Inspiration from Total Immersion

total-immersion.jpgIt’s funny, but over the past week or so I have been picking up the original threads of thought that inspired me to think that there was a better way to think about time management.

The first indication occurred when I read the book “Work the System” by Sam Carpenter.  I discovered how much I had been influenced by Michael Gerber’s books, starting with “The e-Myth Revisited.”

The second indication came as I started to prepare for my next triathlon, which is some four months away.  I am only a proficient swimmer because of the work I have done over the years on my freestyle stroke, based on the work of Terry Laughlin at Total Immersion.

I picked up his book for triathlon swimmers once again,  so that I can begin to work on my stroke and efficiency.  I was quite surprised to see how much of his ideas had seeped into my subconscious, at a few levels.

One level is related to the actual content of the book, which has presents a whole new way of thinking about swimming that flies in the faces of conventional  wisdom.

The other level has to do with the emphasis on continuous practice, in order to eke out small gains and improvements over time.  Terry encourages swimmers to change their thinking from “doing laps,”  and instead to think about their time in the water as “practice time” — an opportunity to ingrain into their bodies a specific new movement, position or tweak.  Each session must have a plan, and the swimmer shouldn’t end the session without being a better swimmer in some small way.

This focus on developing small, seemingly inconsequential habits is the key to becoming a better swimmer who is more streamlined in the water, uses less energy and therefore performs better on the bike and the run, which together take up much more time than the swim.

My hope in developing this blog, and the thinking behind 2Time is that users will come to see that it’s possible to improve their time management skills by taking a similar approach.

If they are able to figure out the simple changes in practice that are needed to happen, then it’s possible to make them a reality with a focus on changing small habits, or practices.

A top swimmer  cannot escape the requirement of ongoing practice, if they hope to improve.  A professional is no different. It’s crazy to think that there is some way to implement new habits of time management without practicing them over and over again until they become second nature, and greater productivity and peace of mind is the result.

The one thing that I wish I could recommend to each professional is a way to practice the skills each day.

Going to the pool to work out before a competition is obviously the time that a swimmer sets aside to get better.

Where or what is the equivalent time for a professional?

When do they get the opportunity each day to practice new skills?

What would be an easy to structure to add to one’s life in order to try out some new approaches?

I have an idea that there could be time set aside each day to do the following:

1. look back at the previous day to see what can be learned

2. decide which new habit to implement that day

3. set up any supports that are required to ensure that the new habit is fully supported

This practice could be repeated each day, until a new habit has become second nature, and does not require conscious attention.

This is a pretty simple example, but as far as I can tell, it’s the only way to ensure that the time is spent actually practicing the new habit.

Now that I look at it, I realize that  I have been using this process each day myself for over a year, but my focus has been on building my scaffold for the day.

While there are a few gifted swimmers who can immediately implement a new suggestion, most need to invest hours of pool time to gain a fraction of a second here, and a fraction of a second there.  Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps spend months of practice to do just that, and they are perhaps the most gifted athletes of all in their disciplines.

The same applies to working professionals. A few might be able to instantly apply the “top 100 tips,” but for most there is a yawning gap between understanding any given tip and turning it into a new habit.

Thanks to Terry Laughlin for not just making it clear that there is only one way to get better, but also for making the path clear for those (like me) that look at Phelps and have no idea, or the wrong idea, of how to climb the learning curve.

I hope this blog, and the products I produce, do the same.

Impressing Your Boss Article

I recently wrote an article for the Stepcase Lifehack website entitled “Impressing Your Boss with Time Management 2.0”

I got the idea when I remembered some performance reviews I had received in the past in which I could not figure out what I should do differently, if anything.

I imagined that employees who were told that they should improve their time management skills were no better off, and had no idea where to start, and whether or not it would reverse a poor perception.

