Time Management Fundamentals

Chapter 1: Laying the Productivity

Chapter 2: Obstacle to Productivity

Chapter 3: Productivity Principle 1: Space

CHAPTER 1

Getting the Most from this Course

Getting the Most from this Course text

This course was designed to provide advice you can apply immediately, no matter which video you jump to in the training. However, to get the best result, I strongly encourage you to complete this training as a whole, in one, maybe two, sittings. Here are a few recommendations to make that work. Number one is schedule the time to complete it. To view all the videos, as well as complete activities that I'll give you, it'll probably take you several hours. My second piece of advice is to complete the course while in your workspace. Your workspace is the laboratory for you to learn the science of time management. This training is very hands-on, so when you schedule that block of time to complete the course, schedule it so you can be where you do your paperwork, where you answer your emails, your workspace. Also, when I ask you to do something in this training, do it right then. Pause the video, do what I've asked you to do, put it into action. Rather than rushing through all the videos, put your emphasis on taking action. By implementing immediately, you'll condition yourself. It's a bit like how athletes or professional musicians use repetition to create muscle memory. I want you to create productivity memory. This will help you develop mental and physical conditioning so you automatically behave in the most productive manner with things like email, paperwork, incoming phone calls, and the ideas that pop into your head. If you take action immediately, that will go a long way toward building your mental muscle memory. Finally, set your goal to be a lasting change. Many of my clients who have completed this program have experienced a near permanent boost in productivity that lasts for many, many years. How can you accomplish that? By putting greater emphasis on timeless principles, rather than rapidly changing tools. The tendency for many people is to believe that the new software, the next computer, or a smartphone upgrade will suddenly improve their productivity by virtue of advanced technology. The truth? Technology itself will not make you more productive. What will make you more productive is using the technology in a way that's based on timeless principles, principles that never change, regardless of advancements in technology. For example, one of the things that you'll learn in this course is that you need to carry your calendar, your contacts, and your tasks with you, wherever you go. The brand of phone and its operating system don't matter as much as the commitment you make to live that timeless principle. The next time you think that buying a new tool will make you more productive, remember, its value is dependent on how well you live according to the principles of effective time management. This course will outline those simplified principles, and, more importantly, help you practice them, so that they become second nature to you. It's in the habits you'll develop where you'll experience lasting change. In summary, schedule the time to complete the course, preferably, in one complete block. Complete this course in your workspace. Take action immediately to apply the principles I'll share, and focus on a lasting change by putting emphasis on timeless principles ahead of rapidly changing tools. Do these things, and you'll get the maximum benefit from this course.

Understanding the Focus-Chaos Scale

Understanding the Focus-Chaos Scale text

Do you naturally favor focus or chaos? Through years of working with people in a variety of backgrounds, I've found that people have natural tendencies when it comes to productivity. It's best understood with a graph. On the far left we have focus and on the far right we have chaos. Those who fall on the far left are the focus masters. These are people who naturally understand organization and productivity. The best of them have never had any issues with time management or organization. Their biggest challenge? Being frustrated by the inefficiency of the people all around them. They may tell others, "Just do it my way." But this rarely works as focus masters are rare. If you find yourself in the focus master category, follow this course to learn a simple framework you can use to help others become more productive. Those who fall on the far right of the scale are the chaos masters. Chaos masters have always struggled with organization and productivity. They've learned to be successful despite their natural tendency to be a little, well more than a little disorganized in everything that they do. These are the people who often have piles all around the office yet claim they know where everything is. The chaos master's biggest challenge? Learning how to boost productivity in a way that doesn't hinder their creativity or desire to build relationships. If you find yourself in this category, go through this course with a different mindset. Focus on freeing up time and space to do your greatest work. Those in the middle are the nomads. I've found most people fit into this category. They consider themselves inherently focused, but find it more difficult. Circumstances at work and in life have pulled them out of that focused existence. If you're a nomad, go through this course seeking to discover how you lost focus. Also, work on establishing new habits to protect your focus as you move forward. By understanding where you fall on the focus-chaos scale, you'll understand how this course can best help you. I also shared this scale with you for one additional reason. Many of those who have successfully completed this program have found it helpful to learn where I, your instructor, fit on this scale. The truth? I am inherently a chaos master. You would think by the way I operate now that I am a focused master 99% of the time. Yet in my past, you had to use a shovel to get from the front door to my desk. I also jumped from career to career, living in constant chaos. Once I worked with a psychologist who determined I was, "Off the charts ADHD." This awareness led me to build the unified system that we're going to cover right now. The methods I'll share helped me compensate for an incredibly chaotic way of operating. This might give you some hope. Most other time management systems were built by focus masters so they're typically hard for the rest of us mere mortals to grasp. The principles we'll cover here are simplified and universal. Wherever you fit on the scale between focus and chaos, there's something here for you.

