Tag: #techniques

Time management techniques

Automate Decisions
  • Transfer money to your savings account every time you receive a paycheck
  • Choose all your outfits for your week on Sunday and hang them in the closet in order
  • Subscribe to a weekly fresh delivery of organic vegetables and fruits to your home
  • Standardize the typical daily meals you like the most, saving time in cooking and grocery shopping
  • Prepare your sports bag every night and put it in your car. If you prefer running in the morning, leave your running shoes near the bed
  • Automate all electronic gadgets to go into sleep mode at a certain hour

“Time management is not a peripheral activity or skill. It is the core skill upon which everything else in life depends.” – Brian Tracy

Work Around Your Energy Levels

Productivity is directly related to your energy level.
Find your most productive hours — the time of your peak energy — and schedule Deep Work for those periods. Do low-value and low-energy tasks (also known as shallow work), such as responding to emails or unimportant meetings, in between those hours.

Plan Your Day the Night Before

Before going to bed, spend 5 minutes writing your to-do list for the next day. These tasks should help you move towards your professional and personal goals.
You’ll be better prepared mentally for the challenges ahead before waking up and there won’t be any room for procrastination in the morning. As a result, you’ll work faster and smoother than ever before.

Start the Day with Critical Work

A golden time management technique: Find your most important task (MIT) for the day and tackle it first. 
Your MIT should be the one thing that creates the most impact on your work. Getting it done will give you the momentum and sense of accomplishment early in the day. That’s how big life goals are achieved: small continuous efforts, day after day.

Prioritize Tasks
  • Write down all your tasks.
  • Identify what’s urgent and what’s important. After each task, mark them with “U” for Urgent and “I” for Important. 
  • Assess value: look at your “I” tasks and identify the high-value drivers of your work. You want to find which tasks have priority over others and how many people are impacted by your work
  • Estimate time to complete each task. Order them from the most effort to the least effort.
Delegate or Outsource Tasks
  • Find the right person: he should have all the necessary skills and is capable of doing the job
  • Provide clear instructions: write down the tasks in a step-by-step manual be as specific as possible
  • Define success: be specific about what the expected outcome is and the deadline to have the task completed
  • Clarity: have the tasks explained back to you and offer clarification when something is unclear, rewriting the specifications if needed
Automate Repetitive Tasks

Putting some of your daily tasks on autopilot is key to working smarter.

  • Create canned responses for emails you keep writing over and over again
  • Set reminders in your calendar so you never forget anything
  • Proofread your writing automatically
  • Schedule and automate your social media posts in advance
  • Automatically fill online forms,  saving all your passwords in one place
  • Create spreadsheet templates for reports you have to do weekly/monthly.
Set Time Constraints

Set deadlines even when you don’t need to. Schedule less time to complete tasks and force your brain to focus.
Parkinson’s law states: “work expands to fill the time available for its completion”. So, if you reduce the time you have to complete a task, you force your brain to focus and complete it.

Eliminate Distractions
  • Turn off all notifications on your phone, computer, and tablet
  • Leave your phone in odd places that prevent you from immediately finding it
  • Work with headphones as people are less likely to approach you.
  • If you find interesting articles, save them  to read later, such as during the commute
  • Turn off your Wi-Fi when your tasks don’t require internet connectivity
  • Don’t browse social media at work at all. 
  • Use “Do Not Disturb” functions on chat systems.
  • If you have an office, shut the door.
Track Your Time

Track your time to have real data on your work and uncover insights on how you can improve your productivity.
After a couple of weeks, you’ll start noticing patterns and knowing where and how your time is leaking. By being aware of how exactly you are using your time, you can devise a plan to attack your leaks and how to get rid of them.

The 2-Minute Rule
  • If it can be done in two minutes, just do it. Don’t add it to your to-do list, put it aside for later, or delegate it to someone else. Just do it.
  • If it takes more than two minutes, start it. Once you start acting on small tasks, you can keep the ball rolling. Simply working on it for two minutes will help you break the first barrier of procrastination.
Say No More Often Than Yes

Say “no” by default to anything that doesn’t contribute to your top 5 career goals.
Your time is a limited resource and you can’t let people set your agenda in life.

