Time Management

Time spent on anything that does not give you a return, is time wasted and time spent on anything that gives you a returns time invested. People who manage their time well and invest their time, it gives a return in wisdom, health, money, relationships.

Steps to be more productive:

1- Have a morning Ritual:

Make most out of the day by having morning ritual, so that you can start your day with right mindset and ready to take on challenges. When we have solid morning routine we start our day on our terms. On the other hand when you think in real time every day that you are going to do, it waste the time. Routine brings freedom and give you predictable and highest return on your time, in terms of productivity.

Spend time on your personal development as success is something you attract by the person you have become. Here is the recommendation from Hal Elrod for the morning Ritual: SAVERS

Silence or meditation
Affirmations
Visualization: Visualize your day ahead, visualize how you are going to be productive, visualize how your life easy when you achieve your purpose., visualize how you will avoid the distractions, visualize success. Roy Williams said “First step of doing something is to see in your mind”
Exercise: Start day with exercise to invest time for your health and have a energized start of the day.
Reading: Read your purpose for the day
Scribing (writing)

2- Getting in the zone:

Being fully engaged in what you are doing makes your work feel effortless and that state is called ‘being in the zone’ or ‘flow state’. Being in this state increase your productivity exponentially.

Here are some ideas to get into zone:

Buy electric timer (don’t use phone as it will cause interruptions)
Decide the chunk of time of focused work e.g. 45 mins and break for 15 min. Quality of your work depends on the quality of your break, as breaks recharges you for the next flow state. People who don’t take breaks, their focus time is full of interruptions and their breaks contains constant thoughts about work.

3- Work on only 10X things that move you closer to your goals:

Work only on the things that help you achieve your goal. Any thing that does not move you closer to your goal, is wastage of time. Keep them very low in the priority list.

4- Make step by step plan for major goals:

For major goals, make monthly plan and a daily to do list. Daily to do list should have only one thing that will pay the highest return the time invested.

Now a days, we feel that we are very busy because our to do list is very long. We add many extra things in to do list, because the work we need to do to reach our goals is mostly hard and we are afraid of failing them. By adding extra unimportant items in our list, gives us illusion that we are working towards our goal, keeps us busy and help us avoid doing the most important work, we should be doing. Keep this fact in mind when making your monthly or daily plan and continuously ask yourself ‘do I really need to do this?’ Hard tasks become easy, when you start them and give your 100% to them

5- 80/20 Rule:

Spend at least 80% of your time on yourself and spend 20% time on the things that others ask you to do or they need to get done but they don’t move you closer to your goal.

One way of doing this, to divide your day to to 4 chunks of work and do your own 10x work in the first 3 chunk and in 4th chunk, do the work you have to do for others that does not give you any return on your time investment, all at once. If you start doing other people’s work in the first chunk, it will take up whole day, not leaving any time to do the most important work.