How I Find Time For Everything Important
Three and a half years ago my perception of time changed due to two factors: meeting my wife whom I love spending time with and finding a job I enjoy doing so much I would do it for free. This created a level of pressure on the 24 hours available every day.
When you do not have time to do everything you want, decisions must be made. The simplest and the worst decision is to start cutting corners. Sleep less, do things half-assed, take less care of yourself. Too many of us go this path. Don’t.
The second approach is time management. Time management is an attempt to do more stuff with the same amount of time. It is about efficiency. There are thousands of books on the topic you can go read. I won’t waste your time on that.
The most complex and effective path is focusing on important things. If you believe that you spend time on the most important thing, you will be happy even without accomplishing everything you planned. A nice side-effect of that is that you end up very productive long-term.
Over the last couple of years, I learned a few principles and tools that help me focus on important things, leading to happiness and productivity.
They are both obvious and counter-intuitive. First, a simple idea.
You Always Do The Most Important Thing
Why do you do what you do? Because you decided that it is the most important thing. There is no other reason for you to do something. Unless you are like this guy:
If you did not make a conscious decision, then your subconscious made it.
If you are a student playing League of Legends the night before an exam, it means your brain figured out that getting a dose of dopamine is more important than studying.
To understand why it happens, we need the next idea.
You Are Not a Single Mind
Inside our brains, multiple factions of neurons fight for control.
Some write about a Lizard Brain. Tim Urban talks about an Instant Gratification Monkey. When the part of the brain that makes decisions is different from the part that evaluates the decisions, they disagree, and you feel unhappy.
First step is to accept the situation. Next step is to build systems to align parts of your brain.
Aligning Your Minds
There are hundreds of books on the topic. You will never fully achieve the alignment, but you can make some progress. I guarantee that you will become happier and more productive along the path.
Here are few tools that worked for me.
The One Thing
To be happy with what you do, you need to really believe that you do the right thing. Fortunately, you can do only one thing at a time, even if you incorrectly believe in multitasking.
This means you need to figure out just one thing to do at any given moment. I recommend this book: The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results. It has a framework for figuring out just that: what is your One Thing.
You should do the most important task the first thing every day while you still have a fresh mind, high willpower, and more time in reserve. You will feel great till the rest of the day no matter what else happens or does not happen. Sometimes it can be two or three things, but not many.
Journal
Writing a journal helps you realize how bad we are at remembering what happened just a few days ago. Makes you wonder how much truth is in history books, right?
Having notes about every day helps with identifying behavior patterns and improving them.
I spend about 10 minutes every day to record my plans and reflections on the day. Then I spend 30–60 minutes every weekend to review my week and plan the next week. The journal is such a powerful tool that I plan to keep it till the rest of my life. Totally worth 10 minutes per day.
Hard Rules
Psychologists discovered that strict rules (e.g. “don’t eat sweets Sunday to Friday”) are easier to follow than vague rules (e.g. “eat less sweets”). Primitive parts of our brains are not very good at nuanced thinking. Your long-term-focused mind can develop rules that help you deal with the reactive and urge-focused mind.
For example, my journal showed that I consistently get caught up in work-related communications if I open my email in the morning. Now, I have a hard rule: do not open email or Slack until I completed with my morning routine. I run, meditate, and write journal before diving into the workday. Works way better than my previous attempts to “have a healthier lifestyle”.
Summary
You will not change the way you spend your time fast. But you can start by identifying the right approach for dealing with limited time. Remember:
- You already do what is the most important to you.
- If you are unhappy with how you spend time, it is because you allow wrong parts of your brain make decisions.
- You can change this by building systems that align “smart” part of your brain with the primitive parts.
Good luck!
