by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Goals, Growth, Habits, Leadership, Mindset, Miniseries, Planning, Productivity, Time, Tools
Other parts of the miniseries:
Winning the war for time–Part 1
Winning the war for time–Part 3
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 37 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Winning the war for time–Part 2
— From Learning to Lead: Bringing Out the Best in People by Fred Smith (1915-2007)
In yesterday’s post, we learned the importance of having clarity on our philosophy on time: Fred Smith, leadership guru, taught us some powerful questions to ask ourselves in his book Learning to Lead to determine why we want to get more out of time.
Today, we’ll see why Smith questions the idea of spending time and, instead, prefers to see time as an investment.
He says, “There are two ways to approach time. One is technological: minutes as units. The other is the philosophical: minutes as meaning. […] Too often people don’t know the difference between a fast track and a frantic track.” Smith enjoys a fast-track life, but he doesn’t relish being frantic. That’s an incredibly important distinction.
“It’s just as foolish to use every minute for activity as it is to spend every nickel you’ve got.”
The author goes on to say, “Some people think they have to spend time, use it up one way or another—while others invest it.” His philosophy is to invest it, which means looking for a return on what he does. “Some of that return will be in dollars or other visible achievement, but some will be more internal. Investing time wisely does something for you. Over a period of time it brings an appreciation, a patina to life; it generates maturity and fullness.”
A key thing to consider, as Smith points out, is that “Opportunity is not a mandate to do. Your mandate comes from what you have chosen to try to accomplish.” And he illustrates this by saying, “If a farmer has a bushel of corn and several different fields in which to plant it, he will pick the most fertile field.”
This is a great concept to keep in mind nowadays, when we all live with FOMO, the Fear Of Missing Out, and thus try to do too much as we don’t want to miss any opportunities.
Another important point that Smith makes is that of earning respect for our time.
Just as we respect and value other people’s time and effort, we should expect and demand that people respect ours the same way.
People respect us when we address their problems quickly. “There’s something professional about that,” writes the author. “If through reading as well as living we have developed the intuition, knowledge and experience to be helpful to others, and if we have the courage to go right at the issue and not be afraid of conflict, people will see we mean business with our time.”
In practical terms, the best way to do this is to “train people to think in terms of schedule” by saying things that will signal such respect for our time and that of others.
For instance, “You can set definite times for meetings. Even if the calendar is open, you don’t say, ‘Well, come any time Tuesday.’ Instead you say, ‘I’ll be glad to see you. How long do you think you’ll need?’ or ‘How long will it take us to accomplish what you’ve got in mind?’”
Also, Smith says, “You can telegraph your view of time by cutting the conversation off promptly at the end. ‘Is there anything else that we should talk about, or are we finished?’ This establishes the reason why we’re talking: to accomplish something.”
I like Smith’s approach to time because I think it’s sensible and practical. Come back tomorrow for another installment of this miniseries. Smith will be guiding us through personal habits to avoid wasting time, among other topics.
ACTION
TODAY: Think of times when you have spent more time than you wanted in a meeting or a project. What is the common denominator among all those times? How do you give people access to your time? How can you change that access? Work on the language you use with yourself and with others to think in terms of schedule.
FUTURE: Once you’ve figured out how to improve the ways in which you handle your time with others, begin to test. Slowly but surely, you’ll be getting used to the language that works best in each occasion, to the point where you won’t make the mistakes of the past again. Test and rehearse many times until it all comes naturally.
Know someone who is always battling time? Please share this post with that person. Thank you! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Goals, Growth, Habits, Leadership, Mindset, Miniseries, Planning, Productivity, Time, Tools
Other parts of the miniseries:
Winning the war for time–Part 2
Winning the war for time–Part 3
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 56 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Winning the war for time–Part 1
— From Learning to Lead: Bringing Out the Best in People by Fred Smith (1915-2007)
If you find yourself in a crunch and need to make or find time, Fred Smith, leadership guru, gave us this miniseries a while back: How to find 5 extra hours per week.
