Habits – Page 6 – 2Time Labs

December 5, 2008

Learning Time Management is Like Learning a Language

I came across an article on Tim Ferris’ blog on the topic of Why Language Classes Don’t Work: How to Cut Classes and Double Your Learning Rate.

I found it interesting because it parallels my experience in time management courses to some degree.

He makes the following points about problems that he has encountered in language learning classes:

1. Teachers are viewed as saviors when materials are actually the determining factor.

I have found this to be true in my courses. The “teacher” is only there to provide a foil for the materials, and when the materials are badly conceived (as most are) then no matter how good the student is, the new habits are impossible to learn.

Poor course materials in time management that focus on a single set of new habits never work for more than a few students, and the teacher can’t make up for this problem.

2. Classes move as slowly as the slowest student.

In poorly designed classes, when a student cannot understand why a new habit is important, a great deal of time is wasted showing him/her why it’s necessary. Better classes are focused on each student developing systems that work for them, and no-one else. It’s not important to learn the higher skills if they are not at the point of immediate use.

The best classes help students develop and use their skills at a pace that works for them

3. Conversation can be learned but not taught. (read: Time management can be learned but not taught.)

Because time management is built on a collection of personal habits, changing them is entirely up the individual’s willingness, and requires continuous practice to turn a new technique into a habit that can stick. In other words, there’s more to be gained from repetitive trial and error than there is from any explanation or theory. All a good time management class does is point students in the correct direction, and shows them what they need to teach themselves.

4. Teachers are often prescriptive instead of descriptive.

A good teacher of time management never tells a student what they should do, but merely points out the advantages and disadvantages of certain choices. In MyTimeDesign, for example, a student has the choice at every stage of which skill-level to adapt in each discipline.

For example, we need not putt like Tiger Woods to have a golf game that we are satisfied with. Yet, there are many time management systems that will warn students that they MUST follow “the system” according to the way it’s designed, down to the naming of folders, the colour of the tabs on their diary and the names they use for everyday items.

When the user’s needs are placed at the center of a time management program, these 4 traps are much easier to avoid.

November 10, 2008

Experimenting with Time Management Systems

I read a tremendous article recently that captures the importance of experimenting more eloquently than I ever could.

I found it in the April 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review and it is entitled “Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life,” and written by Stewart Friedman.

The authors divides a professional’s life into four separate areas — work, home, community and self — and urges employees and leaders alike to undertake focused improvement projects in each area. Each project is given a start and an end date, and only a few are to be attempted at any one time in order to ensure that one’s energy isn’t dissipated.

Also, by attempting these projects, he points out that people can take the leadership lessons learned from one area into all areas. This is because we all live interconnected lives, and there is a non-linear magic that occurs in someone’s life when a true improvement takes place.

Imagine for instance someone who decides to partake in a community project, in order to help them try some new time management skills. They could quite deliberately accept a leadership role in order to test themselves, to see what happens with their ability to manage a new volume of work.

If this idea sounds familiar to frequent readers of the blog, then it should.

2Time is built on the idea of continuous experimentation, and the truth is that building your own time management system can only be done well with the kind of focus the author describes.

In the old world of time management, the instructions were simple to give, but hard to follow. Authors and gurus simply said: “Follow me.” And, “if you have difficulty doing so, try harder.”

That was essentially it.

In Time Management 2.0 the reality is very different. In order to design a time management system that works for you you need to constantly experiment with different approaches, in order to discover your default habit patterns. Unless you are lucky enough to have a handbook somewhere that describes your habits in detail, you are likely to be venturing into new territory.

This is not a problem, as long as you have some tolerance for the trial and error process that comes with self-discovery. Also, it’s important to know that this self-knowledge is only a means to an end — a personally customized time management system.

What I realized while reading this article is that a professional who takes the effort to design their own time management system is likely to see an improvement in all areas of their life at the same time. This is likely to occur because people who undertake this kind of design end up creating systems that allow them to relax into the flow state for longer and longer periods of time.

This is true whether or not they are reading a book, talking to their children, replying to a tricky email or attending a meeting. They are simply able to invent a method that allows themselves to give 100% more often than those who are stuck in unconscious time management systems.

The author gives a few tips on how to design the best experiments. He advocates creating experiments that “feel like something of a stretch: not too easy, not too daunting. It might be something quite mundane for someone else, but that doesn’t matter. What’s critical is that you see it as a moderately difficult, challenge.”

