motivation

Finishing Unwanted Tasks

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This week, I had a presentation to prepare for my PhD program that definitely tested my time management. Completing this presentation was both the most important and least appealing thing on my “Choose-To List.” As you know, that is a common and dangerous situation. What do you do when the task you least want to do is the task you most need to do?

Stop Substituting

When faced with a task we don’t want to do, our first inclination is to just do something else instead. I caught myself doing that yesterday. I didn’t want to work on my presentation, so instead I did some grading, cleaned my house, worked on some different homework, and went grocery shopping. All of those things also needed to be completed, however, none were as important as my presentation. I substituted tasks I should be doing with tasks I’d rather be doing. That’s why at the end of the day, I didn’t feel as productive as I could have.

Make it Enjoyable

Sometimes we need to go out of our way to make a dreaded task more enjoyable. You all know about my love of Starbucks. I went out and bought myself a Salted Caramel Mocha Frappuccino to sip while I’m working on my presentation. Nothing seems quite as terrible when you have a delicious cup of happiness next to you!

Visualize

The single best way I know to motivate myself to do something it to visualize it being completed. In this case, I visualized myself crawling into bed at night and thinking, “Wow, I don’t have to worry about the presentation anymore! It’s all finished.” It’s not going to become any more appealing to work on, so I might as well just finish it now and be done with it. Half the stress of finishing work comes from worrying about finishing it. I was going to worry about my presentation until it was done. The sooner I finish it, the sooner I can stop worrying about it and my stress level decreases.

This week, take charge of your unwanted tasks.  Visualize them being finished, do everything you can to make them more enjoyable and stop substituting them with other, less important things. Your productivity will thank you.

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Technorati Keywords Time Management, Efficiency,

Photo Credit: Naypong

 

How to Tackle Huge Projects

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In The Time Diet, I frequently say how important it is to break up your “meat” tasks and set small goals for yourself to stay motivated with your time management. Yesterday, I stumbled across an example of exactly why this is true. In keeping with The Time Diet analogy, I appropriately found this example on a restaurant menu.

On Friday night, my husband and I went out to dinner. I saw “sliders” on the menu and thought that little mini hamburgers sounded delicious.

“No,” I thought to myself. “It’s way too easy to eat too many of those!” One hamburger has about the same meat as two sliders, but nobody eats just two sliders! They are so little, you end up eating more meat than you realize.

Then it dawned on me. The same is true for time management!

When we have a huge “meat” project looming, it can be overwhelming. (We’ll call this the “hamburger”). However, if you break up that same work into smaller projects and spread it out over time, you won’t feel like you’re working as hard. You’ve essentially turned your big “hamburger” into “sliders.” You’re completing the same amount of work, but instead of tackling it all at once, you’re nibbling at it.

How to Break up Work

When you are dividing your work into smaller parts, remember to do the following.

 1) Plan in advance
It is important to divide your big project into smaller chunks as soon as possible. The longer it stays in your head as one huge task, the more you’ll begin to dread it.

2) Construct a timeline
Write in your calendar when you plan to complete each chunk of work so you’ll have it done by the deadline.

 3) Stick to your timeline
Creating a timeline for your work doesn’t do any good if you don’t hold yourself accountable to the checkpoints you set for yourself.

Good luck with your Time Diets this week!

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Technorati Keywords Time Management, Efficiency,

Photo Credit: Grant Cochrane

Just Keep Swimming

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This week, I was reminded of one of my favorite motivational time management quotes. It was spoken by none other than Dory, the blue fish in Disney’s well-known time management film, “Finding Nemo.”

What? You didn’t know “Finding Nemo” was a film about time management? OK, well, maybe not entirely, but whether or not Disney intended it this way, there are many embedded lessons about dedication and time/stress management.

Time Management in the Ocean

The main character, Marlin, loses his son and sets off on a mission to find him. He is extremely dedicated to his quest, but is becoming overwhelmed by his stress and desperation. That’s when is travel companion, a blue fish named Dory, utters her famous line:

“Just Keep Swimming.”

Basically, stop using your precious time and energy to worry about everything and just calmly keep moving forward. Variations of this advice are everywhere, from the famous quote: “The longest journey begins with a single step,” to my own story about the two cows grazing in a field. Dory’s idea is far from new, but her words are unique in their simplicity. Just….keep…swimming.