Use “Gap Time” Effectively:
  • Learn a new skill, either for your professional or personal life
  • Read books or articles you saved for later
  • Organize your computer, folders, calendar or work
  • Plan your week, tomorrow, or the rest of your day
  • Listen to a podcast
  • Learn a language
  • Take a walk and think and let your mind wander
  • Take a productive pause to clear your mind.
80/20 Your Time

The 80 20 rule states that “80% of the output or results will come from 20% of the input or action”. In other words, the little things are the ones that account for the majority of the results.
Use the 80/20 rule in your life and work to prioritize the input that brings the majority of the output.

Break Down Big Tasks

Break down big tasks into smaller ones to avoid procrastinating and help you stay on track to achieve your final goal.
Never put a huge project down as just one to-do on your list. Instead, put bite-sized to-dos that you can do one at a time. Take it to step by step.

Work From the Calendar

Schedule tasks, working from your calendar instead of the to-do list. When an event is consistently scheduled on your calendar, it’s much more likely to transform into an unconscious habit
Using your calendar forces you to rethink your work from tasks to time units. That small change increases the likelihood of getting things done.

reference

https://dansilvestre.com/time-management-techniques/amp/

Meditation: Positive Psychology

Meditation is the practice of thinking deeply in silence, in order to make the mind calm. Through regular mediation, levels of stress can be reduced as well as managed. Meditation is a relaxation technique like yoga and deep breathing that activates the body’s relaxation response. When meditation is practiced regularly, it leads to decrease in our stress levels in everyday life. Meditation gives a boost in our feelings of happiness and calmness. It increases our ability to stay cool, calm and composed under pressure.

Meditation begins by heating the activities of the brain for some time and going into a state of stillness or silence. In today’s time, when one’s life is affected be immense stress due to pressure emanating from excessive materialism, professional success, social acceptance, etc, meditation comes as a heavenly refuge. A major benefit of effective meditation is a reduction of anxiety and effects of depression.

Thousands of years ago, a wandering Nepalese prince sat under a tree, vowing not to rise until he attained enlightenment. After a long night of deep meditation, Siddhartha Gautama, better known as the Buddha, saw the light and declared that suffering is subjective and can be reduced through self-awareness. This was laid the foundation of meditation as as successful technique for reducing suffering.

Many studies have shown that meditation not only has mental but profound physiological effects on the body. Thus, to achieve peace of mind, meditation is an exercise not to be missed. It should ideally be followed daily and be supported by a healthy lifestyle and a healthy diet. Only 15-30 minutes of his daily can have a magical effect on one’s life

Effective meditation is free from any kind of other distraction. Research has shown that meditation has benefits on mental health, including decrease in depression, increase in positive emotional state and increases in the ability to deal with unavoidable stressful conditions in life. Meditation not only involves relaxation but also the active growth of positive mental states such as affection, kindness, sympathy, tolerance and energy.

The benefits of meditation are many. Meditation also helps in increasing creative levels of mind. While practicing meditation, our heart rate and breathing slows down, blood pressure becomes normal, sweating becomes less and oxygen can be used more efficiently. Moreover, our immune system functions well. In short, meditation is magnificent and effective in temporary stress reduction and long-term health. A clear and peaceful state of mind can be achieved through this practice. Meditation increases positive thinking, attention levels and awareness to reduce stress. Thus, meditation should be suggested as a treatment for the prevention of many stress-related conditions.

Meditation alters the chemistry of the brain and increases positive emotions. Statistics have shown that meditation has improved lifestyles of people suffering from stress-related conditions. People living in a big city suffering from continuous pain, hypertension, anxiety and depression can be trained to do meditation. Positive effects can be seen soon among them.

To conclude, meditation should be recommended to patients suffering from conditions caused by stress. Doctors and scientists are working to observe the effects of meditation practiced by people who are undergoing stressful situations. It should be noted that many prestigious Universities such as Harvard have made their best efforts in carrying out their researches on meditation and without a doubt, the results are positive. Meditation is an important tool to cope up with stress-related situations. Moreover, through meditation, one can turn to the internal peace to calm down the discomforts caused by stressful experiences of life.