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I get asked this question a lot, and the short answer is, “You can’t.”

The long answer is that you can make more time for the important things, if you stop doing things that are not important. The trick is to identify those things and weed them out.

Do you know what you are doing with your time?

As previously discussed in the post “3 Steps to Better Time Management” we need to take a look at three things in our lives:

1. How do we really spend our time?
2. What is truly important to us?
3. How can we make our commitments more effective?

If you feel like you do not have enough time it is likely that you are busy spending your time rather than investing it.

Knowing what we are really doing with our time is essential, and in order to find out we need to create a time log, a blank piece of paper divided into three columns: “Time”,” Activity”, and “Interruption”. Carry this paper with you for an entire day, recording your actions and activities, according to these instructions:

1. Every time you take on a new activity, make an entry on the Time Log. You may feel foolish. It will interrupt your work. Do it anyway and do it for the entire day. Pick a happy medium in defining what constitutes a new activity. (Don’t stop to note every pen stroke, but don’t have only large blocks of time entered as a single activity.)

2. Under “time,” enter the time you start the new activity, to the minute. Under “activity,” enter a brief description of what you’re doing. Under “interruption,” explain why the activity felt like an interruption of your time, if it did. This last column is totally subjective.

Tracking your day like this will allow you to see exactly what it is that you have been doing, so be honest and disciplined about it. You may be surprised at how different it is from what you think that you have been doing. It also allows you to track the types of interruptions that you experience, and when. I would recommend that if you do this exercise, put the completed time tracker in your Tickler File for four weeks later and do it again then. This will enable you to track your progress on staying productive, and managing those interruptions (if possible).

The next step is to look over your actions and activities for the day with a hi-lighter in your hand. Hi-light the entries that you consider to be “important”, and make a list of them on a second sheet of paper. Then make a list of the “unimportant” or “interruption” entries. Staple these together and file them in your Tickler for comparison four weeks from now. You may want to write the “interruptions” on a 3″x5″ card and keep it in your organizer so that you can be reminded of what activities you are working on eliminating.

Make more time: Action steps

Look at your time-tracker log. Are you spending time doing things that you do not need to do? Are they wasteful of your resources? Are there tasks or activities that could be delegated?

• Stop doing the things that you do not need to do. This can be difficult but it is essential. Delegate as much as possible, delete the rest as best you can.
• Batch your activities. Some tasks, like checking e-mail, paying bills and filing can be done in groups. Create some filters for your e-mail account and only check it periodically (the period will vary based on your needs). In fact, if e-mail is one of those activities that pulls you out of a workflow mindset then you definitely need to get it under control.
• Set a regular time for a Weekly Review. Checking back on yourself is a powerful motivator to get things done in  timely manner. Looking at a long list of un-done tasks can be depressing, but looking back upon a list of crossed-off activities is inspirational! Use your Review time to create a short list of Most Important Tasks - the things that have to get done next week. Focus on this list and your work will seem much less daunting.

What do you think? Do you have any tips for making more time for the things that matter?
Please share in the comments.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/97s6e8. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

My new capture notebook.

This is a 4″ x 6″ Notebook that I picked up at Pottery Barn in Portland, ME. I bought 3 because they were on sale for 50% off, not knowing exactly what I would use them for. After my little spiral notebook that I was using for capture ran out of pages (and got a little worse for wear) I decided to use one of these notebooks. The verdict: it worked great!

However, with a little tweaking it can work even better.

Read more –>

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/7aqvkz. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

This is a guest-post from Jon Gatrell @ spatiallyrelevant.org - many thanks to Stephen for the opportunity and the subject! @Stephen was kind enough to remind me of a very simple blogging basic - build and extend ideas for your readers, the piece he thought might best be extended was 10 Tips to Deal with the Fact You Will Never leave Your Job.

Complacency is a really interesting thing - it’s comfortable - like that old quilt you have for cold and rainy days when you settle in will movies, soup and sleep. While this post is an extension of a previous piece, as recommended by Stephen, the original concept was originally focused at your career, this is more so about that high tide and low tide of productivity we seem to always move between in all aspects of life.

With the increasingly short attention span of folk, sometimes we are just as likely to move on to something else when we hit one of those tough spots in a gig - nothing to write, a really tough task or a seemingly useless hoop which just has to be jumped through. Even in lower supply than our attention, is our time - so find a way to keep the momentum on a project, task or even a hobby because you ain’t getting your time back team.

Productivity is often a sine curve - the good with the bad, the mountains with the valleys. The productivity is nothing when it is something we like, new or challenging; however the biggest challenge is what to do in the trough of productivity. Those low productivity times are great for procrastination, low quality and limited creativity - sounds like FUN!

The productivity trough requires continued effort and initiative to move out of and begin that ascend to the peak - when it is just a little more fun. As I look historically at my less motivated moments on projects or in life, I find it is the opportunities when I engaged other people, enriched the effort and found something to enjoy along the way is when moving from zero to something was a bunch easier. The easiest way is to change the way you look at something. There is little to no fun in lack of progress and getting all OCD on what’s left to be done. Baby steps help too.

Engage

To break out of a productivity slump I just do the 3 E’s, engage, enrich and enjoy. I’m a knowledge junkie, so engage is really going out a getting input from other folks. There are great number of folks doing good things all over the place and they just might be working on something close to what you are working on, so seek them out. I reach out to other authors, my circle of friends and randoms to get a fresh view on something.

Engaging for me is reading, asking questions and looking for divergent views. By triangulating on content inputs, I often find I can quickly qualify ideas, find creative solutions and enhancements which I wouldn’t have gotten via my own thought process. Once you are engaged and building a baseline, it is now time to enhance the subject your writing about, the task at hand or the project which you never seem to start. What can YOU bring to a situation to create unique value?

Enrich

Typically engage is held as being part of the conversation in the social media world, but I would offer that without adding value to the conversation, it becomes difficult to see engagement as a value added activity. It is different points of view and taking the conversation somewhere else which is valuable. Plenty of folks engage in the conversation, but what is the value is statements like “I defer to the majority” or “Whatever is fine by fine” or “I look forward to the final copy” - these acknowledgments are certainly engaged, but not very productive or value add. To move out of the trough, you need to put in a little energy and get the benefit of making something different, better or just having a meaningful impact on the final product.

Got a little too social media/bloggy there. So what is the project equivalent of conversing without enriching the discussion? Doing something in a mechanical, lack luster way — Phoning it in or taking a spaghetti approach - just throwing it out and seeing what sticks. Not a whole lot of fun in that.

Enjoy

How much time do you spend executing towards getting something done? All the time, I suspect - chores, work, hobbies and even when you are at play - these is a little bit of goal oriented effort. So is the enjoyment in the process, progress or the end product? For me it should be all three, but rarely is - so I take it where I can get. That’s the odd thing about doing things - you never really know if you will really enjoy it unless you engage and attempt to enrich a situation.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5edxhh. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

This is a podcast experiment. Please listen and let me know what you think.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (370)

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5baf29. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen