Getting More Things Done Quicker

I have got into a position where there are quite of lot of profitable things I can do with my time, and also quite a few people waiting on me coming up with the goods.  I have tried really long hours in the past.  My experience was that it wasn't all that productive.  There are a number of reasons I wouldn't normally recommend it.  The two most important are that long hours aren't satisfying and they aren't focused.  Tumbling into bed late and then not being able to sleep doesn't feel good.  You also lose the ability to focus on what actually matters.  If you are planning to put in 10 hours solid you don't apply much thought to how much of what needs to be done can be ditched.


Nonetheless, I still have a heap of stuff to get done and while possibly I shouldn't have got into this situation in the first place, this is the situation in which I find myself.  So how am I going to square this particular circle?

What I have decided to do is to reconfigure the month of May as one in which I am experimenting with how to get more out of my time.  With a background in science I am quite happy with the notion that an experiment is something that takes priority over everything else, so that ethos hopefully will help me avoid getting into slog for the sake of slog as I have done in the past.

A reasonable amount of the stuff I have to do is physical work with a low level of intellectual engagement, so I am planning to use that to re-listen to Dick Tracy's Time Power.  I am also going to devote time to studying and trying out time management suggestions from people who have something to say on the matter.  For example I'll be looking at Steve Pavlina's 33 rules to boost your productivity and seeing which ideas I can try out and see how well they work.

My aim is to identify what works and adopt it into my regular set of habits and approaches.  The ultimate aim is not to work huge numbers of hours, quite the opposite in fact.  This blog will, for the next month, be my work book for a month of intense experimentation.  First stage this morning - draw up a strategic plan for the day.




photo credit: ~C4Chaos via photopin cc