We’ve All Been Marlin

Haven’t we all been there before? Wanting to bury our head in our hands after becoming lost in a seemingly endless ocean of stressful work? Stress is a natural part of life and we are all going to feel it from time to time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do everything in our power to get rid of it as soon as possible so it doesn’t slow us down.

Here are three simple ways you can keep from becoming overwhelmed with your work:

1) Think of it in smaller chunks

As you sit down to begin a large “Meat” task in your Time Diet, don’t think of it as one big project. Think of it only in terms of what you plan to accomplish that day.

2) Take a break before you need it

We all know how important Desserts are in your day. Don’t wait until you hit a wall with your work to give yourself a break. By then, it’s too late and you’re already stressed.

3) Write down your timeline

Plotting out which parts of a task you plan to complete when can be very reassuring. Then, when you catch yourself muttering, “How in the world will I ever get this all done?” you need only look at your calendar to answer your question.

This week, do not let stress overwhelm you and slow you down. Keep moving forward. Your friends, your family, and maybe even this blog can serve as a life preserver when you feel like you’re drowning, but YOU have the power to “just keep swimming.”

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Technorati Tags: Time Management, Motivation,

Photo Credit: Copyright Benson Kua. 

How To Manage Your Time Like a Genius

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You could be the next genius in your field if you learn to manage your time like one!
I’m of the opinion that being a “genius” or “talented” are traits only partially gained at birth and that excellent time management skills play a big part in most very successful people. Let’s look at their secret.

Time Management From Amadeus to Zuckerberg

On my trip to Salzburg, Austria I had the opportunity to tour the birth place of one of classical music’s greatest talents- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. On display are many letters that Mozart wrote back and forth to his sister, including one in which he described in detail what his typical work day entailed. Here is an excerpt of what he wrote:

“My hair is always done by 6 in the morning and by 7 I am fully dressed. I then compose until 9. Then I give lessons from 9-1…I can never work before 5 or 6. I am often prevented by a concert. If not, I compose until 9…..When I come home early I will often lose myself in writing until 1 o’clock and then wake up again.”

I was amazed at his work ethic. Having been told my whole life that Mozart was a musical genius, it’s easy to think that this brilliant music just poured out of his head with ease. I’m not suggesting that if I too spent the majority of every day composing that I could also produce music of Mozart’s quality. There is definitely something to be said for sheer talent. However, Mozart devoted hours upon hours to writing his music. He ate, breathed and slept music. It was his life. This wasn’t just dedication, it was obsession.

Fast forward about 250 years and you’ll find the same obsession in today’s great minds. The movie The Social Network depicts the tireless energy Mark Zuckerberg put into creating Facebook. We can sit around and debate the movie’s gross inaccuracies of the “real” story, but one thing seems to be clear- this man ate, breathed and slept Facebook. He too was obsessed and used this obsession to push his idea into existence.

Both of these men were obsessed with their craft and their time management plan seemed to be “work whenever possible.” My question is, is this the kind of dedication it takes to do great things? Is the quest for a healthy, balanced life unrealistic?

I don’t think so. In his book Outliers, Malcom Gladwell popularized the idea of the 10,000 Hour Rule; that you need to do something for 10,000 hours to be truly great. I don’t believe that those 10,000 hours need to necessarily be all in a row. The key is persistence. You’ll never reach those 10,000 hours if you consistently get off track, let Time Killers steal your focus and give in to procrastination. However, you’ll also never reach those 10,000 hours if you try to do them all at once and burn out too quickly. Seth Godin describes this as getting past The Dip.

The lesson to take from these great minds is not their obsessive use of their time, but their obsessive belief in their work. Their time management secret is actually a motivation management secret. Work with fierce determination toward your goal and you’re on track to greatness.

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Making Time

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The gym and I have not been as good a friends this year as we have been in the past. By the time I’m done with work and school for the day I’m so tired that I’ve been letting my workouts fall by the wayside. Because of my recent fitness slacking, I was particularly proud of myself the other day when I took my gym bag to work with me and vowed to put in at least 30 minutes of cardio before coming home. I was so proud of myself that I even called my health-nut sister to tell her I was going to exercise!

