But that doesn’t stop us from trying, does it?

A quick search of Twitter for the phrase “time management” or the hashtag “#timemanagement” reveals how many people are looking for tips, shortcuts, and back doors.

We all want to be able to take a pill and wake up the following morning able to manage our time better.

Rather than looking for tips, we’d all be better off treating the issue as if it were a matter of lifelong learning rather than a miraculous flash in the pan.

In other words, it’s not as if people arrive at the perfect system at some point in their lives, and all they can do from that point on is hold onto it for dear life.

Instead, it’s more important for someone to treat their time management system as if it were something like they were their weight management system.

Trying to manage your weight at the age of 45 in the same way that you did at 25 is a recipe for disaster.

In the same way, trying to hold onto the same time management system, regardless of changes in the following aspects of your life, is just as crazy:

• Retirement or working
• Type of job
• Commuting time (or working at home)
• Number of kids
• Technology availability
• Marital status
• Ability to remember

It’s a better idea to see time management skills as something that you must change over time — and continually redesign. One thing we do know is that a poor time management system can lead to regrets of all shapes and sizes, particularly as your life draws to a close.
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I just checked the results of the latest search, and found that 3 of the first 14 posts actually used the phrase “time management tips.”  This echoed a trend I have noticed lately — there is a great deal of interest in “tips” in the area of time management.

As I have said in earlier posts, there is nothing wrong with  tips per se.  According to Dictionary.com, a tip is:  “a useful hint or idea; a basic, practical fact.”

However, it seems to me that when someone is looking for a time management “tip” they are looking more for a “hint” than a solid “idea.”  In other words, they are looking for an easy-to-implement piece of advice that requires little effort on their part to implement.

For example, a simple-seeming enough tip could be “purchase iPhone.”  Seems easy enough, as long as the price isn’t an obstacle…  but as I point out in an earlier post, the choice of which technology to implement turns out to be quite an important and difficult one, when seen correctly.  When it’s just  a matter of logging on to Amazon and using a credit card to order a gadget, however, it looks very, very easy.

When I wrote the free e-book  offered on this website I used the following by-line: “Toss Away the Tips, and Focus on the Fundamentals.  At the time, I had a sense that people were focusing on the wrong things, which was triggered by an article I saw listing “The Top 100 Time Management Tips.”

What I didn’t say in the ebook is that I think that we humans absolutely love to hear that something is easy, effortless and free.

We want to believe that greater productivity is simply a matter of putting into place a few tips here and there that require little or no effort.  In other words, the unspoken question is: “how can I get something for nothing?”

In time management, the answer is simple… you can’t.  Here’s why.

Each person on the planet who is aware of the concept of time uses different habits to manage themselves, in an effort to make the most of the time they have.  No two people are exactly the same, and no two habit- systems are the same either.

They were all learned after years of trial and error, most of which took place without conscious effort.  For some, what they have created and implemented works for them.  For many, it doesn’t.

The end-point is the same, however.  Each person has a set of routines or habits that are executed over and over again, and they are now baked into their muscle memory where they are executed without thinking.

However good these habits are, at the same time they are difficult for anyone to break, and therein lies the problem.

When someone makes a decision to become more productive, manage their time better or procrastinate less, they are doing more than asking for a few tips.

Instead, they are setting up an internal battle between their new intention, and their already ingrained habits.  Very few people are any good at willfully, deliberately changing habits, even when there is powerful external pressure to do so.

I once had a friend who was a constant smoker.  A few years ago, he literally smoked himself to an early death, unable to stop the habit that took him on a one-way death march to the grave.  Millions of others do the same each year – testimony to the power of ingrained habits.

The problem is that there is not a single time management system in the world that can be implemented without the development of new habits.  Even the smallest of tips are useless if they cannot be converted by the user into a new habit of some kind.

Given our weakness at “habit management”it’s no wonder that the failure rate is so high.

The problem is that it’s difficult to promote the idea of “hard-to-change habits” and it’s much easier to advertise “10 easy, effortless tips.” I know which option I’d sign up for!

What I have noticed is that developers of time management systems downplay the challenge that users have in making the necessary conversion, and few offer the kind of long-term support that is needed to craft new habits.Unfortunately, habit breaking and making is a time consuming business that requires lots of practice, months of repetition, plenty of emotional support, constant reinforcement of the costs of quitting – all until new some muscle memory begins to develop.

