Core Idea: Time Management

[Music]

today i want to do my first

core idea video deep dive i should say

my first core idea deep dive and the

topic i want to do it on

is time

management

so my goal here is to give a brief

summary

of my thinking about time management

and what that's going to

consist of is let me define for you what

i mean by time management

let me give you

the three principles

in my writing and on this podcast we

always talk about that any good time

management system should probably

satisfy and then i will briefly talk

through my particular system

which we can think of as

one example of a time management system

that satisfies these principles so you

can do something else but so you see

what a real

fully fledged time management system

that satisfies these principles look

like and then i'm going to have a

bonus fourth principle i want to talk

about

that debatably is not really about time

management it lives right outside time

management but it's related so i'm going

to talk about that briefly at the end so

that is my agenda for this core idea

discussion on time

management

so let's start what do i mean by time

management for me

at least in the context of this

discussion i'm thinking about work

so time management in work

the way you deal with your time outside

of work is a little bit different so i'm

going to put that aside

and in the context of work

i'm going to define time management to

be

whatever philosophy process systems or

rules that you deploy to make decisions

about what you're going to do right now

with your time

how do you figure out

it's 12 26

on a friday what do i do next

in the end that's what a time management

system is a way to help you answer that

question

in as useful a manner

as possible

now everyone who works has some sort of

time management system they're using

if you don't know what it's called if

you can't tell me the details of it if

you've never thought about that it's

just a really bad one probably but you

still have one one way or the other

you're making these decisions the

question is just how do we want to make

these decisions

what is going to work better so i'm

going to give you

the three properties i think any good

time management system should have

i love alliteration

long time listeners the podcast know

this

i love cs in my alliteration as long

time listeners of this podcast know so i

named the three key properties here with

three c's capture

configure

control

let's talk about these each briefly in

the abstract and i'll tell you about my

system that satisfies these number one

capture

i believe a good professional time

management system

needs to have

some place in which you

store

all the information that's important to

making decisions about what you need to

be doing and what you should be doing

that is trusted it's a place that you

are going to look at things that go in

there will not be forgotten

these ideas get out of your head and

into a system so you're not wasting

brain cycles on trying to remember

or keep fresh stuff that you need to do

now in the context of tasks

we can give credit to this idea to david

allen so david allen in his

seminal

post computer

time management book and i mean that

very specifically because as i've

written about before

time management goes through big

evolution so post computers computer

networks and email time management went

through a big revolution david allen was

there at the beginning

he had this idea of full capture where

he said all of your tasks should be in a

trusted system that you review regularly

not in your head

he actually adapted that idea from a

previous business thinker named dean

atchison

unrelated to president truman secretary

of state same name different person

who had first developed i believe in the

1970s this notion of full capture and

david allen expanded it so that's really

the core of this

and david allen's articulation of full

capture said don't waste mental energy

remembering things have it in a system

so your brain can be clear to actually

focus on working

this also reduces a lot of stress

because your brain gets stressed when

it's worried about forgetting things you

need to do

i generalize capture though beyond what

alan talks about

in addition to each of your

commitments being somewhere you trust

i want your plans to also be somewhere

your trust

so any thinking you've done

about what you're working on on all

sorts of different time scales

that should be written down somewhere

you trust and review regularly as well i

think that's often overlooked but the

planning process of what's going on how

do i want to get my work done what needs

to be done this semester what do i have

to get done this week to hit this goal

that's a really important part of time

management i don't want that all in your

head that also gets captured

all right second property

configure

all right this is a a twist that i've

become

increasingly a loud advocate for which

is care more about how you actually

organize this information that you're

capturing

i think you really need to think through

once i have this information written

down somewhere

where do i put it how do i organize it

is it in categories is it broken up by

role

uh equally important

getting the relevant information

consolidated i'm really big on this so

not only do you have a a really smart

organization for all the stuff on your

plate

you're also gathering in one place all

the relevant information

you're not searching through your email

inbox to try to remember what does this

mean and where are we and what do i owe

this person i'm supposed to get back to

derek about the program codes what does

that mean let me go through my inbox now

all that should be in one place

so these are our two goals with with

organize

a that the information is organized well

where what you want to happen here what

you want to have happen here is that you

can very quickly get the gestalt of

what's on your plate what's due what's

not who you're waiting to hear back from

the information is put aside in such a

way that it's not just a list with a

hundred things and two all the relevant

information is there

i'm not scrambling around to figure out

what i need to know to do this thing

all the information is there

all right

control

the third property of a good prima time

management system

control says instead of being

reactive

in your decisions about what you want to

do with your time and by reactive i mean

just saying okay it's 12 23 on friday

