This week’s blog is a little something different. Presenting: a video blog in honor of 50 likes on Facebook!
If the scenario in this video sounds all too familiar to you, leave a comment and tell your story!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dlEteb4E8g]
One of the tricks in your Time Diet is to know when you’re unfocused during work and immediately take steps to become more focused so you can complete your work faster. Recently, my work at home had become increasingly unfocused for two reasons: 1) My workspace was cluttered and 2) it was filled with distractions. Because my husband and I both have laptops, we end up doing most of our work at the kitchen table. I’ve found that I like this better than being at a desk because I don’t have to face into a wall and I feel far less claustrophobic when I’m doing work. This had been working fine for several years, but recently I found myself getting distracted. I have a perfect view of the television from my seat at the table, which becomes all too tempting to turn on (and even more tempting to watch when my husband already has it on!) Also, it was becoming increasingly annoying to have to move aside kitchen clutter to have a space to work. I knew my work was taking longer than it should because of these distractions, so I needed a change.
Last weekend, I bought a used conference table for 25 dollars at a second hand store. It’s 8 feet long, solid wood and aside from a small knick in the side, looks brand new. Actually getting it into our office (which we barely used up until now) was quite an experience, but now I have the perfect workspace and the past week I have felt a renewed vigor with my work I haven’t felt in a while. It has all the things I liked about the kitchen table –it doesn’t face a wall, it’s a large surface and big enough for my husband and me to both work there — without any of the downfalls. I now can no longer see a TV from my work place and I don’t have to worry about clutter from other rooms of the house getting in my way.
A simple “change of scenery” can go a long way for improving your focus. Want to know a teaching secret? In college, teachers learn that if they want to have a really productive and attentive day to flip the students’ desks to face a different direction. Why does this work? Because the students now have a change of scenery! Their routine has been altered. Now, you don’t have to go buy a giant piece of furniture like I did to make this work for you. Any small change in your work environment can help shake up your routine and give you a more focused work session. Do not become so entrenched in a work routine that you let yourself become less productive without realizing it. Frequently re-evaluate how and where you’re working to make sure you’re getting the most out of your work time. Or just come over to our office. I’m pretty sure we have room for you down at the end of our enormous table.
In our Time Diets, we all have to learn to combat that little voice in our heads that is just a bit too unrealistically optimistic. It’s that voice that creeps out when you’re just about to start some work that says, “Why work now? Look at that big wonderful television! You know you want to watch that new reality show. Just watch it! When you’re done you’re bound to feel much more like getting your work done!” In a regular diet you might recognize this as the same voice who tells you it’s ok to grab that second piece of chocolate cake because you’ve “earned” it, or to grab a Big Mac for lunch instead of making a sandwich because it’s easier.
This voice is your Inner Time-Waster and it is your goal to make it as soft as possible. Your Inner Time-Waster can be very convincing. It is very good at finding any possible reason to put off doing your work. Sometimes it’ll try to tell you that you’ll feel more like doing work later, or that you work all the time and deserve a break. It’s particularly good at convincing you to put off easy tasks that should only take a few minutes until the infamous “later.” Do not be fooled. Do you really think you’ll feel more like working later? No. This rarely happens. Get started so you have less to do when “later” gets here. For short tasks, remember the 5-minutes rule. If it takes less than 5 minutes, do it now or else you’re likely to forget about.
Your Inner Time-Waster is right about one thing though- you do work all the time and you do need a break, but if you’re following your Time Diet correctly, you’re already scheduling in those Desserts for yourself. So, when you catch your Inner Time-Waster trying to convince you to do anything but work, tell it to shut up and get lost! You have complete control of your workday and are planning to get your work done first so you can enjoy your Desserts worry-free. Take that Inner Time-Waster. I’m done with you.
New Year’s Day is rapidly approaching, which means millions of people will be making resolutions for how they can better themselves in 2011. One of the most common resolutions seems to revolve around dieting to shed those holiday pounds acquired by indulging in a bit too much eggnog and Christmas cookies. I propose that your diet be of a different kind. What better excuse to finally hone your time management skills and start taking back control of your day? If you haven’t already, make January 1st the day you start your Time Diet.