Follow this link to read my recommendations on how an employee can use Time Management 2.0 principles to create a new impression: Impressing Your Boss With Time Management 2.0
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Becoming More Disciplined

habit-tracker-piece.jpgOn a teleconference today, the attendees and I talked about the need to be more disciplined in order to change one’s time management practices.

I thought about it for a moment and then I had a different thought.

A year ago, I  created a worksheet for each to help me implement a number of new habits.

Essentially, I focused on creating a single new habit, which was to sit down and work through my list of new habits each work-day, before doing anything else.

If I performed the habit in the last 24 hours I would earn a check (or tick) on  the list, and if not, I would  place an “x.”  I had no idea how it would work, but I was shocked to realize that I have been doing the practice for over a year, coming up with a new sheet each month.  I have implemented all the new habits that I have committed myself to, and created a new raft of brand new habits during the year to put in place.

Recently, I switched over to a small spreadsheet on my PDA, and am no longer using paper, but underlying idea remains exactly the same.

As a result of doing this practice, I now have several new practices that have become habits.  When a practice on the sheet has become a habit, I simply remove it.

Question is — Am I more disciplined?

I’m not sure, as “more disciplined” sounds to me like one of those judgements that people make without really understanding what they mean, or how to accomplish them. For example, it’s not helpful to tell someone to “become more disciplined.”

It’s much more helpful to tell them to:

a.  create a tracking sheet for the new habits  they want to implement

b. each morning, before doing anything else, go down the list and track whether or not the habit was implemented in the last 24 hours

c. at the end of each month, create a new sheet

In other words, forget about being disciplined and instead, focus on your sheet each morning and on doing as many items each day.  By the end of the month aim to do almost all of the items each day.  People may believe that you are being more disciplined, but you know that it’s simply been a matter of focusing on one sheet of paper each day.

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Improving Time Management Over the Years

led_digital_watch_red_70s_type_display.jpgI just read an interesting article from the New York Times exploring the reasons why free-throw shooting in basketball has not improved over the years.

Apparently, the success-rate of free-throws in the NBA and college basketball has remained unchanged at approximately 69% since the mid 1960’s.  The authors of the piece make the case that not enough has changed over the years to cause the overall average to shift, and in particular they point out some areas in which little or nothing has changed.

Here is an excerpt:

Ray Stefani, a professor emeritus at California State University, Long Beach, is an expert in the statistical analysis of sports. Widespread improvement over time in any sport, he said, depends on a combination of four factors: physiology (the size and fitness of athletes, perhaps aided by performance-enhancing drugs), technology or innovation (things like the advent of rowing machines to train rowers, and the Fosbury Flop in high jumping), coaching (changes in strategy) and equipment (like the clap skate in speedskating or fiberglass poles in pole vaulting).

This made me wonder — what are the equivalent factors in the area of time management that would have to change in order for the average professional’s productivity to improve?

Here are some candidates for factors that have impacted personal productivity in the past 50 years:

Technology — the ability to transport the modern tools of communication and organization has unchained professionals from their desks, and that is a benefit.  However, the poor use of gadgets has helped to make some users more inefficient than they were before

Practice — the little codification that has occurred in books such as Getting Things Done and on the 2Time Management blog has brought some level of standardization to a haphazard field with no established standards, and little proper research

Coaching —  while there remains little or no standardized training for time management, many pick up a book or do an online course to learn how to improve their time management skills

Measurement — in the case of basketball and many other sports, it is easy to determine how effective a player is relative to his/her peers.  Not so time management, which unfortunately for most, remains in the dark ages when it comes to having simple, empirical measures of success that can be used to compare one user to another, or even to record simple changes that a user makes in their time management system.

Of these factors, I believe that a real breakthrough will come when a fool-proof method is derived for measuring personal productivity.

Here in the 2Time approach, I advocate the use of a personal test — “what does this do to my peace of mind?”  However,  this test is hardly empirical.

Until the day comes when a solid method of measurement is created,  it will be impossible to improve time management from year to year with any reliability.