what do i want to do next i don't know

let me see what seems relevant let me

look at my uh let me look at my inbox

let me look at slack

maybe i'll look at a to-do list and try

to choose something off of it

control says don't be reactive don't

wait till you get to the moment to say

what should i do next

instead be proactive

make a plan for your time in advance

that makes the most of the time that you

actually have available so you think

ahead you look at the time you have

available and you say what do i want to

do with this

i'm planning the whole picture at once

i'm not waiting till the moment to say

what happens next

now on the podcast

i talk often about doing this control

at multiple time scales you'll hear me

talk about multi-scale planning this is

where that actually applies and what i

recommend is that you should be doing

this type of planning on three time

scales quarterly weekly daily

so quarterly

you have a plan

for what you want to try to get done

that quarter what's important what are

the big projects you're working on

there could even be daily work that you

want to really emphasize like look i got

to get my cold calls up

so every monday wednesday friday i spend

the first hour doing cold calls whatever

it is but you're making this plan for

the quarter

looking ahead at the quarter is this a

busy quarter not a big quarter what are

the big deadlines this quarter is there

a huge trade fair halfway through it

that means the first half of the quarter

has to be really focused on preparing

for that trade of trade fair you're

looking at the whole picture of the

quarter and at this pretty big

granularity coming up with a plan

every week

you then look at that quarterly plan and

produce a plan for the week ahead of you

now you're doing weekly planning

and when you're doing weekly planning uh

what you really want to do is get a

sense of what's going to happen which

day

and then finally you get down to the

daily scale

where you say what am i actually doing

during the hours of the day

so we're in weekly planning you were

looking at what am i going to do the

different days of this week at daily

planning you're saying here's my day

of a meeting here i have a call here i

have two meetings here here's the time

that's for you what do i want to do

during that time so multi-scale planning

i think is the right way to think about

control you're giving your

time a job as opposed to asking in the

moment what should i do next

i think any good time management system

should do

capture configure control

let me talk briefly about my per

specific instantiation of these

properties what my time management

system looks like at the moment

so for capture

there is where i actually store

the things i need to do and i use trello

which is a task board software system so

it gives you a visual metaphor for cards

on a board arranged vertically in

columns i use trello

to keep track of tasks and commitments

and i use google docs

to keep track of plans

the plans i have about various things

so trello is where all my tasks are

google docs are where my uh my plans

live so that's where in multi-scale

planning my

quarterly plan lives

that's where other plans live jesse and

i for example have a google doc where we

we have our plans for the podcast etc

trello

for tasks

google docs for plans

in addition to the storage systems you

have to have the capture tool so the

tools you use to capture things during

the day on the fly that will then get

later moved into those storage systems

now for me i use two main ones

i have my time block planner

i am in a lucky situation where i was

able to design and publish my own

planner so you can obviously find out

more about that at timeblockplanner.com

but that planner has

for every day a page in which you can

capture stuff

so i capture stuff right in that planner

on my computer i also have a text file

on my desktop

i call it workingmemory.txt

because i think of it as like an

expansion of my actual

working memory

and i use that when i'm on my computer

to capture things especially when i'm

cleaning out my email

i can just type much faster than i can

write and i capture all sorts of notes

in this document uh i work through ideas

on the document it really is like an

extension of my working memory so a lot

gets captured in there if i'm in a

meeting on zoom

things are popping up i have to do i'm

writing it probably right there in that

workingmemory.txt

at the end of every day i do a shutdown

my planner even has a box i checked it

says shutdown complete that indicates

i've done my shutdown as part of that

shutdown process

i look through everything in that

planner everything in workingmemory.txt

and i get it into one of those more

stable systems goes on the trello or i

update my google doc

so those things get pushed back down to

zero

they're temporary tools to capture and

then they get moved into the more stable

systems

the one addendum i should add there is

the calendar obviously some of these

things are appointments so that goes

right to the calendar all right

configure

i mention i use trello

for my task the way i actually use

trello is i have a separate board for

each of my different professional roles

i keep a separate board as a writer

a separate board for example as a

teacher

which i keep as a separate board as a

researcher

etc

those are then split up into columns

there's a few standard columns that

every one of these boards have i

typically have a column where i put task

on there that's called to be processed

it's a pretty complicated thing i need

to do and i don't quite understand all

the details of it but i don't want to

keep track of it in my head but also you

know it's five o'clock and i'm shutting

down i don't have time to spend 20

minutes figuring out

what does this mean

like what are the actual actions here so

i'll just throw that in the 2b process

column i usually have a column on each

of these boards for

waiting to hear back from

so if i've sent someone a note

and i need information from them and

that information is critical for me to

keep making progress i like to put a

card

on my trello board under waiting to hear

back that says here's what i'm waiting

to hear back from and here's what i'm

going to do once i get that information

i don't want to remember that in my head

so i put it on there i typically have a

column for things i'm working on this

week and i'll typically have a column

for

if there's specifically persistent

initiatives within that role

