present yourself
      7. do not work late

5. Work the plan

   1. Work on the tasks in order from high-to-low-priority tasks
   2. Take the momentum to finish tasks one by one.
   3. ==Once in a while, pause to stretch or take a quick walk around the building with your laptop, which makes you look on your way to something important==

6. Finish the day with a review and reschedule

   1. Ensure unfinished tasks receive sufficient attention, which means they are ==managed== and not forgotten.

How to deal with new tasks during the day?

• reshuffle and reschedule accordingly

Calendar Management​

==Never miss a meeting and show up on time. It demonstrates your responsibility reliability. And the secret is to always use your calendar and don’t trust your brain to agree an appointment without checking your calendar==. If you are going to be late or miss an appointment, always call.

The calendar is the place to put events fixed to happen in a certain time range. They can be:

1. Appointments and meetings
2. Milestones
3. Future to do items
4. Repeating tasks

==Adjust yourself according to your personal rhythms and your company's rhythms.== Most important (high-impact) work should be scheduled to peak hours you can focus with the highest energy level.

Balance is important. Work, family life, social life, volunteer work, personal projects, sleep are all important and can be scheduled well with a centralized calendar.

Life Goals​

You will achieve more if you set goals. And setting a goal without working toward it is better than having no goals at all. If you haven’t determined what your goals are, you cannot spot the few opportunities that do cross your path by chance.

The secret lies in writing down your goals. Apply the SMART principles during the goal-setting. (Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Relevant, Time-based). However, stretching the goals and challenging yourself is very important to boost personal growth. Keep those goals in two dimensions:

1. Time. In 1 month, 1 year, or 5 years?
2. Roles. Personal or Professional Goals?

Then develop strategies for those goals -

1. ==Diagnose== the current status and identify the major challenges
2. ==Find guiding policies== that will derive new advantages over time
3. ==Act coherently==. All the actions and resources should be aligned to follow the guiding policies to fulfill the goals.

When working on those goals over time, be sure to keep up with the system. Periodically review them per month, quarter, and year, which includes:

1. Goal review
2. Step review

Finally, use your calendar for this repeated “Goal & Next Step Review.”

Learning from who manages chaos for a living​

Why should we learn time management from a system administrator? Thomas Limoncelli says “I’m a system administrator! I manage chaos for a living!”

==Your customers value your ability to follow through more than they appreciate any other skill you have. Nothing ruins your reputation like agreeing to do something and forgetting to do it.==

What is the key to perfect follow-through?​

The Cycle system. It is called cycle because it repeats every day and the output of one day is the input to the next. It uses these three tools -

1. A day-by-day to-do list and an hour-to-hour schedule
2. A calendar
3. A list of long-term goals

Keep them in one single place and sync across all devices. And don’t trust your brain for remembering and prioritizing and scheduling tasks.

Why other systems fail?​

1. The scattered notes system
   1. No gotta catch 'em all
   2. No prioritizing
   3. No contexts for you to resume previous work
   4. Easy to lose
2. The ever-growing to-do list of doom
   1. No prioritizing
   2. No contexts for you to resume previous work
   3. Easy to ignore old tasks
   4. ==Self-esteem killer: the god damn list never gets completed!==

What is a system that succeeds?​

• Portable & Reliable. The tool should be portable with you everywhere, and reliable to keep all tasks.
• Manageable: It can break up or union tasks, so they become manageable.
• Providing Contexts: A task record can contain contexts that you can easily recover to the working status.
• Prioritizeable & Schedulable. It should be easy to scope to today's work items and schedule, though still keep the ability to arrange tasks more than one day.

Why is routine a good thing? It gives us a way to think once and do many.

Routines, for example, can be

1. Gas up on Sunday
2. Always bring my organizer
3. Regularly meet with my boss
4. The check-in-with-staff walk-around
5. The check-in-with-customers walk-around
6. During outages, communicate to management
7. Use automatic checks while performing specific tasks
8. Always back up a file before you edit
9. Record “To Take” items for trips, (especially when you travel a lot),

Mantras, for example, can be

1. ==If it has to be done every day, do it early in the day. So it won’t let you stay up late.==
2. Sooner is better than later.
3. Trust the process.
4. When in doubt, throw it out. If I ever do need it, I can ask the source for a copy.
5. Write down every request.
6. If you are not sure if an email list is useful, it isn’t.

