How to Solve Problematic Tasks at Your Inhuman Pace?
Response to the challenge from Jakub Jančík
Problem-solving is one of the basic activities you can stimulate your brain with. I have become addicted to this addictive sport. To solve problems effectively all the time, you need to have activities where you learn to switch off. For me, writing here on Medium has become such a wonderful hobby.
Jakub Jančík asked me the following question in his article The Key to Being Consistently Productive — Diversity
What do you do to keep yourself going constantly at your inhuman pace?
The answer is simple. The key is a combination of the following factors.
Every activity requires time — blocks of time
Depending on what kind of problem it is, you first need to determine whether it is a creative activity that requires full focus or, for example, just repetitive work in the form of answering emails or phone calls.
Depending on what kind of activity, it gets a place in your time block. Yes, you read correctly in the time block. To be as efficient as I am and handle multiple projects simultaneously, I use time blocks where I use these five main blocks.
- Full focus
- Creativity block
- Recurring labour
- Cooking/Eating
- Time with GF/tomcat
The first four blocks are also connected with work. Now let’s take a closer look at the blocks I use so you can understand my thinking.
Full focus
This block is the core block. This is where all challenging tasks that require maximum focus fall. By setting this block when I am in it, I ignore all notifications, phone calls and often pre-arranged meetings where my interaction is not directly required.
Thanks to the fact that I have complete peace of mind within this block, I can solve problems quickly and efficiently. However, this block is also connected with another important thing.
To use the full focus block, you need to know, based on your long-term observation, in what situations and times you can best focus since the full focus is on more than just putting on some music or brain.fm, I also use headphones with active noise cancellation, turning off the notifications and starting to work in full focus mode.
But it’s also about your current state of mind. I have this block regularly between 4:00–9:00 am, then have another one like this at 10:30–3:00 pm. So as you can see, it’s not just about having quiet, but you need to use the right time for your biorhythm.
Creativity block
This time frame for me, just like the Full focus block, is conditioned by specific time windows. So far, I have found that I can work well in creativity from 7:00–9:00 and then 3:30–7:00 p.m. Still, the difference here is that I work best if I give myself, for example, an hour for a given activity, and then the result is better than if I give myself two hours. In creativity mode, I also need different incentives in terms of music choice.
Repetitive activities
It may surprise you, but I’m more of an introvert. That’s kind of the way IT people are, so I don’t completely seek out social interactions. If I have to expose myself to them anymore, I combine them into coherent blocks, deal with as many meetings/emails/phone calls as possible at once, and then go back to my social bubble.
Where I have peace of mind, so for example, if I don’t reply to your comment in the first few days after the article is published, then I probably won’t even get to it as you’re stuck in my notifications, for which I apologise, I believe I’ve certainly bricked someone like that, and I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t reply to a nice comment like that, Jan.
Back to the point. Since they don’t require much brain activity, Repetitive activities can be resolved within blocks of time when you know you’re not really thinking extra hard, for example, before you go to lunch or when you’re done. I take some of my work calls from the car while driving or walking to clear my head and get some fresh air.
I often decline phone calls/online meetings unless I’m not needed or can be answered by email. Then I see no reason to waste time on something like that when I could be highly efficient for another activity or rob my loved ones of time together.
Cooking/Eating
I’m sure Ondrej would disagree with me here, but I spend time cooking, listening to podcasts and books or watching twitch.tv, for example. It may seem like too much multitasking, but it’s a nice distraction and head-clearing for me. With cooking, I sometimes also spend time in online work meetings, as if only verbal interaction is required and there is no need to share a screen, then you can use your time better than sitting in front of a PC.
Time with family
The last block of time is the most important one for me. However, I work a lot during the day and even on weekends. Hence, I have this block of time which, if I put it somewhere, means I dedicate time to my loved ones and during this time, I am practically not doing anything else. Even if you see me online, I will reply late. I complicate life for all of us more than enough with my work, so I keep these sacred moments for them.
Priorities
In the first part of this article, I introduced my time blocks. To make this time blocks effective, you must correctly identify the activity and assign the correct time slot accordingly. You need to be able to identify what priority the activities you need to have.
So to get the best possible result, you also need to be able to prioritize, and it doesn’t stop there. For example, if you have three different activities you need to do, but they have something in common, it is more beneficial for you to combine these activities and solve them together, thus saving time by solving three different problems when you have a focus on that area, and you are in the flow.
It’s all a matter of practice, but if you like books/articles about productivity, one important thing is often overlooked: to be productive at all, you need an activity to focus on first.
When you have an activity dedicated to, you can use simple steps to gradually improve that activity, saving time for other activities and thus increasing your work efficiency and productivity. But as I have already mentioned, you always need to be productive towards some activity, for nothing will not bring you anything.
Stoicism
There’s one more thing I didn’t mention. Over time I came to stoicism. For a long time, people have told me I’m phlegmatic and don’t care about everything, but that’s not the case. I don’t care about anything, and I solve everything a lot. I just learned to worry when there’s room for it, so even when problems arise, I act with a cool head because I accept things as they are the moment they come, and thanks to that, I’m able to solve even very complex problems in moments when most people fall off.
Conclusion
To solve problems at your inhuman pace, you must understand that only some activities are efficient to perform simultaneously. You need to figure out how your biorhythm works, what helps you focus and what doesn’t, when you are creative when you are better at solving logical problems, etc.
Awareness is also important, as it saves your highly efficient blocks of time on repetitive activities. One final piece of advice if you don’t have to put something off, don’t do it. You’ll pile up a bunch of small problems that you’ll eventually have to solve anyway, and it will take you more time than if you solved the activity right away.
I have no choice but to thank Jakub for the nice challenge he prepared for me. Hopefully, you had a chance to learn the secret behind my success at an inhuman pace of problem-solving.
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