All Posts Tagged Tag: ‘tips’
Building Time Maps
Do you have enough time? Do you stress out over the hours that you’ve left out to finish your projects?
If you want to have "more time" or to manage it more effectively I have couple of tips for you.
Where is my time?
Nothing comes from nowhere and in order to have more time you need to know where it goes. Your first task is to think what are the ways you spend your time. It would be the best if you could track it for a week or so. For starters simply jot down all the regular and irregular activities that form part of your life.
Think of as many as possible. Then look at your list and check how many hours per day or per week are you spending on each activity.
If you really want to know where your time goes consider tracking it for a week or more if possible. There are countless software packages for doing that, some even allow to monitor your computer usage, used applications and visited internet sites. But remember, it’s not only about tracking your computer activities, look at your life as whole.
Daily/Weekly chart
Once you have your list of activities ready it’s time to put a map in place. It works best if you use daily or weekly perspective of your week.
Lets start with a simple and easy method that will give you results very quickly:
- Take a ruled sheet of paper and some colour pens or alternatively use spreadsheet on your computer.
- List all the hours in the day starting from 0:00 to 23:00. Each of the line represent a single hour of your day.
- If you need more granular approach, say 30min slots just divide the lines appropriately or find bigger piece of paper.
- Now start on the top and go down drawing a line between each activity. Once you’ve done fill the blocks with colours you want.
[sample day schedule]
What you can see now is the map of day’s activities. By sketching this quick map you can identify any time sinks or simply realise that you have a lot on your plate and there is not much room.
If you have listed the number of hours you spend on each activity per day or per week then you can create pie chart. This method approaches your time map from slightly different angle and lets you see all the areas where you spend your time in proportion to the total time available. You can also see how they stack up against each other and what are the areas that dominate your schedule.
[sample weekly activities]
It’s worth considering this approach if want to look at things from monthly or even annual perspective.
Analyse
Once you’re done with your map it’s time to look at it and analyse it. There is no point in creating something if you’re not going to use it. Time maps give you an overview of your situation so now you need to look at it and start asking questions.
- What is important?
- Is there anything that can be eliminated?
- Is there any free time?
- Am I spending time in the right way? etc
Next week I will look at time budgeting which aims at re-shaping your current schedule and making space for activities that are important and move you towards your goals and desires.
GTD Implementation – some tips
Today I would like to give you some of my tips on how to implement GTD. This is mostly based on my mistakes that I have done when I started my GTD adventure. Hope your will find some value in this. Here they are (in no particular order).
Brain dump – Write it down. This applies to anything and everything that sits in your head. Write them all, your ideas, things to do, dreams, goals etc. Be strict and consistent. The fewer things in your head the more benefit your will get. Personally I think this is single most important element of GTD implementation that gives the most visible effect. You can literally feel weight lifted from your shoulders.
One thing at a time – Single things out. Focus on one thing at a time and consistently work through the lists and inboxes. Resist the urge to do things and browse through the stacks. The idea is that you pick one examine it, make decision (defer, do, delete) and move the the next one. This might be hard at first but should be easier over time.
Decide on the system – Setting up your system and tools is the most difficult time consuming part. You will probably spend hours trying various different approaches. My tip is asses your needs. Look at the effects of your brain dump and try to think what will be sufficient for you. Don’t try to over do your system, keep it simple i the rule no.1.
Pick your tools – Now when you’ve assessed your needs pick your tools but try to keep things simple and consistent Try to use tools that will support your system and each other. Tools that can easily exchange information and allow you to use them whenever your are and when ever you need them.
Stick with your choice – That’s very hard especially in the beginning. When the new habits have been created yet, when methodology is fresh and unsettled it’s easy to be lured by some new tools. The fact is: "it’s not going to work". Most of us like to play with new things, spend a little time with it and when bored move to another. But in this case you should change your tool only if….
Check if it’s you – When you find that your system is limiting you and does not meet your needs make sure this is systems fault. Often you consider something as system failure but in fact it’s your fault. You didn’t keep your system current, you have neglected some parts of the process, your haven’t clarified some thoughts. If that’s not the case and your implementation is not sufficient for you switch to something that will better fit your needs But this should be the only situation when you make a change. Otherwise you will spend more time transferring data across different platforms and wont get your things done.
Make notes – This is something that I discovered recently. I didn’t put enough attention on my implementation how it works, where are my in baskets, how do I file etc. so it was kind of loose and unstructured. Making notes on your system gives you an option to see, reflect what works and what doesn’t. I know, system should be simple and at hand and that 100% true but in order to do that your need to see your system form higher altitude, get some perspective.
Keep your system current – That sounds obvious but I always need to remind this to myself. It’s necessary to makes sure that the system is constantly fed with new items. Make sure you log all actions, projects, waiting for’s. Check if the inboxes are empty and calendar is accurate.
I hope you’ve found these tips useful. If you have some more tips and would like to share them please feel free to leave a comment.