Furthermore, he advises that once users have gotten started with a few projects, that they be open to constant adaptation. In this way, there is no such thing as failure. Whether goals are achieved or not, there is something important to be learned, and one’s life can be transformed in both cases.

Also, it turns out that there is no such thing as small or unimportant experiments. They all make a contribution towards the greatest of changes.

I have found that users who are confronted by the idea of building a time management system for their own, benefit greatly when they take the approach of breaking the project down into small steps, and sequence the steps they are planning to take over time. This prevents the overload that comes from taking the typical time management program in which hundreds of new habits are introduced in a torrent that drowns most participants.

It’s a great article, and it can be purchased from hbr.org and searching for reprint R0804H.

October 20, 2008

The Company’s “Guidelines”

I just found a most interesting set of corporate guidelines.

It comes from a marketing company called Sandia, in a document entitled “Being More Productive: Working more effectively will greatly benefit our clients, the agency and yourself.”

The document describes 16 ideas for its employees on how to increase productivity, ranging from #16 – “Do not carry a cellphone or Crackberry 24/7” to #15 – “Prioritize.”

I think the ideas are wonderful, but there is not a single mention of basic Time Management 2.0 ideas, starting with the idea that the user is responsible for their own time management system, and must define, manage and master it for themselves.

In fact, in the document, there is no mention of the user at all.

It made me wonder — was the article intended to be followed by all employees? The language seemed to be a bit “mandatory” which I imagine could create all sorts of resentment– it’s very “1.0” in its tone. The statement that “working more effectively will greatly benefit our clients, the agency and myself” which implies some kind of hierarchy in which my experience is at the bottom of the pile.

I would suggest to Sandia that their model is, on the whole, unsustainable.

The problem is in the assumptions that might be underlying the list, which include the notion that habits are easy to break, and that each employee should be using the same time management system as everyone else.

Research of all kinds shows that ingrained habits are difficult to make and/or break, and each person is different. Employees need to know this in order to see why it is they won’t be successful trying to put all these ideas into effect immediately. Managers also need to know that they cannot evaluate their employees on how well they are implementing the 16 items the day after the list is passed around, or even a year after.

But maybe the biggest problem of all is that the employee seems to be the lowest priority, and a mere tool of the company’s productivity needs. I don’t know for a fact if Sandia intentionally means to put customers first and employees last, but the way the document is written strongly implies that this is so.

I can’t imagine that the company means to replace a love of customer and company above a concern for self by just stating it in a document. I think it’s a smarter strategy to speak to employee’s greatest concern when it comes to productivity, which is that it contribute to their peace of mind and other desired emotional states.

The days are gone when employees can be thought of as mere “tools” of a company that exist in order to produce results. Thinking of them in this way misses the mark, and probably lead the company to think that putting out this list would result in changed behavior.

What employees do need is help to design their own system, and to see that the list of 16 items is a useful set of ideas that they must now work on to make their own.

[email_link]

October 14, 2008

Rudeness or Poor Time Management Skills

It’s happened to all of us… we are in what we think is a useful conversation, when the person we are talking with, suddenly switches over to their Blackberry, or cell phone.

In the moment, they make a decision that the unknown call or email that has just come in is more important than the conversation they are having with us.

We think to ourselves “How rude!” as we get that partial-attention that is now commonplace when the person we are talking with is giving us “just so much” of their attention and no more.

I have been on the giving and receiving end of this poor habit.

I know that when I do it, I trick myself into thinking that I can get away with it, and I know that I don’t intend to be rude, but in that moment I am engaging in a habit that undermines my productivity as I attempt to multitask my way to greater accomplishment.

One of my clients, a phone company, had executives who had developed a habit of answering their cell phones at any moment, even in mid-sentence. Another company had a policy of answering their landlines each and every time they rang, and refused to put in place a voicemail system.

The result in each case was very long meetings and a generally frenetic pace, as anything took precedence over the task at hand. Even the unknown caller.

When an unknown caller or sender of email has that much power over our activities, it destroys our productivity and peace of mind, as we eventually never really commit to getting anything completed without interruption.

That is the same as having a mindset that the thing we are working on in the moment might be important, but we are always on the look-out for more important things to whisk us away. Of course, after the switch has taken place, nothing has changed, as the new task is also only as good as the next interruption.

Those who suffer from this affliction never, ever have enough time go get anything done.