i'll give it its own column so i can

really quickly see for this thing i'm

working on

what are all the different things that

need to be done

so as a researcher there might be a

column for a paper we're preparing for

publication in my administrative role at

georgetown there might be a column for a

search committee that i'm on here's the

relevant tasks

the time that i really get into and

clean this up and look at it and move

things around and check in on it is when

i do my weekly plan

so once a week as part of my commitment

to configure

i really go through these systems and i

update it

once a week when i'm building my weekly

plan

there's also when i'm reviewing the

google docs that capture these other

types of plans that are going on and

update them and remind myself what's on

them so the weekly scale is when i'm

really

getting my hands dirty throughout the

week i'm just throwing stuff into here

at the end of each day but each week i

really go in and clean things up

all right finally is control

i already talked about multi-scale

planning i think it's the best way to do

control you could do it other ways but i

do for me it's semester instead of

quarterly but semester weekly

daily planning

semester plans in a google doc

weekly plan i actually type it up in a

text document and print it out

and i keep it with me in the back of my

time block planner so that's how and

then i'll update it and reprint it as i

need to throughout the week

and then for my daily plan i'm time

blocking like i talked about

here's my day let me block off

everything on my calendar here's the

time that remains what do i want to do

during that time

well let me look at my weekly plan to

remind myself of what my big picture

plan is for this day and then i'm

blocking off actual hours of time and

saying here's what i'm doing here here's

what i'm doing there

and i fill in all that information i do

that right in my time block planner but

you can do this in any type of notebook

there's a whole video at my site

timeblockplanner.com

that walks through the details of how

time blocking works so that is how i do

the daily piece you put those all

together there's my commitment to

control

all right so stepping back capture

configure control you do those three

things

you're going to be making smart

decisions

about what you want to be doing with

your time professionally

now i know people get concerned they say

well i might be injecting too much

structure into my life and this is going

to make my work life more rigid and i'll

be less creative

i call nonsense and all of that

just because you're in control of

everything doesn't mean you need to

schedule every seven minutes of your

time like a crazy person

i mean you can when you're in control

your time you can now start to make

decisions like

thursday afternoon starting at 12 i want

to do no work i'm going to go to the

woods and just think about this problem

i'm working on

when you're doing capture configure

control you could do that with

confidence because you know what's on

your plate you've cleared out that time

you know things aren't being forgotten

you made sure that you had time on

wednesday to catch up on things people

need to hear about thursday because

you're in control you can aim that

control at

more breaks more free time more

creativity less stress

you can significantly like a lot of my

listeners do reduce the amount of time

it takes for you to get your normal

workload done

and because you're in complete control

of things move it into certain days and

keep whole days free to basically do

phantom part-time jobs there's a lot you

can do that makes your life more

interesting and creative

and less stressful

once you have an intentional way of

making these decisions about what do i

want to do next with my time

all right now i promised you a bonus

property that

arguably has to do with time management

arguably it's something different so

i'll just mention it briefly

and that is

constrain

so circling this whole idea

is how you figure out

what gets on your plate to be managed in

the first place

and how you actually manage that work

i'm just going to plant the seed here

because this is a bigger conversation

but

we need to be very careful about how we

decide what we say yes to and what we

say no to

we would really like to avoid the

situation where we have so much work on

our plate that yeah we can control it

and be organized about it but we still

don't have enough time to get it done we

want to avoid that situation so having

clear rules in place about how do i

decide what i let on my plate that's

really important

processes is the second thing that i

think is really important when it comes

to constraining

you know figuring out

how do i want to do this work

the stuff i let on my plate can i put a

process in place that will reduce the

footprint this has on

my schedule

there's a lot of different things this

can mean and again because we're just

seed planting here i'm just going to

very briefly skim the surface but there

may be automation you're doing here you

know what we have to produce this same

client report every week

i don't want to just send emails back

and forth and kind of figure it out at

the last minute here is our process for

doing it and you figure out a whole

process that's the same thing the same

things happen at the same times every

week you can rely on it you've taken

that burden off of your planning system

to have to figure out from scratch

for small questions and back and forth

you might push that all towards office

hours

three days a week for one hour well

publicized i'm in my office zoom is on

come to that office hours if you have a

small question for me come to that

office hours if there's a little bit of

information you need come to that office

hours if there's something we can figure

out in two minutes of back and forth

and when people bother you with the

email or slack like hey what are we

doing again about this or can explain to

me again what this thing means just say

yeah come to my office hours

these type of processes are all about

reducing what it is that you actually do

have to manage with your capture can

configure control system you want to

simplify that simplify what's on your

plate simplify how the things are on

your plate are executed the easier you

can make

the planning version of yourself job

the better you're going to do at your

actual job

all right so let me summarize it there

that is my

thinking

on this core idea

of time management

you