"The secret to doing good research is to always be a little underemployed; you waste years by not being able to waste hours." — Amos Tversky
- Opposite of "traction" is "distraction".
- Making time to make time - weekly reflection on your previous week, be deliberate about your upcoming week.
- Tracking and awareness is the first step to acknowledging and improving.
- How I've been using a calendar instead of a todo list for a few weeks.
- Pomodoro technique – try it for the most challenging tasks!
- Meetings can be incredibly disruptive – I share a few tips on how to be more careful with meeting time management.
- Enable "Do Not Disturb" on macOS and iOS.
- Having Slack and your email inbox open throughout the day can be incredibly distracting. Try to open them at fixed times and batch up this work.
Actions / take aways
- Take time each week to reflect, and map your time. Book in 15 minutes this week.
- Try using a calendar instead of your todo list to plan your tasks.
- Keep meetings to fixed days in the week – like Mondays and Tuesdays, to free up your other days for deeper work.
- Wrap up meetings with 5 minute breaks in between to refresh and re-energise.
- Close your email and only open it at fixed times in the day.
- Enable "Do Not Disturb" on your devices.
- Don’t be afraid to pause, and make time for you. You can’t spend every waking hour being productive - you will eventually crash. But we each have different limits – so try to find what works best for you.
Links and further reading
Thanks, and see you next time!
P.S. I'm on Twitter https://twitter.com/jamesjgill
Music: Jakarta by Bonsaye
Podcast hosting: Transistor