Let me tell you about my amazing sister. She is smart, gorgeous, eats better than Jillian Michaels and works out 5-6 times a week. I told her that I wish I could get to the gym more often but I just never have the energy. Then she said something that has inspired my time management all week. She said, “Well, I mean, I never have the energy to work out either, but I just do it.”

Just Do It. Wow, someone should use that as a company slogan.

I have been thinking about my sister’s comment all week. Don’t we all have things we want to do but never seem to have the time or energy for? What if we stopped making excuses and made time for the things that are important to us? I can count on one hand the number of times I have bounded out of bed at 5am with the energy to go to work, but I go anyways, putting on a smile and faking energy until I have my morning cup of coffee and the adrenaline of the day kicks in.

A Challenge

This week, I challenge you to make time for something meaningful that you never think you have the time or energy for. Since talking to my sister, I have found the energy to go to the gym two more times and I feel so empowered. Remember- you control your schedule, no one else and you decide if something is worth your time. Stop making excuses and start making time for things that are important to you.

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Harnessing Unexpected Motivation

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Sometimes work just seems to take longer than it should. We may have eliminated all distractions and given ourselves ample time, but we just aren’t being as productive at a task as we know we could be. Why is this? It may be because we just aren’t motivated. Focused work is twice as efficient as unfocused work, but focused work that you are actually motivated to complete is the even more ideal scenario.

I’m not saying you will always be 100% motivated and excited to complete a task or that you should wait around for inspiration to strike before beginning anything. However, when you do feel particularly motivated to do something, it’s often best to just go ahead and do it, even if you had originally planned to complete something with a slightly more pressing deadline.

Adjusting Your Schedule

This past week was my spring break from both teaching and my grad program. I had a detailed plan sketched out of what tasks I needed to complete and when I planned to complete them. On Monday, I had planned to knock out some easy and tedious tasks first that were due right after break was over. However, when I woke up on Monday, I felt ambitious. I wanted to tackle the literature review for my research class. A literature review is the part of a research study in which you read as many published studies as you can that have already been written about your topic and then summarize them into one concise section that will eventually serve as the lead-in to your own research paper. I had really not been looking forward to doing this, and since my paper isn’t due until May, I was planning on breaking up this task into tiny little parts and spreading it out over the month of April to make it more manageable. Usually, this would be a great plan, however, here I was on a Monday morning actually feeling motivated to tackle this challenge.

Even though I had tasks on my choose-to list with more pressing deadlines, I took advantage of this surprising motivation and spent all of Monday and most of Tuesday finishing this literature review. I took frequent breaks to complete chores around my house and make sure I didn’t burn out on this heavy “Meat” task, but overall, I was on a roll for two days straight. By late Tuesday afternoon, my motivation was gone, but I had almost finished my task.

In our Time Diets, we work so hard to motivate ourselves to complete tasks we don’t want to do. We post our goals in our workplace so we remember what we’re working for. We break up big tasks into more manageable chunks and we remove all distractions so we are free to focus on our work. We are so good at manufacturing inspiration that we can’t forget to ignore when inspiration strikes on its own. I ended up finishing those easy tasks I had originally planned to do on Monday a little closer to their due date than I would have hoped, but I was still able to finish everything I needed to do without the risk of missing a deadline. Taking advantage of my surprising motivating to finish my lit review was the most productive decision I could have possibly made over my spring break.

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There Are No Vegetarians in Time Management

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Have you ever noticed that when you have a big, difficult project looming over your head, you become suddenly motivated to do everything else in the world except your project? That pile of dishes in the sink? Let me get right on that! The stack of papers waiting to be filed? Sounds like a blast! Pretty soon, my home or office looks amazing, but my project still hasn’t been started. I surely can’t be the only person this happens to!

So, why do we do this? Big projects are Meat tasks. They are difficult, time consuming and require a lot of thinking. It is no wonder we often struggle to find the motivation to start tasks like these! However, most successful people can’t rationalize not working just because they don’t want to start something difficult. We want to be productive, we just really don’t want to start this Meat task. That is why we turn to our Vegetables! Vegetable tasks are much easier and more mindless to do. By filling our day with Vegetables we temporarily mask the guilt of not working on our more difficult Meat tasks. There is a great comic about this behavior here: PhD Comics (If you’ve never read PhD Comics, they are hysterical!)