Practice Produces the Best Time Management System

gladwell.jpgAs I have mentioned in other places in this blog, there is a common belief that people who have good time management systems are naturally more organized than others.

However, recent research consistently shows that talent has little to do with it, and it has more to do with consistent, disciplined practice than anything else.

In his new book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell  makes the same point on this video:

Malcolm Gladwell’s video on practicing producing performance

Time Management and Jamaica’s Olympic Success

Here in Jamaica, as you can imagine, we are glued to our television sets watching our countrymen win an unprecedented number of medals.

We are a famously proud people, and right about now we are ready to burst with pride!

Traffic halts, television sets appear in offices and phones buzz across the world as productivity in Jamaica drops a notch or two (or ten) — first things first, after all.

As a recreational runner in Jamaica, and as a triathlete I am reminded of a lesson I learned when  I completed an  Iron-distance triathlon a few years ago (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, 26.2 mile run.)

Looking back at the  months that it took to lose 20 pounds, work on several disciplines at once and research the demands of the race and its effects on the body, I think that the most critical factor that separates those who are successful from those who are not  is simply one thing.

Time management.

Or to put it more accurately, habit management that results in good time management.

Becoming an ironman has more to do with the months that precede the event than anything else, and there are only a handful of athletes who can devote unlimited time to the pursuit.  Most people who attempt the race have a spouse, children, jobs, friends and other real obligations that must be maintained while the madness of completing a race of this distance is entertained.

Somehow, 15-20 hours per week of training need to be carved out, at minimum,  in order to be able to finish the race.  That’s no small feat — you might be thinking that it would be “impossible” to find that kind of time in your own life, so no ironman for you.

Someone training for the race must create a 10-12 week schedule that describes which training is done on each day.   A tremendous amount of organizing must take take place in order to practice the three sports (plus do the necessary weight-lifting) in addition to changing one’s diet, which is often necessary.  The training typically follows a 3+1 rhythm, based on 3 hard weeks followed by 1 easy week, which is necessary for the body to recover from the stress it’s being put under.

A bicycle must be maintained and transported, at times.  A pool must be visited during the right hours.  The stores that sell the nutritional aids need to be open at the right time.

Many find that their sleep patterns must change in order to accommodate  an early morning workout.  I used an alarm on my watch to remind me each night that it was time to get to bed (this helped me become a firm believer in the fundamental component – “Interrupting” – described elsewhere in this blog.)

In short, an entirely new set of habits must be adapted in order to become better at time management.  Also, a new set of habits must be learned in order to accomplish improved weight management, work management, money management, race management, etc.

The irony is that almost no time is spent in any of the training books I have read on the topic of time management.  Yet, it’s exactly what stops most people from even attempting this particular goal that happens to demand so many new time demands.

My recommendation for users who are interested in improving their skills in time management is to create the need to practice better skills in a way that doesn’t threaten their jobs or their marriages.  The trick is an easy one — pick something like a marathon or triathlon that would ordinarily be impossible using the old skills, and learn the new skills while undertaking the new challenge.

Whether the goal is accomplished or not, it’s possible to produce an improvement in time management skills, in addition to those of swimming, cycling and running.

To become top-class in their sport, our Jamaican Olympians had to learn these skills, particularly as  I heard that the most successful coach in Jamaica (an ex-accountant with an MBA who is a school-mate of mine) insists that all team-members must be on time – no matter what.  In the Jamaican culture, that runs very much against the norm and I imagine that there have been thousands of young athletes over the years that failed to make to grade.

They simply failed to develop the time management skills necessary to accomplish the bigger goals of winning a medal in the Olympics, or completing an ironman triathlon.

Practicing New Habits

ropes-course.JPGI recently got a little too happy when I found a game on CNet.com that claimed to be a “time management game.”