Here are 3 simple things you can do on January 1st that will get your Time Diet off to a great start for the year:
1) Pick a time that you will sit down and make your choose-to list every day. Remember, having a daily list of things you are choosing to do for the day helps keep you focused and organized. Setting aside a few minutes at the same time each day to write down your choose-to list will help make it a habit and ensure you never start a day without a plan. Tell someone, whether it is your spouse, roommate, boyfriend, girlfriend, family member or other person close to you, when you plan to make your list so you are accountable to someone other than yourself. Telling someone about your resolutions makes you more likely to follow through with them.
2) Pick your worst Time Killer and eliminate it. Time Killers are those little things that waste our time without our permission. They distract us from our work and cause tasks to take longer than they really need to. Conquering all of your Time Killers at once can be overwhelming, so pick the one you feel is the biggest distraction and modify your routine so it no longer interferes. For example, if you just can’t resist texting with a friend or checking Facebook for updates while you are attempting to work, vow to silence your phone or put it in the other room while you do your work from now on.
3) An important part of the Time Diet is spreading out big “meat” tasks that require a lot of work over a longer period of time so they are more manageable. Pick one big task you already have planned in 2011 and write in your calendar when you plan to start it so that it will be done in time. For example, I already know I have a huge paper due for my PhD program in May. I am writing down a date in March that I want to have all of my research completed by, and I’m writing down a date in April that I want to have a finished rough draft. This way, I’m not tempted to save all of my work for the end and I will have successfully spread it out over a more manageable time frame.
Good luck as your start your Time Diet! Feel free to leave a comment either here or on Facebook letting me know how your diet is going. Happy New Year!
This past week was the last week leading up to my winter break off from teaching. I finished up my last two school performances, turned in my last two papers and was finally able to see the light at the end of the tunnel from this long and hectic semester! As much as I wanted to just shut down early, I knew that if I did I’d have an even bigger pile of work awaiting me when I came back in January. Even though my motivation was waning, I had a lot of meat tasks to get through like planning out my teaching time-line for the next quarter, designing worksheets for my students to help them with their new music and making further progress on an ongoing research project for grad school. Boy, I did not feel like doing any of this!
When we finally force ourselves to begin meat tasks we don’t want to do, we tend to start one, work on it until it gets difficult and then stop and move on to another task. Then we work on that one until it also gets to a difficult point and move on to another one. In the short term, we feel good about ourselves because we have mustered up the motivation to start all these tasks we really didn’t want to do, but in the long term we’ve made it much harder on ourselves. Now, all the easy parts of the meat tasks are done and we’ve got nothing but difficult parts left! If we thought it was difficult to motivate ourselves before, now it’s going to be doubly difficult because we know the easy parts are done and we’re left with the tough things to chew through.
It was very tempting to just do all the easy parts of my meat tasks before winter break and save the tough parts for January, but I knew that would just make me spend my two weeks off dreading going back to work. Instead, when I hit my first speed bump in a task, I forced myself to push past it and keep going. We all know what that’s like when we are beginning a big task and we hit that first major stumbling block. There is a pivotal moment where we can either stop, or push past it. When you catch yourself getting to that point, and you know you just want to stop and save the tough stuff for later remind yourself that it’s not going to be any easier to finish later. You don’t have to finish the whole task now, but if you don’t at least start on the tough part, it’s going to be so much harder to force yourself into “work mode” again. Spreading out your meat tasks over time is important, but deciding how to break up the chunks is even more vital to managing your motivation.
I’ve talked recently about using visualization as a tool to find the motivation to finish something, and that technique really saved me this week! This was one of those “crunch time” weeks with both work and school. Concerts to direct, grades to fill out, papers to write, etc… Now, unfortunately, this is also December- my absolute favorite time of year- and I wasn’t going to give up some of my favorite holiday traditions to sit and write a paper all day. Last Sunday, I had a marathon Christmas cookie baking session with a few friends. We had so much fun and ended up baking about 12-dozen cookies. What a blast! But, I had a 15-page paper due the next week and as soon as they left, I knew I had to get to work. The problem was, after a whole afternoon of baking, I wanted to curl up on the couch with a cup of hot chocolate, not my laptop.