Finding your Personal Motivation for Lasting Change

Finding your Personal Motivation for Lasting Change text

What would you do if you had an extra 10 hours per week? Pause for a moment and ponder that question. If you had an extra two hours every work day, how would you reinvest that time? Would it be on hobbies? Would it be on friend and family? Would you reinvest it to further develop your career? One of the critical elements in becoming more productive and mastering time management is to have a strong motivation in mind. So I invite you to carefully consider this question. If you had an extra 10 hours per week, how would you spend the time? This motivation is a vision of the future. What you will do or what life will look like once you've reached a certain point. It's my experience that those who follow this course get a similar result. They gain at least an extra 10 hours per week of increased productivity in their schedule. So, before we go through the process of getting that time, I would like you to decide, right now, what you'll do with that time once you get it. Write your answer down. When I have an extra 10 hours a week, I will and then fill in the blank. Then, put that in a prominent place where you can see it. As you go through this training, continually look back at that question and remember your personal motivation. There are going to be moments where you find what I ask you to do to be a bit challenging. A little bit challenging is necessary for growth, right? So whenever you feel challenged, and maybe a little inclined to not complete the course, look back at that answer you posted and remember your vision of the future, of what you'll do with the extra time you'll uncover. Regularly refer back to your motivation and the likelihood of your follow through will increase.

CHAPTER 2: Obstacle to Productivity

Addressing the Myth of Multitasking

Addressing the Myth of Multitasking text

Ironically, the biggest obstacle to effective time management is something that many people believe is what makes them more productive. Let's address the myth of multitasking before we dive deeper into time management. In order for you to experience this myth firsthand, let's do an exercise together, adapted from my book "The Myth of Multitasking." We're going to find out how well you use your time when you multitask. You can download and print out a handout from the course page. You can also use any piece of white paper to do this exercise. Notice that I have the phrase at the top of this exercise,"Switchtasking is a Thief." When people think they're multitasking, very often instead, what they're doing is switchtasking. Switchtasking occurs when you attempt to perform multiple attention requiring tasks at the same time. Switchtasking is a thief. It's a thief of time. It's a thief of money and it's a thief of your sanity. And you're about to experience, firsthand, what I mean. Here's how the exercise works. Wait to hear all of the instructions before you begin. First, recopy the phrase, "Switchtasking is a thief," in the first row. And then, underneath that in the second row, write the numbers one to 21, one number for every letter in that phrase. Use a timer while you do this and write down your time underneath the second row. Great! Now let's do this again. This time, I want you to switchtask. Switch back and forth between each letter and number. Again, wait until I give you all the instructions. For every letter you write, you're going to write a number. You'll begin by writing the letter "S," and beneath that, you'll write a one. And then you'll write a "W" and beneath that, you'll write a two. "I" and three, and so on. Again, use a timer and keep track of how long this takes you. What you just experienced is the myth of multitasking. Rather than getting more done faster, you got worse results slower. This is because your brain is physically incapable of handling multiple active tasks at the same time. In your everyday activities, switching back and forth rapidly between tasks gives the same result as what you just experienced when you switched back and forth between the numbers and the letters. No, I'm not talking about doing something active while something mindless or mundane happens in the background, such as exercising while watching TV. To clarify, I call that sort of activity, "background tasking." But when most people say they're multitasking, or, "I'm a good multitasker," they're referring to attempting to perform multiple active tasks at the same time. This is switchtasking and it's disastrous to effective time management.