The reason for my premature celebration is that I have been trying to find a way to help participants in my 2-day and online programs to practice the 11 fundamentals in some way.  I initially imagined that this could be done through a simulation, in which I created an imaginary environment to manage a large number of time demands.

The game, which I played for an hour, was all about running a pet fish store, and required the owner to make split-second decisions about what fish to stock, what fish-food to use and what ornaments to place in the tank.  As the game progressed, things moved faster and faster, and at different levels, points could be accumulated  that could be exchanged for a bigger tank and better machines, among other upgrades.

As time went  on, I was indeed getting better at playing the game, and at making split-second decisions about how to manage my time in the game.

The only  problem is, the game lasted only 60 minutes, and I don’t plan to ever play it again.

So, my new-found skills are essentially useless  now that the game is over, as all I really learned to do was to play the game better.

It reminded me of a day I spent on a ropes course  with a team of which I was a member.  We performed all sorts of interesting tasks that required communication, teamwork, planning, etc.

However, it made not a shred of difference to the members of the team, once we returned to the office.

I suppose that with constant  practice that we could have become better at navigating ropes courses.  I also imagine that with more time I could have become a better player of the “pet-fish store game.”

However,  I would not have become a better team player, or have improved any time management skills by continuing in either direction.

This makes sense — I doubt that Michael Jordan spends too much time improving his basketball game by playing NBA Live on his Nintendo.  Also, I doubt that the kid who won the last   World of Warcraft contest would do too well fighting the insurgents in Afghanistan.

In the 2Time system, the core habits that I identified were only those that could be observed, and they all include some element of physical motion.  Mental habits  like ” focusing” or “prioritizing” were deliberately left out of the fundamentals.

I now see that playing a video game involves very different physical motion and practices than playing basketball.  Someone watching a game player from behind would not mistake them for a basketball player due to how differently they are using their bodies.

Someone watching a  team going through a session at the ropes course would not be mistake them for a team that is huddled over the sales results from last month trying to decide which strategy to follow.

Finally, playing a video game does not, alas, make me a better manager of my time, unless it causes me to engage in one or more of the 11 fundamentals  in some way.

I think that true practice comes from repeating actions until they become ingrained into our neuro-muscular systems, and if that’s not happening, then it’s not really practice.

So, I am back to where I started, still looking for a way to help users to practice the 11 fundamentals in a safe environment.

Click here to be taken to Jenny’s Fish-Shop – Time Management Game.

An Article on E-mail Etiquette

A humorous article from the New York Times of June 26th caught my eye for some interesting points that it made about handling emails.

While the main point of the article was to deliver some email advice to someone who is entering public life, I think that some of the advice was mistaken.

While I agree with some of the advice (especially when it comes to dealing with “wackos” who send email) I think the advice about handling email was built on a faulty premise.

The author makes the point that he does not keep an empty inbox, but instead treats his inbox as a rolling todo list.  He tried David Allen’s advice to return the inbox tozero (i.e. to empty it) at least once per week, but found that it didn’t work for him.  His reasoning was that merely moving the email to a folder didn’t make sense, as he was merely moving messages around from one folder to another, accomplishing little.

He missed the point that I believe Allen is trying to make, and in doing so sets himself for future failure.

The habit he has adopted involves him taking the following steps:

1) reading his email

2) making a mental decision to do something with it later .e.g  study it, share it, store it, act on it, etc.)

3) leaving it where he found it (in the inbox)

This might not be a problem for him today, when the number of incoming emails numbers around 150 after a typical spam removal operation.  However, if his email were to double or triple in number, his system would encounter difficulties as his inbox would become overwhelming.

What  he missed in Allen’s advice was something that many miss, which is the principle or practice underlying the tip thatAllen is giving.

