TEDxSydney - Nigel Marsh - Work Life Balance is an Ongoing Battle. A Master Plan for Taking Back Control of Your Life. Here’s the problem we face, every day of our lives.
Nearly everything that generates enduring value requires effort, focus, and even some discomfort along the way. At the same time, we’re deeply wired to avoid pain, which the body reads as mortally dangerous, and to move toward pleasure, the more immediate the better. We’re also exposed to more temptation than ever. The world is literally at our fingertips, a few keystrokes away. It’s forever beckoning us, like the Sirens singing to Odysseus, who lashed himself to the mast of his ship to resist their call.The sirens sing to us, too: Have the dessert.
So how do we take back control of our lives? 1. Because our willpower is so limited, our best defense is to rely on it less. 2. You can’t easily lash yourself to a mast, but you can selectively avoid temptations. A Day Without Distraction: Lessons Learned from 12 Hrs of Forced Focus. Here are the rules: All work must be done in blocks of at least 30 minutes.
If I start editing a paper, for example, I have to spend at least 30 minutes editing. If I need to complete a small task, like handing in a form, I have to spend at least 30 minutes doing small tasks. Crucially, checking email and looking up information online count as small tasks. If I need to check my inbox or grab a quick stat from the web, I have to spend at least 30 minutes dedicated to similarly small diversions.
I followed these rules for one full work day. Continuous Partial Attention The motivation for my experiment should sound familiar. For some jobs, where responsiveness is crucial, this work style might be necessary. The solution to this quandary is well-known by now: batching. Check email only a small number of times per day! This is why I launched my experiment. Ignoring the small stuff isn’t an option, but living in a state of continuous partial attention won’t cut it either. Conclusions. How Good is Your Time Management? - Time Management Training from MindTools. Discover Time Management Tools That Can Help You © iStockphoto How often do you find yourself running out of time?
Weekly, daily, hourly? For many people, it seems that there's just never enough time in the day to get everything done. Effective Time Management Tips And Techniques - How To Manage Time Successfully. Personal time management skills and techniques. Time management skills are your abilities to recognize and solve personal time management problems.
The goal of these time management lessons is to show you what you can do to improve those skills. With good time management skills you are in control of your time and your life, of your stress and energy levels. Beating Procrastination - Time Management Skills from MindTools. It's Friday afternoon and the clock is ticking.
You're working furiously to complete a task before the five o'clock deadline, while silently cursing yourself for not starting it sooner. How did this happen? What went wrong? Why did you lose your focus? Well, there were the hours that you spent re-reading emails and checking social media, the excessive "preparation," the coffee breaks, and the time spent on other tasks that you could have safely left for next week. Sound familiar? Procrastination is a trap that many of us fall into. In this article and video, we look at why it happens, and we explore strategies for managing and prioritizing your workload more effectively. Do you choose more enjoyable tasks over high-priority ones? Is Procrastination the Same as Being Lazy? Procrastination is often confused with laziness, but they are very different. Procrastination is an active process – you choose to do something else instead of the task that you know you should be doing.
Warning: Tip: The Urgent/Important Matrix - Using time effectively not just efficiently - Time Management Skills from MindTools. Using Time Effectively, Not Just Efficiently © iStockphotoblackred Focus on your most important work.
Imagine that your boss has asked you to prepare an important presentation for the next board meeting. You only have a few days to put it together, your workload is already high, and you have many other urgent tasks on your To-Do List. Because of this, you're anxious, you can't concentrate, and everything seems to distract you. Time stressors are some of the most pervasive sources of pressure in the workplace, and they happen as a result of having too much to do, in too little time. Eisenhower's Urgent/Important Principle helps you think about your priorities, and determine which of your activities are important and which are, essentially, distractions. What Are "Urgent" and "Important" Activities? In a 1954 speech to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, former U.S. He recognized that great time management means being effective as well as efficient.