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

Participative Leadership Style

In this blog I will specify my leadership style, discuss how I do it, its merits and disadvantages. My leadership style is participative leadership. I always include my team members to come up with solutions. I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these solutions. Based on the discussion I will take the decision. The final decision always lie with me.

With the participative decision team members feel ownership and will be more motivated to work as it is their decision. Moreover they deliver it with my minimal supervision. With this style I will be easily approachable to the team and they can walk in anytime with questions or issues.

One of the disadvantages with this participative leadership style is time consuming. In most of the situations I know the solution for a problem which we are discussing, but instead of telling them what to do, I ask them their options, put leading questions and finally tell them what do to. This is somewhat similar to coaching, but not exactly same.

Amazing Leonardo da Vinci

Last couple of days I was listening to the Leonardo da Vinci seven principles. In that author Michael J. Gelb said that Leonardo did too many things in his life and most of them are incomplete. It is amazing that a person can do so many things.

As a painter he did amazing painting. Mona Lisa is one of his best painting. The last supper painting still perplexes so many. As per Gelb, Leonardo did 19 pictures and all of them were great pictures. He is the first painter to use oil paint. He did many inventions in painting.

Actually painting is a hobby for Leonardo. He is actually an inventor.  He invented many items. I could not recollect them. He is also a scientist.

As a scientist he did many theories, but never tried to prove them. Some of his theories were later proved. He did an airplane model theory. Later another scientist took his model theory and made the plane that was working.

Both as an inventor and scientist lot of his work is incomplete. In addition he never organized his work. He also did learning in anatomy and religion. He learned different languages.

It is amazing that one person can do so many things in his lifetime. Some may call him a failure as he never focused on one thing.