It’s not that they are rude — it’s just a sign of their unconscious ineffectiveness.

[email_link]

October 9, 2008

Age Activated Attention Disorder or “Multitasking Gone Mad”

A friend of mine sent the following article that gave me a chuckle…

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Recently, I was diagnosed with A.A.A.D.D. – Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.

This is how it manifests itself:

I decide to water my garden. As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car in the garage and decide it needs washing.

As I start toward the garage, I notice mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mail box earlier.

I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.

I lay my car keys on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, and notice that the can is full.

So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first.

But then I think, since I’m going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway, I may as well pay the bills first.

I take my check book off the table, and see that there is only one check left. My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of Pepsi I’d been drinking.

I’m going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the Pepsi aside so that I don’t accidentally knock it over.

The Pepsi is getting warm, and I decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold.

As I head toward the kitchen with the Pepsi, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye–they need water.

I put the Pepsi on the counter and discover my reading glasses that I’ve been searching for all morning.

I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I’m going to water the flowers.

I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table.

I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I’ll be looking for the remote, but I won’t remember that it’s on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I’ll water the flowers.

I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor.

So, I set the remote back on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill.

Then, I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.

At the end of the day:

the garden isn’t watered
the car isn’t washed
the trash can isn’t emptied
the bills aren’t paid
there is a warm can of Pepsi sitting on the counter
the flowers don’t have enough water,
there is still only 1 check in my check book,
I can’t find the remote,
I can’t find my glasses,
and I don’t remember what I did with the car keys.

Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I’m really baffled because I know I was busy all damn day, and I’m really tired.

I realize this is a serious problem, and I’ll try to get some help for it,
but first I’ll check my e-mail….

Do me a favor. Forward this message to everyone you know, because I don’t remember who the hell I’ve sent it to.

[email_link]

October 7, 2008

Now, Everyone’s a Surgeon

There used to be a time when only surgeons had cell phones and beepers.

Because their jobs required quick responses that involved matters of life or death, it seemed to make sense. After all, a couple of hours spent at the golf course could cost someone their life if they could not be contacted during a round.

We have come a long way since then.

Now, there are companies that are pressuring their employees to carry Blackberries, and to be available to answer email on a 12/18/24 hour basis. And these companies aren’t hospitals, army barracks or police stations.

Instead, they are employers of accountants, lawyers, bankers and other business-people of all kinds.

Without any planning or foresight, companies are using the Blackberry to change the way professionals use their time. Today, Blackberry users are answering their email, instead of doing less important things like participating in meetings, exercising, listening to their kids, giving their spouses their full attention and other such apparently unimportant activities.

These companies are causing professionals to continuously interrupt what they are doing in order to check and respond to a blind piece of email (it’s blind because they have no idea who it’s from or what it says.) In other words, they are responding like surgeons… except, the truth is, no-one’s life is on the line.

Try telling that to someone who is pretending to listen to you while they are checking their email on their Blackberry.

The reaction is often one of irritation, anger and even hostility. Their blind piece of email is obviously more important than the conversation that they are having with you, which is why checking it gains such immediate priority.

Their productivity (and yours) plummets at that very moment.

But what is it, poor manners aside, that causes a Blackberry user to grab their Curve in spite of what else they might be engaged in at the moment?

It’s not confidence, or skilled execution. Instead, the look in a Blackberry users eyes tell it all. The unit vibrates, rings or flashes, and they are gripped in that moment by a fear, or even a panic that “they might be missing something important.”

The panic, and its subsequent response, becomes a habit over time, until they get to the point where they cannot stop themselves from impulsively grabbing for their PDA. They cannot help themselves, and their behavior appears the have all the compulsion of an addiction.

But it’s not email that is the drug of choice. Instead, it’ s the driver behind the email — the “need to know” or, the fear of not knowing.

This is what wakes them up at 3:00am “just to check,” and to smuggle their device on vacations where they promised to leave it at home. This is what interrupts meals, conversations, projects, exercise, cooking and even “quality time.”

It’s a habit that a professional who finds themselves addicted would need some concentrated effort to break. one excellent course of action would be to use 2TIme approach to build their own time management and productivity systm.

With a greater degree of awareness, the Blackberry can return to its rightful place as a productivity enabler, rather than an unconscious dis-abler. We can all focus on developing habits that make knowledge workers really successful, and drop the surgeon-like, faux-urgency that we have developed.