In the book, Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell, he notes that it takes some 10,000 repetitions on average, to become good at something, and he uses Mozart as an example of someone who almost HAD to become a genius because of the time he devoted to practicing his music.

That is not good news for most of us.

But it’s the truth, even though it might not sell books, programs or workshops.

Also, I’d be shocked if lots of people started tweeting about changing “time management habits”.

If anything, I believe that there will be a gradual dawning of the fact that the constant pursuit of tips is a fool’s errand, and that real change will only come from a steady investment in incremental behavior change.

After all, it’s the only way to produce a top ballplayer, musician or chemist.  Why shouldn’t it be the only way to produce a top of the line, highly productive professional?

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This article from the New York Times reminds me of times when I was trapped in endless meetings as a young employee, wondering why this was happening, and what I could possibly do about it!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/jobs/18pre.html?8dpc : Meetings are a Matter of Precious Time

One thing I know now is that once a meeting has gone off in the wrong direction, it’s difficult to bring it back on track after only 10-15 minutes of intoxicating, aimless chatter.  Taking the initiative to define the PAL (Purpose, Agenda, Logistics) within the first five minutes probably saves ten times that time it takes.

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I have not changed my mind about the value of the fundamentals, and the vapid nature of the tips, but as I have said elsewhere… some of these tips are kinda sexy.

So,  just in case you love empty calories, here is a link to a very interesting article that is full of tips… entitled The List to Beat All Lists: Top 20 Productivity Lists to Rock Your Tasks.  Enjoy, but don’t over-indulge!

P.S.

I suggest that you not try to implement all these tips, and instead focus on perfecting the 11 fundamentals of the 2Time system.  There is no short-cut to higher levels of productivity, no fancy new software or nifty new PDA that will magicallytransform your habits.  Instead, the only way to get there is by hard work… in much the same way that people get to Carnegie Hall.

To download the manifesto that covers the 7 Essential fundamentals, visit http://changethis.com/45.04.NewTime.  Incidentally the manifesto continues to make its way up the ChangeThis.com rankings and is now listed at #135 out of 270 in terms of downloads.  Thanks to readers who have downloaded a copy.

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In any case, it’s a good list made up of the absolute best thinking to be found anywhere on the planet.

The Top 100 Productivity and Life Hack blogs:

http://www.collegedegree.com/library/college-life/top-100-
productivity-and-lifehack-blogs

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So, I present this interesting list of tools with a caveat – employ them in your habits cautiously, with an understanding of how they impact the fundamentals.

Having said that, have fun!

Here is the link – http://urlcut.com/tips4-2time

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The fact is that the most productive managers DO NOT have an open door policy, and this with good reason. When taken to its extreme, managers think that they should be available to interruptions as long as there is no-one in their office. The impact of this unconscious decision is that a manager never creates a space in which they can be deeply productive, unless they come in early, stay late or come in on weekends.

I say to managers that they need to schedule their times to have an Open Door, and allow themselves to be interrupted only when there are emergencies. This takes careful scheduling, plus an effort to notify others about the exact nature of this “modified” open door policy.

The result, however, is more quality time for both the employee and the manager. The manager is able to give 100% of his attention to the times when he has to do uninterrupted deep thinking, and the times when he has the employee in front of him in need of his attention, without his mind straying to other activities. The employee gains by being able to gain the full attention of the manager.

A modified open door policy is a win-win for everyone.

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One chapter is entitled “The End of Time Management”.

He argues that one should forget all about time management!

Of course, this is more of a fancy title for a chapter than anything else, as he is mostly focused on doing the right things, rather than merely trying to maximize output or efficiency. He pooh-poohs the idea of trying to be more efficient, and looks back at his days when he was focused on working harder and harder, on God-knows-what.

But the truth is, he must have the same problem that the rest of us have, in the 11 fundamental elements. Even though he may only work 4 hours per week, he must still Capture, Empty, Schedule, Toss, etc. because he is subject to the same physical rules that we are, and has the same memory constraints that we do (or soon will, given a few more years of age).

Also, I am sure that he has more ideas than he has time to implement in this lifetime, so he must be using some method to choose between alternatives.

