More time hacks

After writing “Time hacks for those of us with normal jobs”, other ideas came out:

Try fasting

Twice a week I try to fast — after my evening meal, I do not eat till the following dinner. As well as saving me time in preparing and cooking meals. It strengthens my willpower, the executive part of my brain. Sometimes, I feel myself go into some slight superspeed mode (like when you change an audio track to 1.5x). I’m more alert as my body isn’t weighed down by digestion. Fasting also teaches me to be more present and overall this makes me more mindful about how I’m spending my time. (Though be careful your monkey doesn’t go into overdrive once you finish the fast!)

Seriously, use a calendar

Sometimes people tell me to remind them to do something… “erm…remind yourself?”. To be honest, I should be pushing back and showing them to use their calendars more. I wrote before about using calendars here. You can save yourself so much effort by scheduling tasks and freeing your mind to better things than “must remember to buy milk”.

Plan backwards and get busier

Some deadlines you can breakdown into parts that need completing. If you need motivation to drive you to do things, then add more to your days, not less. Go see your friends, get lost in a film, enjoy your life. When you realise that if you don’t do it now, you won’t fit it in, it’ll hopefully give you that boost to push you to do it now. For example, looking ahead in my calendar, I know I don’t have any other time this weekend to write this, so this pushes me to write now.

Now? Important? Me?

When I get work, I always check when something needs to be done. It’s easy to assume that something is urgent when someone first brings it up, but you can save yourself so much pressure by just asking “So when do you need this by?” and negotiate if necessary. Schedule it correctly and delegate if needed.

Collaborate

It doesn’t have to be all/nothing. I’ve saved myself a few brain spins by just calling up a colleague and running an idea by then.

Set the next action

With work, where I do a lot of hat swapping, I flag up all emails/actions that need addressing. When I respond, I flag my response so that I can quickly see where I’m at; thus keeping the momentum and saving minutes not chasing my own tail.

Learn from mistakes

When you do chase or step on your own tail, take a moment to consider when and how it happened and what you can do to change it. Was there a miscommunication, is something not explicit? Mistakes are only useless if you don’t consider what you could have done better.