However, those tactics are geared to win a short battle for time, as you cannot sustain them for the long run. Enter this new miniseries as a continuation of the previous one, also from Fred Smith’s book Learning to Lead. This time we will focus on, in the author’s words, winning the war for time.
“You can only win the war with a philosophical base,” says Smith. This means asking WHY you want to get more out of time: “Is it because [you] want to become famous or make money? [Are you] part of a peer group that always seems busy? What’s the real reason to squeeze more into [your] days and weeks?”
“These days, haste has become a status symbol. People assume, If I’m busier than you are, I must be more important.”
Smith confesses to being perplexed: “Maybe I’m missing something, but I always thought if you were successful, you had more time, not less. […] Lack of time is a status symbol, and that, to me, is backwards. If you really are somebody, you are in control of your time.”
What, then, should the best approach to time be? A very American idea is that of utilizing time to its fullest. Smith shares his thoughts: “I think optimizing opportunities and talents… is a valid reason to use time well.” And he says that this point of view arises from his philosophical cornerstones:
- Time is simply life’s clock. “Time is a tool—a means in life, never an end. […] Time is not something to be pursued for it’s own sake but for what can be done with it.”
- Life is measured by time. “I have a responsibility to control it,” says Smith. “Most of us don’t let other people spend our money; likewise, we should limit their power to spend our time also.”
- We all have the same amount of time each day as everybody else. “The great achievers of the world don’t have any more time than [we] do. It’s simply untrue to say, ‘I don’t have enough time.’ What is not the same for everybody is energy. Unless I recognize my level of energy and recognize that it comes in ebbs and surges, I won’t accomplish all I could.” (This miniseries can help with harnessing your energy and creating the time and space for being awesomely effective.)
- Know the ultimate purpose of your life. This is the only way you’ll be able to know whether you are using your time properly and wisely. Smith mentions that, if you don’t know that ultimate purpose, you have no way of judging your efficiency.
And I’ll leave you to ponder these thoughts today. Please come back tomorrow for another installment of this miniseries where Smith shares why it’s better to invest time than to spend it.
ACTION
TODAY: Ask yourself: What is your philosophical approach to time? Why do you want to get more out of time? Your answers will help bring you clarity.
FUTURE: With your newfound clarity about your philosophy of time, apply it now to your purpose. What activities do you think will be the best use of your time?
Know someone who is always battling time? Please share this post with that person. Thank you! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Goals, Growth, Leadership, Mindset, Opportunity, Planning, Productivity, Resources, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 53 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Warren Buffett’s little-known tool for prioritizing
— From Warren Buffett’s 5-Step Process for Prioritizing True Success (and Why Most People Never Do It) as appears in the Live Your Legend blog post by the late Scott Dinsmore. Today the site is run by Chelsea Dinsmore.
We’ve talked about prioritizing before, yet I’m always on a quest for additional tools and hacks that can I bring into my life and my projects.
Today I came across a great story in the Live Your Legend blog. It’s about Warren Buffet teaching his pilot a 5-step process on how to prioritize, and a great, new, little-known tool that everyone should adopt.
The story goes like this (taken directly from the post):
1. Know what you want – List your top 25. One day, a few years back Warren went up to his pilot (we’ll call him Steve) and jokingly said, “The fact that you’re still working for me, tells me I’m not doing my job. You should be out, going after more of your goals and dreams.” Warren then asked Steve to list the top 25 things he wanted to do in the next few years or even his lifetime.
2. Pick your Top 5. Once Steve completed his list, Warren then asked him to review each item and circle the top five that were most important to him. The ones he wanted more than anything. Steve was hesitant because, to him, they were all massively important. After all, that’s why he wrote them down. But Warren insisted that he could only pick five. So Steve spent some time with his list and after some deliberation, made five circles. “Are you sure these are the absolute highest priority for you?” Warren asked. Steve confidently replied the affirmative.