At the same time, he has some good tips about focusing his time and effort:

1. If you had a heart attack and had to work two hours a day, what would you do?
2. If you had a second heart attack and had to work two hours per week, what would you do?
3. If you had a gun to your head, and had to stop doing 4/5 different time-consuming activities, what would you remove?
4. What are the top three activities that I use to fill time to feel as though I’ve been productive?
5. Learn to ask, “If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?”
6. Put a Post-It note to remind yourself to ask, “Are you inventing things to do to avoid the important?”
7. Do not multitask.
8. Use Parkinson’s Law on a Macro and Micro Level.

These aren’t bad tips, and his enthusiasm for doing things differently is quite catching. I particularly like the idea of focusing on the most important 2 hours each day and week, as a way to put the most impactful tasks at the top of the mind.

However, these tips do not together make a time management system. The person who tries to implement them might be no more effective than before, because these happen to be the insights that impacted him at some point, but are unlikely to have the same impact on others.

Also on the cover of the book he has a picture of someone lying in a hammock between two palm trees. I happen to live in Jamaica, where we actually do have hammocks, and people do take naps in them from time to time, all year round. Ferriss makes the point that you can’t spend four hours a week working and the rest of the time lying around doing nothing. Life gets very boring, very quickly at that rate.

Instead, I can say that even when you own a hammock, life just does not stand still until your nap is finished. Instead, it keeps on happening and happening, and time demands keep coming at you relentlessly, long after you have logged off your computer and gone to bed.

A system that a user creates for themselves must deal with growing time demands, and no amount of hammock jockeying causes them to disappear.

So, instead of throwing away all time management systems, it’s a good idea to focus on the habits that comprise all such systems – this is essentially what Ferriss is asking his readers to do, without directly saying so.

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Personal Productivity Required Reading List: 100 Kick-butt Lifehacking Blogs

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Lifehacking is all about finding ways to streamline and improve your life. These bloggers can help you do just that, offering clever tricks and tips for making your everyday life more effective. Check them out for some of the best ingenuity the Internet has to offer.

Top Ten
The bloggers in our top ten are lifehack experts, even if they don’t know it yet. They offer excellent resources and can provide a wealth of knowledge that’s sure to help you kick things up a notch.

1. Get Rich Slowly: More money, more problems? Not at Get Rich Slowly. JD Roth’s blog offers well written, real life ways to get and keep your finances in order.
2. Lifehacker: Technology can help you work more efficiently, but often it just offers more distraction. Lifehacker helps readers cut through the fat, offering tips for software, websites and other life hacks that save time and energy.
3. Dumb Little Man: Jay White started this blog because he was tired of “recreating the wheel” whenever he tried something new. Jay’s documented his own life tips as well as the lessons he’s learned from others, to create a knowledge resource focused on saving time and making life easier.
4. 43 Folders: Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders offers tips on time management, efficiency, stress reduction and other shortcuts for life.
5. Steve Pavlina: Steve Pavlina used to be a grand theft auto inmate. Now, he’s a personal development guru, offering advice on self employment, giving up coffee, self discipline, and even the meaning of life.
6. Lifehack: Not to be confused with Lifehacker, Lifehack focuses on methods to improve your lifestyle. Topics include productivity, money, communication and more.
7. Zen Habits: Zen Habits helps you hack your life by implementing good habits. This includes achieving goals, motivating yourself, simplifying and being happy.
8. Ririan Project: Ririan focuses on life with achievement and balance. This blog offers techniques for getting the most out of life, time, money and more.
9. Web Worker Daily: Web Worker Daily delivers how-tos, time saving software applications, and other productivity tips for those that make their living online.
10. LifeDev: LifeDev offers readers high quality posts on personal development and productivity. Read this blog for information on how to get things done, as well as find tools to help you work better.

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One Simple Technique to Help You Overcome Procrastination and Start Writing Now

August 5th, 2006 | Productivity

For the last three weeks I’ve been using something called “contingency management” to write more, and more consistently, than at any point in my entire life. I now write an average of three pages a day (typed, double-spaced) during one 30-minute session. I’ve also used this technique to jump start two projects that were stalled for months.

Only a small fraction of my writing would be publishable, but I now have over 60 pages of new ideas, hunches, questions, and possible solutions that simply didn’t exist a month ago. On top of everything, I no longer cringe when I think about writing and my self-confidence has skyrocketed.