It was very tempting to tell myself that I could just finish the paper later. I started to think through my week and figured that if I worked through all of my lunches and skipped out on my husband’s work party I could still get the paper done and not have to work on it right then. When we don’t want to do something, we do a pretty job convincing ourselves that we’ll somehow feel more inspired to do our work later. I knew there was no way I was going to feel any more like writing the paper on my lunch breaks than I did right now. I visualized how great it would feel to climb into bed that night knowing my paper was done- to be able to go to work in the morning and not worry about finding any spare moment I could to keep writing. Armed with that delightful vision of a completed paper, I sat down and got to work.
After about 5 pages though, the urge to flop down on the couch and watch TV was creeping up again. I could hear my inner voice say, “Good for you! You got 5 pages done! You’ll do the rest later.” No. I didn’t want a partially done paper. I wanted a finished paper. How often have you started something, decided you’d do the rest later, and then wished so badly you had just finished it while you were on a roll? Every time I wanted to stop, I visualized starting my workweek completely free from the pressures of this paper, and kept going.
I got it done. All of it. It took about 5 hours, but crawling into bed that night knowing it was done and that I wouldn’t have to worry about it was even better than I’d imagined.
So we all know that a day rarely goes by when we don’t have to add something to our choose-to list by mid-afternoon. That is all part of being flexible. However, in some cases adding something to the list is a bad idea. When a new task pops up during the day, if it takes less than 5-minutes, don’t add it to the list. Just do it now. You’re not going to feel any more like doing it later and it’s better to just do it right now before it sits on your list forever. These little few-minutes tasks are usually vegetable tasks, and as any 7 year old can tell you, putting off eating your vegetables doesn’t make them disappear! It just makes them that much more disgusting to eat.
This happens to me with paperwork at school all the time. I’ll check my mailbox and there will be some new tax form the district needs me to fill out, or a quality survey or some other sort of paperwork. It is really tempting to just grab it, put it on my desk, and add it to my choose-to list for another time. I know if this happens, it will just get covered up with other things and I’ll completely forget about it until the school secretary has to call me and ask why I haven’t done this simple thing yet. Since I couldn’t say I’ve been too busy, (because- let’s face it- everyone has at least 2 spare minutes in their lives to fill out a form) I’ll have to tell the truth and just say I didn’t feel like it. This makes me look really flakey and wastes the secretary’s time. Instead, I never let paperwork like this touch my desk. I fill it out as soon as I get it and it’s done. It never takes more than a few minutes, and I don’t have to worry about it.
The 5-Minute Rule is especially important if the task you need to do directly affects someone else’s ability to move forward on a project. For example, the other day I was working on some homework when I noticed a professor had emailed me asking if I could write a 2-3 sentence quote for a grant proposal he was writing. My first thought was to email him back and say that I’d have it to him by tomorrow. I’d finish my homework, have lunch and then sit down and figure out what I wanted to say. But then I realized that he was probably working on the proposal right now. It would only take me a minute or two to figure out something to say and send it back. Grant proposals can be lengthy and have firm deadlines and I didn’t want to hold anything up. So, I took a few moments away from my paper, wrote out a quote for him to use, and sent it off. Done. Now I can get back to my work and he can send off his proposal. Nothing is worse than having to delay a deadline because you’re waiting on things from other people. Especially when you know that the thing you’re waiting for doesn’t take very long at all.
Ah, Thanksgiving weekend. A time when both regular diets and Time Diets traditionally go out the window as we gorge ourselves on pumpkin pie and spend the rest of our time napping, shopping, or watching football. The best part of this holiday weekend is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with suspending your Time Diet for a few days. After all, for many of us those 4 days are one big giant “dessert” in our schedule that we’ve looked forward to since August. The problem is when your enjoyment is interrupted because you start feeling guilty about not doing work. Don’t fall into this trap! Feeling guilty about not doing work when you are on vacation accomplishes nothing. You neither get work done nor enjoy your time off.