The obscure principle in operation here is that an inbox is a temporary collector of incoming items that will be subject to later processing and immediate removal.  When too many items are are acted on with steps 1,2 and 3 above, the result is that items in the inbox become lost in a mountain of past and present messages.  This eventually ruins the peace of mind of the user,as the number of decisions that need to be made mushrooms and preys on the mind.  While we all have our breaking points, we all crumble when too many time demands are waiting to be processedby our already overloaded mental circuits.

Also, the more email the inbox contains, the more likely it is that information will be lost.  This is true for all of us.

He is wrong that merely moving an email to a different folder does nothing — the action by itself frees up the inbox to receive new, clearly viewable inputs.  It might not affect his productivity at the moment, simply because the number of time demands entering his life through his inbox is relatively low.

He mentions that he reads email all throughout theday, spending  perhaps an hour or so on the task in total. It’s even easie to see here that his current practice won’t scale well — if he were to be promoted and needed to manage a sudden increase in time demands, he could easily spend a half a day going through steps 1-3 for each email he wants to keep in his inbox.

Click here to read the article at the New York Times website.

Practicing the Fundamentals — a Rower

rowing_oars.jpgI read this article from the New York Times and loved it, as it echoed many of the ideas I have written about here in 2Time Management.

It speaks to the fact that America has had very few rowers  of world-class standard, and an interview with one of the few top individual rowers, she shares some of what she has learned.

It reads like  an exact copy of the philosophy behind 2Time, with the only difference being that the topic is rowing instead of time management.  The similarities had me smiling:

“During Ms. Guerette’s ascent in the ranks of elite rowing, she has learned a few lessons that could also benefit recreational and collegiate rowers. One is that you should never stop working on technique. “There are principles in rowing that are universally correct,” Ms. Guerette said.

While a rowing stroke looks fluid, it is made up of four sequential elements: the catch, the drive, the finish and the recovery.”

This  is essentially the same message as 2Time — the idea that behind every time management system there are universal practices. As far as we know, there are 11 of them..

“Of her two or three daily sculling sessions, one is almost always focused on drills to hone technique. “There’s not one secret drill that will make you fast,” she said. She practices a wide variety.”

While I haven’t found a way to introduce drills in the 11 practices, I think that any user can treat their habits as a form of drilling in which they do a single act over and over again, looking for small gains.  For example, they might capture 20 times in a day, and observe the practices they  use with a goal of improving them bit by bit.

” “There’s this saying that ‘Miles make champions,’ ” Michelle Guerette said. So she spends up to five hours a day on the water, doing a variety of workouts. ”

Clearly, she practices a great deal, honing her technique.  Professionals in every occupation must do the same with regards to their own time management techniques.   Once theyknow the fundamentals, they must be willing to put in time to practice them in order to improve them.

This applies to adults at every stage of life.  We are all limited by time, whether we are at the start, middle or end of professional careers.  My parents are retired, and they too are challenged with how they manage their time.

A feeling of fulfillment and peace of mind gets destroyed when we feel as is if we are not managing our time well.  We see where our goals are not being fulfilled, and that the limited time we have is being filed with activities that we are not really committed to.  This can all be reversed with a focus on practicing the fundamentals of time management.

The New York Times article can be read by clicking here. 

Post-Pilot Analysis (2) – New Equipment

visa-hand-and-card.jpgDuring the recent pilot of NewHabits-NewGoals (the course built on the concepts of 2Time), it struck me that every professional has their own home-grown time management system. They developed it in a trial-and-error fashion, mostly starting when they were in their early teens, and picking up bits and pieces from people they admired along the way. These included people they know in person, as well as those who may have written books outlining one person’s particular approach.

However, they didn’t develop it in a systematic way. They didn’t know the fundamentals. Without the fundamentals, they could not develop a complete system or innovate within the boundaries of the discipline in way that made their life easier, rather than harder.

Technology has only made their homegrown systems more susceptible to failure. Email is a great idea. Sending email from a Blackberry in the middle of a meeting is a bad idea. Continue reading “Post-Pilot Analysis (2) – New Equipment”