Contingency management has been around for years, but I just learned about it in a great book by Robert Boice called Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing. This is required reading for writers in all fields who want to overcome the inertia of writer’s block and procrastination.

What’s it all about?

Contingency Management is simple. Choose a daily task that you value (e.g., checking your email, working out, showering) and make it contingent on writing for a period of, say, 30 minutes. The trick is finding something you really can’t go a day without doing. For me, checking my email works like a charm.

If you have trouble finding the right task, or if you don’t trust yourself to stick to the plan, enlist a friend to help you in the following way, which comes directly from Boice: On any day that you fail to write, a prewritten check for $25 will be sent to an organization that you absolutely hate. Ouch!

Are you saying I should force myself to write?

Exactly. Forcing yourself to write will have several positive outcomes:

1. It will destroy the excuse that you don’t have enough time to write – you will find it easily.
2. It will help you get in the habit of writing even when you don’t feel like it.
3. If you choose to write on a project in development, you’ll see that your concerns about not being ready to write are groundless (you really don’t need to download another article or check out another book before starting).

I know some of you are probably thinking that forcing yourself to write will be counterproductive. After all, the received wisdom on procrastination and writer’s block includes the idea that you should coax yourself into working by changing your self-talk from “I have to finish this!” to “When can I start?” This is a way to keep your mind from thinking that the task at hand is big and scary and should be put off for as long as possible.

That’s what I believed, too, so I was really skeptical about contingency management at first. But after I completed my first writing period and saw the results, I never once felt forced. On the contrary, it was like my ego stood up to take credit for finishing the task AND for deciding to do it in the first place.

Even though writing doesn’t come as automatically as brushing my teeth (not yet, anyway), the idea that I’m forcing myself to write has completely faded away.

Won’t my creativity take a hit?

Some of you might think forcing yourself to write will quash your creativity; you’d rather wait for that ol’ muse to come a knockin’. Boice has some interesting data on this.

He took 27 university faculty members who complained of writing problems and divided them into three groups. The first group agreed to put off all writing for 10 weeks–they would remain “abstinent” in all but emergency situations. The second group was encouraged only to write when in the mood. The third group used contingency management, agreeing to write three pages a day or else a prewritten check would be sent to a hated organization as mentioned above.

In terms of the number of pages written by each group the results aren’t that surprising. On average, the abstinent group produced 0.2 pages a day, the spontaneous group produced 0.9 pages, and the forced group produced 3.2 pages.

What about the production of creative ideas? Here’s where the differences really matter. The abstinent group reported having a creative thought about once a week, the spontaneous group about once every other day, and the forced group reported having a novel idea at least once a day.

The icing on the cake? The group using contingency management enjoyed writing more than the others.

Getting Started

Like any productivity technique, contingency management has to be tailored to your needs. It might take you some trial and error to find the right contingency, but this is critical. Checking my email works for me, but I’ve known that since 1995 when I used the same technique to help me practice my trombone more often.

What you do during your writing session will depend on how comfortable you are with writing. I usually start with 5 minutes of free writing and then transition into a more thoughtful, deliberate period. Lately I’ve been feeling the urge to produce fewer pages and spend more time forming conceptual outlines. I’ll probably do some switching back and forth between the two in the coming weeks.

I also suggest keeping a daily log of how many pages or words you produce and how much time you spend writing. Keep track even if all you do is enter zeros. This will help you see your progress, but more importantly it will instill the idea that writing can become part of your daily routine.

This is just the beginning

You’ll probably need more than contingency management to overcome anxiety and start popping out manuscripts, but this is about the best procrastination-buster I’ve ever come across. You get to see the results of your labor accumulate with each writing session, and you’re likely to feel your confidence grow as increased discipline and productivity enter your daily routine.

To learn more about contingency management and how to integrate it with other strategies for long-term writing success, I recommend you check out Boice’s book. In the mean time, I hope you give it a shot.

Let me know if it works for you!

Go to source: One Simple Technique to Help You Overcome Procrastination and Start Writing Now — Jim Gibbon.com

This article is one that makes an interesting point in motivating oneself – that using an awareness of how one’s mind works can enable a user to be change their habits selectively, and easily.

I like how the title uses the word “procrastination” but it really is about modifying one’s own behaviour.

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