Times are tough

I’m sorry to [have to] start this way, but times are tough and the internet is unforgiving even to the best of intentions.

The opinions here are my own and not those of my organization.

Don’t adhere to my framework and rules.
No rule is the best rule, do what makes sense to you.
I’m not giving you advice here, I write this for myself.

Your situation is different, I accept that.
I expect you to accept mine.
If you don’t find this useful, it’s not for you.

What’s this about?

This is about Time Management.

Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. Wikipedia

A big idea in a big sentence. In this series I’ll be focusing on planning, control and efficiency, rather than productivity and similar obsessions.

💬   But do I need a wall of text about Time Management?

Yes.
If not from me, then from someone else. This is an infinite topic that you can learn about forever. Why not?

Time, mismanaged

📝   Preface

Maybe it’s already obvious, but you can’t make improvements unless you’re willing to sacrifice more time (ironically). To make it simple: my goal isn’t to work a lot, but I still need a healthy dose of challenges… while having a family, social life, and enough rest. I got to a point where I was just forced to reorganize things, so motivation was definitely not an issue. As with most things, you’ll fall back into the same old habits after a while if you’re not disciplined enough… so I want to preface the following posts by saying that changing habits isn’t easy, but it can be done.

I think I’ll focus mainly on job-related topics, because that’s what most of my readers are interested in. When appropriate, I’ll try to address personal life as well. In general, I believe that most work simply fills up the available time, according to Parkinson’s Law… and optimizing your work commitments (minimizing the impact of work) should be enough to make enough room for your personal life. It should be a synergy of work and life, not a fight.

There’s one other important note – since most people and organizations are optimized to do what feels “safe”, I’ve found that thinking about resistance to change as immunity (involuntary process) rather than active work (voluntary process) is a good life hack. This goes both for personal life and organizations. This point of view has helped me a lot when I felt like I couldn’t change anything.

Some recommended resources on this:

• 👀   Growth Mindset
• 🎧📱📚   Immunity to Change

I’ve ultimately decided to break up the rest of this post into multiple posts, each trying to be self-contained while being a piece of the Time Management puzzle.

Here’s what’s ahead (but don’t click yet):

⚖️   Work and Life are not Enemies   ⤴️

Think work-life synergy, not work-life balance. Let’s look at what hinders progress when it comes to this balancing act.

👹   Backlogs are Evil   ⤴️

Are you getting things done? Or are you getting stuck trying to get things done? Maybe you’re jumping back and forth between topics? Maybe we had the same problem.

⚡️   What is High Priority?   ⤴️

“That doesn’t matter!” – it’s said far too often, isn’t it? But did you know that we often don’t consider facts and conditions when we think about priorities?

📥   A Healthy Inbox   ⤴️

The “Zero Inbox” policy and how adjacent tools help clear the clutter

OK. What now?

If you follow the NEXT POST button below, it should guide you properly through the whole series. Enjoy!