3. Make your Top 5 Plan. Warren now asked Steve when he planned to get to work on these top 5 and what his approach would be. They spent the next while discussing Steve’s plan. Steve explained “Warren, these are the most important things in my life right now. I’m going to get to work on them right away. I’ll start tomorrow. Actually, no, I’ll start tonight.” Steve went on to explain his plan, who he would enlist to help him, and by when all these items would get done. Warren was starting to get excited. With any luck, he would be out of a pilot within weeks…
4. Marry your priorities. Once the Top 5 planning session was over, Warren then asked, “but what about these other 20 things on your list that you didn’t circle? What is your plan for completing those?” Steve replied confidently, “Well the top five are my primary focus, but the other twenty come in at a close second. They are still important, so I’ll work on those intermittently as I see fit as I’m getting through my top 5. They are not as urgent but I still plan to give them dedicated effort.” To Steve’s surprise, Warren responded sternly, “No. You’ve got it wrong, Steve. Everything you didn’t circle just became your ‘avoid at all cost list’. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you’ve succeeded with your top 5.”
5. Know your ‘Avoid at all Cost List‘ and stick to it. Warren makes a powerful and somewhat unconventional point here. Most people would suggest ranking their second most important items just below their first. Makes sense at first, but as it turns out, this is the type of behavior that creates some of the most detrimental distractions in making big things happen.
I love the concept of the ‘avoid-at-all-cost’ list and, as of right-this-very-second, I am incorporating it into my life. I think it’s a great idea and another tool for focus, concentration, and success.
By having an ‘avoid-at-all-costs’ list, your mind will not be distracted by the priorities in that list. It’s as if you put them in a vault and forget about them. You can’t get them out until the other ones are done, so you will not spend precious mental energy thinking about those things that are not your immediate focus. Brilliant!
Do you like the concept of the ‘avoid-at-all-costs’ list as much as I do? Let me know in the comments here.
ACTION
TODAY: Set up some time in your calendar to follow Buffet’s 5 steps and create a plan to achieve your goals.
FUTURE: Once you have your plan, focus, focus, and focus on your top 5 priorities. That laser-like aim will enable you to devote all your energy to your top 5 goals and crush them!
Know anybody who could use this 5-step process to prioritize? Please share this post via Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Collaboration, Growth, Habits, Leadership, Planning, Productivity, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 35 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Maker’s Schedule vs. Manager’s Schedule
— From Paul Graham’s blog by Paul Graham, Co-Founder & Partner, Y Combinator
A few years’ back, Paul Graham wrote a post on his blog where he finally deciphered the incompatibility between scheduling: there are people who deal with their time as managers, and people who deal with theirs as makers. And then there are the hybrids.
Hmmmm, what does all this mean?
Let me explain:
Graham writes in his blog, “The manager’s schedule is for bosses. It’s embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one-hour intervals… When you use time that way, it’s merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you’re done. Most powerful people are on the manager’s schedule. It’s the schedule of command.”
The makers are programmers, writers, and anybody who needs large chunks of time to devote to focus on making whatever it is that they do. “They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can’t write or program well in units of an hour. That’s barely enough time to get started. When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in.”
“Each type of schedule works fine by itself,” Graham continues. “Problems arise when they meet. Since most powerful people operate on the manager’s schedule, they’re in a position to make everyone resonate at their frequency if they want to. But the smarter ones restrain themselves, if they know that some of the people working for them need long chunks of time to work in.”
Managers and makers beware, now that we know how the others operate. Graham offers a solution that has worked for him: office hours clustered at the end of one day. That way managers and makers can indeed meet, but the meeting is not intruding into precious making time.
But what happens when you are a hybrid of both manager and maker? I know I am. And I thought I was going crazy for having a back-to-back meeting schedule on certain days, and reserving other days for long, uninterrupted chunks of time that I defended vehemently and refused to break up with meetings. On the latter, I’d go into “Monk Mode” as Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism, calls it.
I had, not knowing, created maker’s days and manager’s days in my calendar. Thanks to Graham, I now know that this is not a crazy thing to do if you’re a hybrid. You can also partition your day into maker’s hours and manager’s hours.
Graham’s case is also a good illustration. As the founder of Y Combinator, one of the most famous companies to provide seed funding for startups, when he and his team were starting, he “used to program from dinner till about 3 am every day, because at night no one could interrupt [him]. Then [he’d] sleep till about 11 am, and come in and work until dinner on what [he] called ‘business stuff.’” He explains, “I never thought of it in these terms, but in effect I had two workdays each day, one on the manager’s schedule and one on the maker’s.”
