Psychology… But After the Fundamentals

I was listening to a time management audio-book today with some interest, as the author was delving into the frame of mind a good time manager must have to be effective, at the very beginning of the book.

I wondered about that.

In sports, while I know there is a place for “sports psychology”, in the most effective athletes, it is never a replacement for practice in the fundamentals.

However, in the practice of time management, it seems as if professionals are left without a proper starting point, because they have no idea what the fundamentals are. Instead, they are forced to grab onto tips, gadgets and in this case, cool insights, to try to improve their productivity. While there is some value to all of these, they simply don’t trump repetitive, daily practice.

In other words, it doesn’t matter what your mind is doing if your body isn’t getting increasingly skilled at the habits it needs to learn, and if those habits aren’t being burned into your subconscious, and into your body’s memory by simply spending the time trying to make incremental improvements.

The first lesson that a user of 2Time must be clear on is that physical practice comes first (and last) as new habits are honed and perfected.