People who are time poor are less happy, less productive and more stressed out. They exercise less, eat fattier food and have a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease. Time poverty forces us to compromise. Time poverty doesn’t arise from a mismatch between the hours we have and the hours we need; it results from how we think about and value those hours.

There is an 8 out of 10 chance that you are one of the poorest people in the world: time-poor.

Time confetti: the little bits of seconds and minutes lost to unproductive multitasking. Each bit alone is not very bad, but all add up to something more pernicious.Time confetti fragments an hour of leisure to smaller chunks (5-6 minutes long). It takes time to cognitively recover from shifting our minds from the present to a stress-inducing activity. Time confetti makes us feel even more time impoverished than we actually are.

Time trap #1: Technology interruptions break our hours into confetti 

Money protects against sadness but doesn’t buy joy. Once we make enough money to pay our bills, save for the future and have some fun, making more does little for our happiness.A culture obsessed with making more money believes, wrongly, that the way to become more time affluent is to become financially wealthier. Focusing on chasing wealth leads only to an increased focus on chasing wealth.

Time trap #2: We focus too much on work and money

Because of a cultural obsession with money, many people protect their money in ways that are counterproductive to time affluence. We reflexively go for the lowest cost when we shouldn’t.Even if we’re making a bad trade-off between time and money — such as driving two miles out of our way to save 10 cents per gallon on gas — it doesn’t feel like a bad choice. That’s because we don’t really know the worth of the time it took.

Time trap #3: We undervalue our time

Our identities are tied to work.Financial insecurity drives workism. Most of us cope by working more and trying to make more money. And we feel guilty about spending money on things that make us happy, such as dining out or vacations.The social appearance of being busy makes us feel good about ourselves. In contrast, focusing our attention on something other than work can threaten our livelihood and status.

Time trap #4: We regard busyness as a status symbol

Being constantly connected to our devices prevents the brain from recovering, keeps our stress levels elevated and takes us out of the present.Idleness has been shown to be a valuable form of leisure and can increase time affluence. The physical and mental benefits of disengaging the brain are far more valuable than the stress created by keeping the mind engaged at all times.

Time trap #5: We have an aversion to idleness

The best predictor of how busy we are going to be next week is how busy we are right now.

Time trap #6: We think we have more time tomorrow than we actually do 

productivity

Productivity

remotework

Remote Work

habits

Habits

problemsolving

Problem Solving

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Time Management

Which of these 6 time traps is eating up all your time?

Most goals are out of our control. Our focus should be on systems rather than goals. In a system (repeatable process), your focus is on all the parts that you do control.
Reward effort instead of achievement: small gains compound over time.

#1 Focus on Systems Instead of Goals

When you focus on developing systems and work every day, your work compounds over time, developing exponential growth.
The more advantages you create, the more your next advantages pay off. A 1% gain every day compounds to almost 38x increase over a year.

#2 Leverage the Compound Effect

Focus on the output, rather than the input.
If you want to achieve something, you need to commit to a certain output, like publishing a post on your blog weekly. At the end of the day, a system is a way to control how to achieve an output.

#3 Track and Measure Output, Not Input

“80% of the output or results will come from 20% of the input or action.”
Use the 80/20 rule to constantly question yourself if your focus, time, or money is on the things that generate the majority of the results:
<ul>
<li>Are you focusing on the tasks that bring the most output?</li>
<li>Do you spend time on all your clients equally or are you reserving most of it for the best clients that bring you the majority of revenue?</li>
<li>Are most of your distractions coming from a couple of sources? Perhaps your phone or social media?</li>
</ul>
Once you figure out what’s exactly working, double down.

#4 Live by the 80/20 Rule

Our working memory, alertness, and concentration gradually improve a couple of hours after waking up, peaking at about mid-morning.
Take advantage of this state by scheduling your most important work for this period. Focus on performing Deep Work, meaning you get to work free of distraction for a long period of time.

#5 Reserve Mornings for Deep Work

Distractions can be divided into three major groups: physical (i.e. possessions), intangible (i.e. technology), and people.
Anything that interrupts your work when you are in Deep Work state and/or doesn’t contribute to the life you want to build classifies as a distraction. Minimize distractions in your daily life in order to make progress in meaningful work.
Be aware of your distractions. Once you have nailed that down, move on to removing them. Quit these bad habits by adding friction.

#6 Remove Distractions

Use technology to automate repetitive tasks. Start by listing down all the tasks that you have to do recurrently every week. Then find ways to automate them, either by using apps or building your own system. More automation means more time to focus on creative and productive work.

#7 Automate Repetitive Tasks

Question everything: do I think this way because it’s my opinion/other people say so/it’s how the world works or because I’ve tested it?
Test, test, test, and find what works specifically for you. Growth comes from hard work and a little luck. Hyper-growth comes from testing.

#8 Be Data-Driven

By focusing on what you do best and delegating the rest, you optimize your productivity.
To delegate efficiently, make sure you choose the right person for the job. Be very specific about the finished product (the output) and provide clear step-by-step instructions on how to complete the task.
Invest in trading your money for time when the time it takes you to complete a task is more expensive than paying someone.

#9 Delegate the Non-Essential

When you’re behind, go home early. Take some time to rest and come back energized the next day. Sometimes our brain solves the problems for us on its own. Embrace the struggle.

#10 The Struggle Is the Process

Throughout the years, I've learned a lot of lessons about productivity and working smarter. These are my 10 commandments on how to be productive and work smarter, instead of harder. They serve as a constant reminder when I am feeling unproductive or things are just not working out the way they should.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

How to Be Productive: 10 Ways to Actually Work Smarter

Working fringe hours consistently for all aspects of a task also reinforces the mindset that there’s one ‘slot’ for productivity, without the possibility of healthy overlaps with other responsibilities during the day. By determining which bits of a task require the most productive hours, we can allocate them to times when we're most likely to remain uninterrupted, giving us a greater chance of success.

Separate tasks

Identify the most important task the night before. As you transition from non-work responsibilities the next morning, remind yourself of what you’ll be working on when you sit down.If stray worries or thoughts persist, do a quick ‘brain-dump’ (scribbling in a notebook or sending an email to yourself about everything on your mind).While you’re focusing on deep work, minimise the number of things in your mind. Don’t connect to everything else.

Warming up 

Accept that interruptions will happen and thereby reduce their capacity to derail us. When we sit down to work, we can keep a sheet of paper on our desk, precisely with potential interruptions in mind, to quickly take stock of where we were in the task, and how we hope to resume, before addressing the interruption.

Plan for interruptions 

Shift our expectations of what our working day might look like. Realise that productivity and creativity aren’t one-size-fits-all processes. Because whether we putter and splutter towards success or flow with ephemeral fluidity, we can all achieve our own version of the state of optimal performance, even while we’re busy.

Strange times 

I'm really busy these days. These could be a great help.

For busy people, finding time for uninterrupted work may feel utterly unrealistic. But there are methods we can use to optimise what limited ‘deep work’ time we have.

Which of these 6 time traps is eating up all your time?

How to Be Productive: 10 Ways to Actually Work Smarter

How the busiest people get 'deep work' done

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