Understanding these two schedules, and the way in which they interact or the way in which you can combine them if you are a hybrid, brought much clarity and peace of mind to me. I hope it will do the same for you and the way in which you use your time.
Are you a maker, a manager or a hybrid? Let me know in the comments here.
A reminder that, tomorrow, starts the 90-day sprint towards the end of the year — woohoo! Check out Achieve in 90 to focus on finishing your 2018 goals!
ACTION
TODAY: Figure out how whether you’re a manager or a maker, or both.
FUTURE: Now that you know about these two types of schedules, you can rearrange yours for your optimal performance as well as the optimal way in which you interact with your team and the outside world. Here’s a great post with some tips on how to do this.
Please share this post with managers, makers and hybrids, they will thank you! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Goals, Habits, Mindset, Planning, Productivity, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 15 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: The Pomodoro Technique
— From The Pomodoro Technique (website). The book The Pomodoro Technique: The Acclaimed Time-Management System That Has Transformed How We Work by Francesco Cirillo (U.S. edition) was just published a few weeks ago and I can’t wait to read it.
Some of you have asked me how I am able to read as much as I read and write blog posts on a daily basis, plus focus on my work and do the many things that I do without going crazy.
Well, the crazy part does happen sometimes (just ask my husband…), but the productivity and effectiveness I owe to a well-known technique called Pomodoro.
Pomodoro means tomato in Italian. The Pomodoro Technique was invented by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s. He was a college student back then, and had a kitchen timer in the shape of a tomato. Thus, he gave the name of pomodoro to his technique for interval-studying/working with a timer.
The technique is so simple that it’s hard to believe it works, but it’s incredibly effective for focusing, concentrating, tracking and saving time. Cirillo writes, “[The Pomodoro Technique is] a revolutionary time management system, it is at once deceptively simple to learn and life-changing to use.”
Yes, I agree. Believe me, life-changing is not an exaggeration. And not just for me: some of the most productive people I know use the technique or some variation that works for them.
Here’s how it works:
- Choose a task you’d like to get done. I always have next to me a piece of paper. In it I write down the task I’m going to work on: “in the next pomodoro I am going to do X.” X for me can be reading, writing, working, doing research on the internet, finishing a bunch of little tasks that I group together, etc. Then I turn off the phone, all notifications from my computer and social media, remove all possible distractions and have a glass of water (or a cup of tea) by my side.
- Set the timer for 25 minutes. Focus on working on your task without interruption. It’s only 25 minutes, so it’s not a hard thing to do. Cirillo states, “Usually, you can afford to take 25 minutes before calling back a friend or replying to an email. You’ll learn how to handle the inevitable interruption while staying focused on the task at hand.”
- Work on that task until the timer rings. Note that as you work on your chosen task, many things will pop in your mind. I write them down on my piece of paper as they surface, so that I don’t forget them later, and quickly shift my focus back to working on the task I chose for this interval. When the timer rings, reflect it on the piece of paper. Some people write a checkmark, I like to cross out little circles that I draw on my piece of paper. I pretend they’re tomatoes.
- Take a short break. Cirillo writes, “Breathe, meditate, grab a cup of coffee, go for a short walk or do something else relaxing (i.e., not work-related). Your brain will thank you later.” What I usually do is get up and walk around for 5 min, go get myself more water or tea, stretch, make a phone call, etc. I recently started doing a few jumping jacks and pushups or squats during the breaks (might as well make the breaks count towards my goal of 100 pushups…).
- Every 4 pomodoros, take a longer break. 20-30 minutes works well. Dedicate that time to clear your mind. Cirillo says, “Your brain will use this time to assimilate new information and rest before the next round of Pomodoros.” I keep (or take with me) the piece of paper if I go somewhere during this longer break, because usually ideas and thoughts will keep popping up, so I can take action on them during this break (e.g. make a phone call to set up an appointment) or later on.
