Top 5 Daily Habits

Our habits run our life. We all have hundreds of habits or routines which we perform daily without thinking. These habits include brushing teeth, checking emails etc. We can do wonders if we consciously add some habits to our daily list. In this blog I will mention the top 5 daily routing which I made a habit out of it. These routines helped me a lot to reach my goals.

1. Daily Health management – Health is wealth. Without proper health we cannot achieve everything we want. If we want to reach our goals or do bigger we need better health. Health should be our first priority. We need to keep or develop good health habits such as exercising daily, eating healthy foods and avoiding junk food. We all know about this but somehow gets skipped out of our routines. Why not make this a habit so that we will always follow this important habit.
2. Daily goal Setting – We all know how important goals are. These goals lead our life in the direction we want. All most all of us set goals at some point. But the problem is we tend to forget our goals. We need to continuously review it and adjust these goals. Lot of people review their goals yearly, quarterly or monthly. The more we remember about our goals the more close we are achieving them. Our subconscious do wonders if we constantly remember our goals. Our subconscious knowing our goals will make decisions (without our intent) which will put us in right direction. What is the best way to remember our goals? Review them daily. Every morning take a paper or computer and write down your top 10 goals. This hardly takes 5 minutes. Doing in the morning help you think and plan your day on how to achieve your goals
3. Daily Learning – The world is constantly changing and it is going at a rapid pace. It is very hard to keep up with it. Imagine how we can keep this rapid pace without knowing what’s happening in the field we belong  or what’s happening around us. So we must make learning as a part of our daily routine. Every day we need to strive to learn something new. Plan for a routine where you will learn every day. For example while driving to work listen to the podcasts or audio books. Or spend some time every morning reading stuff in your area of expertise.
4. Daily Time management – Without proper time management we cannot accomplish all the tasks or goals we want. As you know there is a saying that “Only busy man can find the time”. As the busy man plans and executes his work properly, he can always find time for important tasks. So we all should strive to plan our work every day and execute them as planned. I use the Muhurtam time management technique for my daily planning. I split my tasks on an hourly basis and follow this technique. Sometimes I just follow this technique to get focus and work for a stretch of time uninterrupted. Further doing the time management keeps us motivated as it gives us the satisfaction of doing more in a day.
5. Daily Reflection – At the end of the day we need to reflect on how we completed our day and what we accomplished today. The best way is to maintain a journal and write down what I accomplished today towards my goals. This helps us to see where we spent most of our day and accordingly plan it for next day. Sometimes it is better to do the daily time management routine after the daily reflection routine.

Above are some of the daily routines or habits that help us to keep ourselves focused and go a track we laid out. These daily habits along with our good habits make us to reach or go beyond our goals.

Muhurtham Time Management for developers

As per Hindu clock, a Muhurtham means 48 minutes. Similar to hour clock, Hinduism uses Muhurtham clock. 24 hours in a day will transpose to 30 muhurthams in a day.

As you know, now-a-days agile is getting very popular and is being used in most software application development. One of the important techniques of this agile development is time boxing. This enables the team to focus on a set of tasks for a short duration without any distractions.

As a software developer you know how importance is flow. When our flow while coding is interrupted we need lot of time to come back to this flow. Because of this we tend to work late nights so that we can focus without interruptions. Wouldn’t it be good we can have our focus while coding and also don’t do the late nights. We can achieve this.

The scrum methodology teaches us to timebox tasks so that we can focus. Let’s extend the same for our coding. Let’s time box our coding time into smaller chunks so that we can focus. This timeboxing should not be too short and not to be too long. I feel that close to one hour should give us enough time to focus on a single task without any distraction.

Hindu Muhurtham (48 minutes) seemed to be an idle time boxing for a developer. This should provide enough time we can avoid or postpone distractions. After this Muhurtham we can take a break and perform all the items we postponed.

Here is a scenario where I use this Muhurtham time management. Let’s say I am working on a code module. First I carve out a small task out of this module which I can complete with in a muhurtham. Before the start of the muhurtham I will ensure that I will not be distracted by completing or planning all the possible distractions. During the muhurtham I will not check emails, try avoiding phone calls, avoid social sites etc. I will put full focus on the task at hand and get into the flow and be in that flow till the end of the muhurtham. Once I complete the muhurtham, I take a break during where I attend all the items, such as checking emails etc, I put off during the muhurtham. After that I embark on another muhurtham.