Understanding the Consequences of Multitasking

Understanding the Consequences of Multitasking text

Let's cover the three effects of switchtasking. Remember, when someone thinks they're multitasking, what they're often doing instead is switching back and forth rapidly between tasks. This isn't multitasking, it's switchtasking. Number one, this is most obvious, when you switchtask, the amount of time it takes to complete things increases. I'll give you a brief example. I once worked with a business owner and asked her to tell me of a recent time when she was multitasking. She described a situation where she was doing three things at once: typing an email, talking to her assistant, and talking on the phone. She spent a total of one hour doing all three of these things at the same time. At least, until the person on the line asked her to stop. The person on the phone could tell by the business owner's multitasking voice. We've all heard it, right? So, finally, she went out into the hall and focused on the phone call. To finish the call, it took her seven minutes. She went back in to talk to her assistant, it took three minutes. She sat down and answered the email, it took her three minutes. In short, when she tried to do all three things at the same time, it took her an hour and she accomplished none of them. But when she did them one at a time, it took her less than 15 minutes and she completed them all successfully. This is where that feeling comes from at the end of the day, when you put your feet up on the couch and you're exhausted. You've been working hard, but what did you accomplish? You've been juggling and jumping between tasks, finishing hardly anything. Number two is quality. When you switchtask, the quality of your work decreases. Or, in other words, the likelihood of mistakes increases. How many times have you seen someone delegated a very clear instruction? Something that's just obvious. Maybe you even gave it to them in writing and they still didn't get it right. Frustrating, right? Whenever you see highly intelligent people making fairly obvious mistakes, it almost always is a symptom of switchtasking, not incompetence. And the final, perhaps less obvious, but still powerful effect of switchtasking is its impact on your stress levels. Whenever you introduce switchtasking, even a simple list of activities becomes highly stressful. Even with so many time-saving devices, we are more stressed out and more starved for time than we've ever been in the history of the world. This is largely due to a cultural acceptance of multitasking. So, let me recap. The three effects of switchtasking, what most people are doing when they think they're multitasking, are the amount of time it takes to complete things increases, the quality of the work you do decreases, and your stress levels increase. The good news? We'll be working on reducing the number of switches in your day. So, you'll be able to complete work faster, make less mistakes, and experience less overall stress.

Understanding the Three Principles of Productivity

Understanding the Three Principles of Productivity text

In order to help you gain focus and find more time, there're three key areas we're going to cover: space, mind and time. While this may sound abstract, these represent the critical components of productivity you deal with daily. The first fundamental principle of time management is space meaning your work space, the physical items that are around you. How well are you using that physical space that you have? In particular, the more gathering points you have the more switches you make, so let's have as few gathering points as possible. A gathering point is any place where things that are unresolved come together. I'll refer to these unresolved items as unprocessed. Typical gathering points include piles of paper, stacks of bills, drawers stuff full of miscellaneous items, even email inboxex, voicemail boxex and receipts stuffed in your pockets - all of these are considered gathering points. We'll go through the process of reducing the number of gathering points you have, which will reduce the switches you experience and help you regain buckets of time. The second fundamental principle is your mind. In particular, keep your mind clear. Yet many people use their mind as a gathering point When this happens you allow to-dos, and tasks, and projects to swirl around in your head. Think about the last hour. How many times did you interrupt yourself when a new thought popped into your head? Each one of these little self-interruptions was a switch, and switches, remember, will cause things to take longer, cause you to make more mistakes and will increase your stress levels. A mind filled with to-dos and action items is constantly in a state of switching. This is terribly inefficient, very stressful, and a recipe for lots of mistakes. I've even seen people who don't sleep well because they go to bed at night thinking about all the things that they need to do and wake up in the morning thinking about all the things that they need to do. One chapter in this course is devoted to helping you find an effective system to get all these things out of your mind forever. This will allow you to better focus throughout your day on the tasks at hand and not distract yourself. The third and final principle deals with time itself, in particular, focusing your time on that which is most valuable. There're many ideas and opportunities that compete for your time daily. Those who are most productive have mastered the skill of making conscious choices about where they will focus their time. They've also become skilled at creating boundaries that protect their attention. You can do the same. This begins with identifying your MVAs, your most valuable activities, and then creating a budget to spend time in those most valuable activities. It also includes underspending time to make sure you never go over budget. By underspending you'll actually get more done, have less stress and, paradoxically, have more time. For now, just remember these principles. Focus on your most valuable activities and underspend time. By mastering the trifecta of space, mind and time you'll find yourself better prepared to stay more productive and focused.