And this is it. Super simple indeed, but if you use it, you’ll become tremendously effective. And you can also modify it to suit whatever you are doing. Play with the focus and break times to find what serves you best. I sometimes do 45-50 minute pomodoros followed by a 10-15 min break if I know the task I have in front of me will take me longer than 25 minutes.
Pomodoros are wonderful to measure the amount of time that something takes to complete, as well as to see how much time I dedicated to each task at the end of the day.
There are plenty of physical and online timers that you can use. Give this technique a shot and I’m sure you’ll be hooked on it as much as I am. Highly recommended.
And if you’d like to learn more productivity techniques and hacks to achieve your goals, my program Achieve in 90 is starting on October 3rd. I’d love to have you join our wonderful group and focus on finishing your chosen goals before the end of the year.
ACTION
TODAY: Set up 30 minutes in your schedule to try out a 25 min pomodoro followed by a quick 5 min break and see how you like it.
FUTURE: Create the habit of incorporating pomodoros in your professional and personal time. You’ll be so much more effective and save a lot of time. You’ll also become more aware of how you spend your time.
Please share this post with someone who might be interested in trying out The Pomodoro Technique! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Goals, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Planning, Productivity, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 18 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Make it impossible to fail
— From Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
When we think of our never-ending to-do list, or when we feel stuck on the project in which we are working, it’s natural to feel resistance. This resistance comes from not being clear on what we need to do, says David Allen, renowned productivity guru, in his book Getting Things Done.
Yet sometimes that clarity we seek is muddled by our way of looking at the task: if you write down a to-do item as, for example, “Tires for the car,” it may be too big and unclear of an item.
Allen suggests an incredibly simple, but oh-so-effective solution. By asking yourself this question and acting on it, it will be almost impossible for you to fail on making progress: “What’s the next action?”
And I’d take it one step further as: What is the immediate, smallest, next action required, for me to move forward with this project?
“This is the critical question for anything [you’re going to write down on your to-do list]” says Allen. “If you answer it appropriately, you’ll have the key substantive thing [to move forward]. The ‘next action’ is the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move the current reality of this thing toward completion.”
In the above example of the tires, the immediate next action is not actually you changing the tires. It’s not making an appointment at the tire shop to bring your car in, either. It’s calling your friend Fred, who told you he’d give you the info of the shop where he got his cars’ tires changed at a great price.
So, the broad “tires for the car,” that has been in your to-do list for the past week, suddenly turns into this immediate, small, next action: “Call Fred for name and phone of the tire shop.”
By breaking it down into small, actionable, next-action chunks, any task can be achieved.
It’s so simple that all we intuitively know it, don’t we? (Yet sometimes we need someone to point out the obvious for us for it to sink in. And that is why Allen’s Getting Things Done system has worked so well for millions of people worldwide, it’s so effective!)
And then what?
The author says, “Do it, Delegate it, or Defer it. Once you’ve decided on the next action, you have three options.”
1. Do it. “If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it is defined.”
2. Delegate it. “If the action will take longer than two minutes, ask yourself, Am I the right person to do this? If the answer is no, delegate it to the appropriate entity.”
3. Defer it. “If the action will take longer than two minutes, and you are the right person to do it, you will have to defer acting on it until later and track it.”
I’ve implemented this simple system for a while now, and it really makes it almost impossible to fail. It always gets me unstuck. And sometimes the action I need to take is so small, that it makes me laugh and, thus, I do it with much joy to move forward.
Hope this turns out to be as effective for you as it’s been for me!
P.S. If you want to learn and apply this and other ways to achieve your goals in 90 days, I’m starting a program called Achieve in 90. Hope you can join us!
ACTION
TODAY: Redo your to-do list in terms of the immediate, smallest, next action required, for you to move forward with your projects.
FUTURE: Make it a habit of thinking in immediate, small, next actions required to move your to-do list forward and achieve your goals. This approach brings clarity and replaces overwhelm with a feeling of can-do when you focus on the next action that you can take. That’s why it makes it impossible to fail.
Please share this productivity tip with someone to alleviate their to-do-list overwhelm! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