[email_link]

September 22, 2008

Regrets and Time Management Execution

Getting rid of “negative” thought-patterns that destroy peace of mind is one of the side-goals that a professional can set as a target when managing his/her own time management system.

Why is it important?

In 2Time, the goal of a time management system is to produce peace of mind for the user. When someone develops the habit of allowing stressful thoughts to go unquestioned, the result is a destruction of peace of mind and further un-productivity as energy, time and attention are frittered away. The ever-elusive “flow” state of mind simply gets pushed away by other less-productive moods.

Some of the common negative thoughts include:

“I am a terrible procrastinator”
“I wasted the entire day”
“I should have done more”
“I am lazy”
“I am not working hard enough”
“I have an awful memory”
“I never have enough time”

While we all have these thoughts from time to time, there are some professionals who believe them, repeat them and then try to take time management programs in order to turn things around. As a teacher of these programs, I probably should not say that many professionals need a different kind of training than the kind that I present.

They need to develop some habits that involve developing their capacity to inquire into the nature of the above thoughts.

Towards this end, I strongly recommend the Work of Byron Katie, which can be found at http://thework.com.

The process she advocates is a simple one — identify the thought, write it down, ask 4 questions to investigate its truth and turn it around to its opposite for even further inquiry.

The results in my case have been simply astounding.

After practicing for a few years, stressful thoughts don’t hang around for long before they are questioned on paper (which I
prefer,) or in my thinking.

Professionals who take a time management program come in order to get rid of one of the above, listed thoughts can very well find themselves wasting their time. Once the thoughts become habitual, there is no degree of productivity that can be attained that remove them, and the unhappy feelings that ensue. These are best dealt with by following the process Katie’ advocates, rather than trying to become more productive.

This is no less important than learning the 11 fundamentals of time management that I describe here in 2Time. However, it definitely is cheaper, and saves a great deal of time.

August 26, 2008

Article: Are You a Multitasking Guru?

Michael, the author of Black Belt Productivity, make a compelling case to read the new book by Dave Crenshaw entitled “The Myth of Multi-Tasking.”

He interviews the author, who shares the gist of the ideas contained in the book. Essentially, he argues that multi-tasking is something that humans are incapable of doing well, and in our age of cell-phones and Blackberry’s, it’s something we should strive not to do. Instead, we should create environments that help us to focus as much of our attention on what we are doing in the moment.

At first blush, it appears to confirm my own observations in this area, so I am open to reading the book, but I’ll look at some more of the reviews before deciding to invest the time. 2Time is built on this very same notion of creating an uninterrupted flow of activity.

Here is the link to the article.

August 4, 2008

Practicing New Habits

I 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.

June 24, 2008

650 billion (not million) in Interruptions

An interesting article in the New York Times entitled”Lost in Email, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast.”

Their effort comes as statistical and anecdotal evidence mounts that the same technology tools that have led to improvements in productivity can be counterproductive if overused.

The article describes one study that shows that some 28% of a professional’s day is spent deal with interruptions by things that aren’t urgent or important.

This seems all well and good… until they give the example of “unnecessary email.”

That made me pay attention, because I know from experience that the problem isn’t the technology, but instead it lies in people’s habits. In others, don’t blame Microsoft Outlook for the habit of checking and acting on email ten times per day.

Not surprisingly, the article cited the example of Intel workers who were encouraged to “limit digital interruptions” and were way more effective as a result. No surprise there! Limiting the interruptions allows for a greater opportunity to enter into the flow state, which is one of the goals of the 2Time Management system.

On engineer has apparently introduced a tool that will prevent a user from having access to his/her email inbox! I thought this was funny at first, because it’s a little like freezing one’s credit cards in a block of ice to prevent impulse purchases. It works, but it doesn’t really change the underlying habit.

The effect of poor habits is now being seen as quite costly:

A typical information worker who sits at a computer all day turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times, according to one measure by RescueTime, a company that analyzes computer habits. The company, which draws its data from 40,000 people who have tracking software on their computers, found that on average the worker also stops at 40 Web sites over the course of the day.

Amazing.

Right at the end of the article a typo caught my attention that stopped me in my tracks altogether…

Correction: June 18, 2008
An article on Saturday about efforts to cut down on information overload in the workplace, using data from the research firm Basex, gave an incorrect estimate in some editions for the annual cost of unnecessary interruptions at work. It is $650 billion — not million.