CHAPTER 3: Productivity Principle 1: Space

Taking an Inventory of Your Gathering Points

Taking an Inventory of Your Gathering Points text

Let's begin by helping you live the principle of space. We'll start by finding out how many gathering points you have. Remember, a gathering point is any place where you gather unprocessed items, things like email, tasks, todos, ideas, busy work, assignments, projects, and so on. Unprocessed means you haven't clearly decided yet either what to do with it, when to do it, or where its home is. If any one of those three things are missing, what, when, or where, then that place where the item is located is a gathering point. We've provided you with a very simple worksheet you can use to determine how many gathering points you have. On this worksheet, for each type of gathering point that you have, add one. So, for instance, in the example at the top of the worksheet, you'll see voicemail. If you have three voicemail accounts, such as personal voicemail, cellphone voicemail, and work voicemail, then the number you would put there would be three. For desk areas, if you had two piles of paper on your desk, then you would write two, and so on. Pause this video now and complete the gathering points worksheet. Then come back and I'll discuss your results with you. Great, you've completed the gathering points worksheet. For many people, this process is a real eye-opener. Let's see how your beginning gathering points number compares with the average results that I've seen through the years of doing this exercise with clients. Prior to completing this course, the average person has between 30 and 40 gathering points. So, if you had a number somewhere between 30 and 40, that's about average. The lowest I've seen from someone who hasn't completed this time management course is 12. Pretty impressive and that person was, as you might imagine, a focus master. The highest number I've ever seen personally is 161 gathering points, which, of course, came from a chaos master. If you're in that range, it's a significant number and we have a lot of work to do, but we also have the greatest opportunity for improvement. Now that you understand where you fit on the scale of beginning gathering points, I'll tell you the target number we're going to shoot for. The number of gathering points that you want to strive to have by the end of this training is six or less. In the next videos, I'll explain what the six gathering points are and steps you can take to get to that number.

Narrowing your Gathering Points

Narrowing your Gathering Points text

In order to manage time effectively and reduce the number of switches that take place in your day, you should strive to have six or less gathering points. I refer to these as "approved gathering points." The gathering points you choose. I'll begin by outlining the six gathering points I recommend my clients use. Then in future videos, I'll discuss each approved gathering point in greater depth. The first one is the inbox, meaning a physical inbox. A physical inbox is the place where everything that is physical and unprocessed should go. Papers, receipts, magazines, books, even cords, cables, things that haven't been put away. Because you don't ever want it to be too full, I recommend that you have a reasonably large inbox. The second gathering point is a portable inbox. The portable inbox is simply the mobile extension of your inbox. It's something that you take with you wherever you go. Understand, a portable inbox is not the entire briefcase. Rather, it's one spot within the breifcase, or it's one pocket within your planner. The third gathering point is a notepad. Notepads can be either digital or paper in a variety of shapes and sizes. Use whatever medium and form works best for you. Notepads are unique in that you're going to have a combination of unprocessed action items with just general notes. The fourth gathering point is one email inbox. You may have multiple email accounts; however, we want them all to go into one inbox or folder. this will save time from having to check many different accounts. You only need to go to one place to see all my unprocessed email. It's typically easy to make this happen with just a few changes in your settings. And the fifth gathering point is voicemail. Voicemail is still a necessity for most everyone, but you only need to check one voicemail account, at most. In a future video, I'll show you some steps that you can take to minimize the number of voicemail accounts that you have. And finally, the sixth gathering point is not required, but given to you as an option. It's the wild card. There are several different options that could work, but you want to choose the one that will make the most sense for you. Later in this chapter, I'll give you some guidance on how to select a wild card gathering point that fits your unique needs. Let's begin by exploring the first approved gathering point: your physical inbox.

Setting up an Inbox Gathering Point

Setting up an Inbox Gathering Point text

Your inbox is the most important tool when it comes to keeping your space organized. Your inbox will become the home for all unprocessed physical items. By home, I mean that, if there's anything out of place, anything unresolved, or anything where you don't have a scheduled time in your calendar or task list to deal with it, toss that item into the physical inbox. Think of your inbox as one big box that sits on your desk or close to your work space. Anything that you see that's out of place, should be picked up and put into that box. Papers, receipts, cables, books, magazines, anything that's physical should go in there. One productivity obstacle some people face is when they allow these things to pile up in different places and then in a whirlwind of frustration they put everything away. I call this binge and purge organization, and it's a huge waste of time. Instead, cultivate the habit of putting things into the inbox rather than putting them away when they're out of place. Then, at a scheduled time, you'll go through that inbox with the system I'll show you. You'll be able to clear everything out bringing it to empty at least once per week. So, how big should your inbox be? This varies according to your position and everyday work needs. Make sure that it's big enough that it never gets to the point of overflowing. If your someone that deals with just a handful of papers each week, then maybe a small plastic tray will work for you. Maybe you deal with larger items. For instance, I once worked with an interior design company that has swatches of fabric and granite and lots of different kinds of samples. They needed to go get a very large tote sized basket. There's no right or wrong inbox. Get whatever works for you. This is a great example of a large inbox that would work for most people. It leaves plenty of room for everything that you might encounter in a week, without getting too full. Take a moment right now and decide what inbox you're going to use for your physical gathering point going forward. This is an important first step toward becoming more productive and getting more time.