8 Time Management Tips

List of Contents

• We own all of our time
• Hell yeah or no
• The daily highlight
• Use a to-do list
• Time blocking
• Parkinson’s Law
• Protected time
• The choice to be satisfied

We own all of our time

We absolutely own all of our time. This is a really big one. When I first had this realisation my life genuinely changed. I used to think, “I dont have time to do stuff”. This helps me realise my time is in entirely control in my own hands. Right now, you are reading this blog. Earlier today, you were spending your time doing something else. It’s not like you don’t have time to read a book today instead it was a case of you are actively choosing not to read a book today. You are control of your own time it’s just that you are not prioritizing to do it today.

Hell yeah or no (What’s worth doing)

Here, the idea is whether a task worth doing is ‘HELL YEAH!’ (you are absolutely sure you want to do it) or a ‘NO!‘. So If someone gives me a task and I am thinking, “Umm maybe It sounds kinda alright”. Then my default position is going to be ‘NO!‘. On the other hand, if someone gives me a task and I am thinking, “HELL YEAH!“. Then I will do it. Personally, I am trying to get better at this using this principle in my life it will take time but it will be very helpul in the long run.

The daily highlight

Basically, The idea is that everyday we decide this thing is one thing that’s going to be my daily highlight of the day, this is the only thing I have to get done today. On the days when I set a daily highlight, I always get that task done without fail. When I don’t have a daily highlight, I get drowned in my todo list and it’s alot harder to get stuff done.

Use a to-do list

You can maintain a physical book or install an application, both work well. There is a general principle of productivity which is :-

Our brain is for having ideas not holding them.

Time blocking

Apparently this is something elon musk does all the time. Basically the idea is whenever we have to do something we block that time in our calendar. So, I don’t like to do this for everything because I am a bit lazy because what I think is the more time I spend in managing my productivity system the less time I spend actually doing the work. But the one thing that I always schedule to my calender at the start of my day is my daily highlight. So, if I have decided my daily highlight is to write a new blog. I would schedule that time in my calendar ahead of time. And this thing where you combine the daily highlight with time blocking is incredibly useful. Everyone thinks, “Only one thing a day, don’t you have to do more than that”. Yeah! you do have to do more than that in most of your lives but imagine if every single day for the next year, you could actually do one thing. The one most important thing to do that day, you would make hell of a lot of progress over the course of the year and that will be game changing.

Parkinson’s Law

Work expands to fill that time we allocate to it.

So, if I have to write a blog in a day and I give myself a whole day to do that. Inevitably, It will take me entire day to write that blog. Whereas if I only give myself 1 hour to write that blog and I fill my day with other things then inevitably I get the blog done in that small amount of time. So, the actionable advice here is to leverage artificial deadlines.

Protected time

For example, I used to have mobile phone addiction. So, I decided to not use my phone in the morning when I wake up I would write some code till I have my lunch and this has been an absolute game changer. My morning is my protected time for coding and even on those days when I am not actively working on a project it’s good to have that protected time for myself to just think about which project should I build next or what tech should I learn next.

The choice to be satisfied

This is something, I have recently starting to appreciate which is that when you are like a productivity nerd and your are interested in effeciency and getting more done. It’s very easy for us to get to the end of the day and to feel cronically dissatisfied with what we have accomplished like at the end of the day is, “Oh! I could have done more”. One thing I have started telling me recently is that I can choose to be satisfied at the end of the day. It doesn’t change how much work I have done by me beating myself about it and it just makes me fill bad. Therefore, I can choose to feel good with how I managed my time.