How to develop routines? Try to find …

1. Repeated events that aren’t scheduled.

2. Maintenance tasks.

3. Relationships and career networking. Relationships require maintenance and are also similar to gardening (they grow if you work diligently, starve if they are ignored, and die if they get too much attention). There are four types of people to maintain relationships

   1. Customers (or SPOC single point of contact for each customer group)
   2. Staff
   3. Peers
   4. Boss(es)

4. When procrastinating takes longer than action.

5. Things you forget often.

6. Inconsequential or low-priority tasks that can be skipped occasionally but shouldn’t be.

7. Developing new skills.

8. Keeping up-to-date by reading.

Why are routines a good thing? Routines allow you to think once and use it repeatedly.

Routines can include the following:

1. Refueling your car on Sundays
2. Always carrying a notebook
3. Meeting with your boss regularly
4. Communicating with employees regularly
5. Engaging with clients regularly
6. Informing management promptly when servers go down
7. Using automated checks for specific tasks
8. Always backing up files before editing
9. Writing down a "must-have items list" (especially useful for frequent travelers)

The principles for handling tasks are as follows:

1. ==If something needs to be done every day, it should be completed as early as possible so you don’t have to stay up late==
2. The earlier you do things, the better
3. Trust the process
4. If you're unsure whether to throw something away, just toss it. If you need it after discarding, you can always copy it from the data source again
5. Record every task
6. If you’re uncertain whether an email list is useful, then it’s useless

How can you develop your own routines? Try to identify the following situations:

1. Tasks that recur without being scheduled

2. Maintenance tasks

3. Relationships and professional networks. Just like a garden, your network needs to be tended (if cared for, it will grow; if neglected, it will wither; if overly focused on, it may die). Here are four types of people you need to maintain relationships with:

   1. Clients (or SPOCs, which are single points of contact for each client group)
   2. Employees
   3. Colleagues
   4. Your boss

4. When the time spent procrastinating exceeds the time spent taking action

5. Things that are frequently forgotten

6. Trivial tasks that are occasionally overlooked but shouldn't be

7. Developing new skills

8. Keeping up with trends through continuous reading

Why is interruption the most significant enemy of productivity?

Total time used = time delayed + time wasted
Time wasted = resuming time for context switch + recovering from mistakes

What is the best friend of productivity?

Focus.

How to focus?

1. An entry-level work we can do is to ==de-clutter our brain== by recording unrelated ideas at somewhere outside of the brain. Use our task tracker extensively.

2. Be aware of our stress and sleep level. If we are tired or under much pressure, sleep well and multitask less.

3. Creating an un-distracting environment.

   1. Clean up the desktop. “When in doubt, throw it out.”
   2. Close IMs, notifications, etc.
   3. Leverage the time when other people are not present. ==The first-hour rule== is that the first hour of the workday is usually the quietest hour in an office. Same for amusement park time management - show up early, you practically have the entire park to yourself.

4. Deal with interruptions effectively.

   1. Make it transparent who is responsible for what. (Though most organizations do not.)
   2. Setup a multi-tier support system.
      1. self-resolve with documents or self-serving portal
      2. let the mutual shield take it
      3. delegate it
      4. record it
      5. do it (save your current work before switching to another task)

Having difficulty falling asleep?

Keep a pad of paper and a pen next to your bed. ==When something is keeping you awake, write it down and try falling asleep again==. Worry keeps us awake because we’re trying to remember to do something about what’s worrying us. Anger keeps us awake because we’re trying to remember to stay angry!

==Staying focus and not being rude==

1. when new requests are coming in, always ==acknowledge== them first to make people feel responsive.
2. when acknowledging a request, do it in a visually meaningful way. Make sure they see I am recording it and confirming it.