Think about it like this: At Thanksgiving dinner, many people eat more food than they would ever think of eating at a normal meal. Feeling guilty about it the next day does nothing. You can’t exactly put back what you ate and what is the point of indulging once a year if your guilty conscience won’t let you enjoy it? Instead, if you decide you are going to allow yourself to indulge at this holiday meal, then just do it and be done with it. The same is true for your Time Diet. Remember, good time management skills only come when you are in control of what you do. If you decide to take these 4 days off, great! Do it and don’t look back. Everyone deserves a break once in a while and if you decide you can afford it now, don’t feel guilty for taking one. I have a ton of reading that I need to do for next week and I was going to take it with me on our Thanksgiving vacation but I forgot it at home. I’m glad I did because it turns out I didn’t feel like working at all and knowing my reading was sitting up in my suitcase would have made me feel guilty for sitting with my feet up by the fire.
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with the ones you love. The holiday season can be a busy time but you want to make sure to keep your stress level in check so you can actually enjoy it. Make sure to check back every week for more tips on maintaining your Time Diet in this famously hectic time!
Whenever people talk about time management, it doesn’t take long until the “to-do list” is mentioned in the conversation. While I think it is essential to write down important deadlines and keep track of the things you plan to accomplish during the day, I don’t really like the name “to-do list.” I think it encourages the notion that we don’t have control over our own time and that some magical deadline god is forcing us to do things. A “to-do list” sounds too much like a “have to-do list” to me.
In reality, everything we do during the day is our choice. I spent part of today writing a paper that I have due in December. Did I particularly want to spend my time that way today? No, and in fact it would be very easy for me to complain that I had to spend the day working and it was so horrible. But, the only reason I had to work on that paper today is because I’m choosing to be in grad school right now. Not only am I choosing to be in grad school, but I’m choosing to want to do well in my classes. I didn’t have to work on my paper today. I chose to. Did that make me any more excited to spend part of my weekend working? No, but if you view your daily tasks as choices rather than mandates it shifts the control from your work to you and control is a powerful thing.
Because the work we do is a choice, I advocate calling it a “choose-to list” instead of a “to-do list”. Calling it a “choose-to list” serves as a constant reminder that the things on it have value because you chose to put them there. If the things on your list don’t seem to have much value, then why are they there? Having a “choose-to list” causes you to constantly reassess whether the things you are doing are really worth your time. If they aren’t, get rid of them. If they are, then stop complaining, put your head down, and start grazing.
At some point, we all need to take a break from our work. Not only do we need a reward for a job well-done, but you reach a point where you simply can’t focus on your work anymore! When you’re deciding when to take your break, it’s usually better to take accomplishment-based breaks instead of time-based ones. A time-based break is when you tell yourself that you’ll work for a certain amount of time before stopping. A common time-based break philosophy is to work for 50 minutes of an hour and then take the other 10 minutes off. The problem with this philosophy is that it doesn’t really reward work, it only rewards the passage of time. If you’re working on a paper and you promise yourself a break after 50 minutes, once 50 minutes have ticked by you’ve technically earned that break, whether you’ve written 3 pages or 3 sentences.
Think about it- no one would go on a diet like that. People go on a diet with a goal in mind. “I’m going to lose 10 pounds!” “I’m going to gain 5 pounds of muscle!” Few people go on a diet and say, “I’m going to eat healthy for 5 days and then stop.” Accomplishment-based breaks reward the work you’ve done rather than the passage of time. Rather than saying you’ll give yourself a break from your paper after 50 minutes, say you’ll give yourself a break after the first 2 pages. This way, you’re rewarding the completion of a task. After all, your end goal is not for time to pass, it’s for your stuff to get done!!
Last Friday, I went to see my author friend speak at a book signing. When someone asked her how she got her writing done, she revealed her secret. She wrote 5 pages every day. No matter what. They didn’t have to be fantastic, she could always go back and revise them, but every day 5 more pages had to be completed that weren’t completed before. This plan is brilliant in its simplicity. I imagine that some days those 5 pages took very little time at all and some days they seemed to take forever. What struck me about her plan is that she had a daily accomplishment goal rather than a daily time goal. I had really expected her to say something like, “I work on my book for 2 hours when I get up in the morning or something like that.” Her accomplishment-based goal inspired me. We can all break up our big tasks into smaller chunks and create mini goals for ourselves throughout the day. It’s far better than watching the minutes on the clock tick by until our designated stop time.