The problem with replacing Meats with Vegetables is that feeling of productivity is only temporary. At the end of the day we still haven’t accomplished what we need to do. Remember, you need a balanced diet of Meats, Vegetables and Desserts every day in order to be productive.

The Time Diet to the Rescue!

So how do we fix this? Well, since we often view Vegetables tasks as a more desirable alternative to Meat tasks, use that to your advantage! When you sit down to start a Meat tasks, set a small goal for yourself. For example, if you’re writing a paper this could mean finishing the first page. When you’ve finished that goal, go do the most mindless Vegetable task on your “choose-to” list. This will keep you in “work-mode” but give your mind a break. Then, return to your Meat task with another small goal to work toward. Pretty soon, you’ll be far enough in to your difficult task that you’ll be in “the zone” and won’t need to take breaks as frequently. Remember, the hardest part of completing a Meat task is starting it. Once you’re on a roll, nothing can stop you!

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Beating the February Blues

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Well Time Diet readers, we all made it through another February. Is there something intrinsically un-motivating about this month or is it just me? Maybe that’s why it only has 28 days, because making this month any longer would just be cruel and unusual punishment. It’s a weird month. The “magic” of the winter/holiday season has officially worn off. Our excitement about our New Year’s resolutions has faded away and we are just ready for spring to get here and for it to stop being so cold. As a teacher, I really feel it because if there is anything worse than trying to motivate yourself through a slump, it’s trying to motivate a bunch of 10 and 11 year olds who seem to also have a major case of the “February Crankies.”

Finding the Motivation for Time Management

So what are we to do? We can’t reasonably expect ourselves to be 100% motivated all the time, but when we fall into a slump like this, productivity falls off the deep end. We become unfocused and our work seems to take three times longer to complete and that only worsens the situation. Unfocused work can throw your whole Time Diet off!

This is the perfect time to restate your goals. We’ve all heard the quote, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” I believe that a plan without a goal is just as bad. Why are you going to work every day? What are you trying to accomplish? Having a clear-cut goal gives your day direction and keeps you on the right track. It’s not good enough to simply have goals. You have to constantly remind yourself of them. I recommend writing your goals down and posting them in a prominent place so you see them frequently throughout the day.

I revisited my goals this week, wrote them on a piece of paper and posted them on my desk. I wanted to share with you what I wrote on my paper:

Emily’s Goals

1. Be “Dr. Schwartz”

2. Treat each of my students like they are my favorite student

3. Book 20 new Time Diet presentations in the next 12 months.

4. Save enough money to buy our dream home

5. Finish my book

6. Make band the most meaningful part of my students’ education

Writing these all out caused me to reflect on why I do everything that I do. It gave my day purpose and led to the most focused, inspired day of work I’ve had in a long time. A lack of focus is the enemy of time management. Having defined goals is the first step toward regaining that focus.

So what are your goals? Make a public commitment to one of your goals by sharing one either in a comment or on Facebook. I can’t wait to hear what you’re working toward!

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Visualizing Your Success

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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.

Motivation Management

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Sometimes I think the phrase “time management” can be a little bit of a misnomer. I mean sure, there are plenty of times when we have too much to do and truly need to figure out how to prioritize our workload and squeeze twice the work into half the time. But then there are times when, if we’re completely honest with ourselves, we know we have the time available to us to finish our work but we just don’t want to! This becomes less about “time management” and more about “motivation management.”

Have you ever seen people on a diet tape a picture of what they want to look like on their refrigerator so they see it every time they go to get food? Why do you suppose they do that? To stay motivated! When you’re on your Time Diet, you need to stay motivated to do the things you don’t want to do. Whenever you sense the dread coming on from a task you don’t want to do, rather than just putting off the task and prolonging that feeling, imagine how good you’ll feel when it’s over with. Visualization is a powerful motivator. Visualize yourself crawling into bed at night not worrying about finishing that thing you don’t want to do. Visualize how relaxed and proud you’ll be that you no longer have to worry about it.

Also, never discount the power of the “picture on the refrigerator” example. Write out your long-term goals and put them somewhere visible that you will see them frequently. Why are you working so hard? Do you want straight As in school? A better job? A cleaner house? Write it down! Frame it on your wall! It’s easy to become un-motivated when you’re staring down a bunch of things you don’t want to do without the constant reminder of why you’re doing them.