This time management improves our productivity by getting maximum out of the available time and reduces the need to work late hours. This also enables us to get into the flow. As the duration is short enough we will be motivated to stay focus in a particular muhurtam. In this technique we will be rewarded by a break after the muhurtham.  Finally this Muhurtham time management is an extension of Pomodoro Technique which is a popular technique for time management.

Following the Muhurtham time management improved my productivity and believe it will help every developer to complete their tasks on time.

Daily Time Management

As you all know time management is crucial for productivity. If time is properly managed we can do more work in a day. It also keeps us motivated as we achieve more and thus gives us satisfaction. In this blog I outline the time management technique I am following.

In order to effectively do time management we have to plan for every day and execute the plan effectively. Before we start, it is important to make a list of your daily recurring tasks, i.e., the set of tasks you do every day. This could include daily reflection, daily goal setting.

Every day at the end of the day we have do planning for the next day. Write down the list of activities that needs to done tomorrow. To this list add our daily recurring tasks. Also include tasks that are related to your goals. It is crucial that you have tasks that are related to your goals. If a task or activity is bigger than few hours try to split it into multiple smaller tasks.

Identifying the tasks one day earlier makes your brain think about it during the night. Also including tasks related to your goals ensures that you don’t forget about your goals and makes you work towards it.

On the next morning, set aside some time to again go over the tasks you created. This time prioritize those tasks. During this prioritization you can also add additional tasks you missed yesterday. While prioritizing the tasks the tasks, bucket all your tasks under A, B, C, D, E.

A is the first priority. These are tasks you have to complete in that day. Once we complete the A tasks depending on the time constraints we can take up the B & C tasks. If there is not enough time, these tasks can be pushed to next day.

D means delegate. Delegate as many taks as you can. Delegating tasks gives you time which you can focus on you’re a tasks. E means eliminate. Directly eliminate those tasks which are not needed and don’t value add

Once you prioritize your tasks focus only on A tasks and execute those tasks before the end of the day. If you needed within A, you can categorize the tasks as A1, A2 etc.

If we can follow this approach we can easily reach our goals within a short period. 

Be selfish, Spend time with your children

We all faced that when we working our kids come and ask us rather silly or stupid questions and thereby breaking our flow. In order to avoid this we may either shut ourselves or reprimand our children for disturbing. There is a big ramification on either of these approaches.

We all know that we are very busy with our work & life. Sometimes it seems that 24 hours is not enough. Let’s us empathize our children, contrary to us, they have lot of free time and want to share some with us, their parents. If we don’t give our children time and attention they deserve. They slowly distance themselves from us and find others who spend time with them.

As the time passes we become old and our children starts having family and their own life. As we grew older our responsibilities decreases and we will have plenty of time on hand, whereas our children become busy in their life. This is exactly opposite to what happened when our children are young. Now we have time and our children are busy.

Will our children give us time and share with us. The answer is plain NO. Due to our hectic schedule we didn’t spend time with our children, so our children due to their hectic schedule will not spend time with us unless we spend time with them when they are young.

If you want your children to give time for you when you are old, give them some time now. Spend quality time with them when they are young. This improves bonding and they will spend quality time with you when you are old.

So be selfish and spend time with your children.

Daily Goal Setting

We all know how crucial goal settings are and how successful we will be if we achieve these goals. We are living in a fast pace world that is constantly changing. To be successful in this world we need to constantly remember our goals and make necessary adjustments while we strive to achieve them. Gone are the days where you set your goals once a year and occasionally review them.

Most of the people set their goals once in a year as mandated by their companies, on New Year day or on their birthdays. They seldom visit these goals. As a result they will never reach or achieve their goals. How can you achieve your goals if you don’t remember them? Your goals should play a crucial role if you are taking crucial decisions. What should you do for this?

One recommendation is to do daily goal setting. This does not mean set your goals for that day. But it means much more. It means every day take a pen and paper or a computer notes and write down your goals. That is every day morning we should write down our top goals that we want to achieve in our life.

