I often see people tweeting the following quote from John C Maxwell: "Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have." ~ John C. Maxwell I get the gist but is this helping anyone. I am not aware of anyone offering advice that is badged as time management that is different to those professing priority management. Even if this is profound and game changing, the problem is that people cannot manage priorities either. Priorities are subjective, ever moving and infinite. What is unimportant and non-urgent to you is the opposite to someone who is waiting for your work. Hence the stress and the drag into reactiveness. The only thing you can really manage is your energy. So should we call it self-management? I am not sure. Word gymnastics are not useful unless put into action. It does not really matter whether you colloquially call it managing your time or managing your priorities. What matters is what you do right now. And you can either be reactive or proactive. Scott Hanselman says there are three types of work: Work as it appears Pre-defined work Defining work (what work needs to be done) We usually work from top to bottom, but we should reverse that if we want to get anything meaningful done. It does not matter what we call it. What matters is what are you going to do right now? Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog Agile does not work: Not when it is an excuse for not gathering requirements, for not understanding complexities and interconnections. Not when it's an excuse for delays, an excuse for inadequate testing and an excuse for poor management. This type of “agile” only results in a shoddy product that may, by luck rather than judgement, be pulled out of the precipice into something useable. Even the creator says the "methodology" does not work. Now that Silicon Valley start-ups run by twenty-somethings are hitting established blue chip manufacturers with the arrogance that the old is bad and the new way is good, I think it is time to stop and learn why manufacturing processes were established in the first place. Eliminate error, remove bottlenecks, get right first time. Doing all the changes in design is much cheaper than in production. These are principals that are not incompatible with software. You can't build a house using agile more elegantly or cheaply than standard practice. But you can build software the other way around. Which method will stand the test of time? As Nassim says probably the one that has already been around the longest. Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog The extent of my “multitasking” abilities: Thinking of blog posts or app feature ideas or framing questions in the shower Listening to podcasts while driving Doing social media on the toilet For everything else. Be present. Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog Don’t think. Trust yourself. Just like a rap battle, a corporate Q&A or simply talking to a stranger. Trust yourself that you will be able to speak the words you need to speak. In hindsight, you will not know where they came from, seemingly bypassing rational thought. If you let yourself see “failure” as okay, then that takes the resistance (as Seth would say) away and you let yourself perform the best you can. Even better than seeing it as okay, redefine failure so you cannot possibly fail. Feeling sorry for yourself because you got rejected by that girl at the bar? Well, that wasn’t the goal. The goal was to approach one person that day, and that’s what you did, so you succeeded. Forgot all your lines and made a bad impression at a work presentation? Well, that wasn’t the goal. The goal was to stand up and speak when no one else volunteered, so you succeeded. Go easier on yourself. See what happens when you gain momentum from small wins. Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog If everything is important then nothing is. If everything is urgent then nothing is. Guess what, if you combine the two, that still doesn’t help. I saw a small team at work using an Eisenhower box on a whiteboard, but everything was in one quadrant. Guess which one? Is brushing your teeth important? Yes, to oral health. To get a promotion? Well, you could say yes, but is it more or less important than getting results expected by your boss? You can always make a case for the important. Who wants to admit to themselves that all their work is not even important? But is it important within the context of your goals and dreams? Instead of categorising things as important or not important you could try a small tweak. Try categorising your to-dos “more important” and “less important” within the context of a given goal. Then make sure you are allocating time appropriately to those that are less urgent. The alternative is to look up from the hamster wheel in 10 years’ time and realise you are still in the same place. Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog The conditions will never be perfect. You will not have enough money Loved ones will leave you You will not always feel motivated. Just start. And keep moving forwards with what you have got. You will figure it out as you go along. Back yourself. Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog Have you ever been someone's “best boss I've ever had”? If not why not? If so, was it because you gave them everything they wanted and let them slack off. Or was it because you achieved something together, because you pushed them to grow, because you cared? Why is this not a widely-used metric in corporations? Because it is hard? Because the top might not like the answer? Because no one cares? If your organisation really wants to be famous for people development then why not start measuring it? Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog Even my mom, retired, gets distracted by her phone like a teenager. Stops a sentence mid flow, looks at a notification, answers an email. Focus! Distractions are your fault. Phone rings, Skype pings, Email bings. Turn notifications off. Then do the difficult, proactive work you came here to do. Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog
Pocket is the go to app to keep my inbox workflow working. If it takes more than 2 mins to deal with, it goes it pocket to read later. Just forward on the email.
See something on the internet that you want to read later, just click the browser plugin. Easy. Like your own newspaper.
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What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog How long are you going to snooze for? Do you really have nothing else to do? In the time you repeatedly hit the snooze button, you could train for a marathon, start a business, get a promotion. But it is easier to stay in bed. This, like all first world problems, is not a new one. “At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work- as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for – the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?’” ~ Meditations - Marcus Aurelius What is new is the level of distractions. Email, IM, Netflix. These are snooze buttons in disguise to keep you from being present. To keep you distracted from “your job as a human being.” So, how long are you going to snooze today before you start moving towards your goal? Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.
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