By writing our goals every day we register these goals into our subconscious mind. Once these goals are clearly embedded in our subconscious mind, they will start affecting our decisions. Without even noticing or doing conscious effort we start taking decisions towards our goals and will eventually fulfill our goals.

The daily goal setting is also important to make necessary changes to our goals. Sometimes our goals may become irrelevant and we have to replace it with more important goals. People usually do this once a year or whenever we have a good occasion. With daily goal setting we don’t need to wait for such an occasion. If we feel a goal is irrelevant we can change it then and there itself.

By doing the daily goal setting our goals will always be relevant and we subconsciously follow those goals. We will also notice several new opportunities which we haven’t seen earlier and capitalize them.

Brain as Storage Device

We all know that how amazing is our brain. It can do several things at a same time. Can you think of something which is similar to brain? Yes you are correct, it is computer. I want to draw an analogy between our brain and computer.

Computer has predominantly three parts, CPU, memory and hard disk. CPU is used to do all the processing, make decisions and execute the decision. Memory is used to store the information CPU is processing currently and hard disk is used to store information that is not currently processing and also to store data for future use.

Similarly brain also has a processing unit, let’s call it as CPU also. This brain’s cpu does something similar to computer CPU but at a greater level and skill. Unlike computer, brain has only one memory, this single memory does both the work of computer’s memory and hard disk. It’s amazing that it can do this much efficiently than computer. There are some disadvantages with a single memory.

What is the problem with this single memory? Have you observed that when you are doing a serious thinking, all of a sudden you remember a work that you needs to do or some work you put off to do at a later time. Yes this happens all the time. When your brain is processing and searching for data in the memory it will fetch the to-do items and much more. In most of the times this is distraction and you lose focus on what you are thinking. So what should we do?

In computers hard disk purpose to remove the distraction when the CPU is processing. So that computer can focus on the current job. If needed computer will fetch the data from hard disk into memory and process it. We should also do something like that. How can we do that?

Similar to computer we should keep our data in a hard disk. For example use computer or a paper to store your to-do tasks. If you are using computer for your to-do tasks, computer will keep track of your tasks and gives you reminders so that you will never miss a task or appointment. Now when you are thinking of some important task most likely your to-do tasks will not come interrupt your thought process. Sometimes they do come up, but you know that these reminders are stored in a hard disk (computer), so you don’t digress much on these to-dos and you will return to your thoughts immediately. Another example is, as you know it is recommended to keep your thoughts on a paper, which is our external hard disk J.

As you see it is better to keep your to-do tasks, thoughts and other things from brain memory in to an external places such as computer, dairy, journal etc. Doing so will free up your memory and your brain can perform efficiently.

Buy Time with Money

We all know that time is money and time spent or wasted is lost. There are numerous blogs and trainings on how to efficiently manage your time (I will cover some of these techniques in my blogs later). But time management is one aspect of finding time. Another aspect is identifying places where you misuse the time and put it to better use. In this blog I cover this aspect.

Most of us get a fixed pay check and we carefully plan and spend that amount. We take extra precaution to ensure that our hard earned money is properly utilized. Some of use even ensure that we save enough for our future needs thereby sacrificing the current needs. One thing we are missing in this process is the amount of time we spend doing this planning and execution of our money management. As you see we are spending time to manage our money. As time is money, what are we doing in this process?

We are spending money to manage our money. We may be saving our hard earned money, but at the same time we are spending our future potential money. This money is manifolds greater than what we can imagine.

I am not suggesting not to manage or plan for your hard earned money, but strike a balance where you don’t spend lot of time. For example you can delegate many of your daily tasks to others, like your children, spouse etc. If you have to run for an errand, see whether your spouse, children or someone else can do it for you. Also if you spending time for lawn mowing, household maintenance try get the job done by paying others do that for you. Compare the money you lose if are doing a particular petty task.

The money you spend on doing petty tasks will get you additional time. As you see you can indeed buy time with money. With this additional time you can plan and achieve big. Think that money you spent for buying time is an investment. I am sure that you will get manifolds return.

Happy buying time J