When It Doesn't Work...

In the past four weeks I was testing all the tools mentioned in the previous posts. First week started off very positively: I found a lot of energy to stick to my four point agenda and I managed to get back the excitement connected with my work. Because of my schedule--working as a teacher--I usually start very early and finish pretty late. That's why it's imperative that I prepare all materials for my coming week in advance (preferably on Saturday or Sunday). So, the first week was very productive: by taking care of myself and not wasting time and energy on "being tired", I managed to get really good results.

The following two weeks, however, were much worse. My schedule included a lot of traveling as I had to deliver three, full day training sessions for corporate clients in a different city. This was truly exhausting...

That's why in the past three weeks I went back to my old ways of stress-inducing, frantic, last-minute preparation and the "putting-out-fires" system of time management.

It turns out that my productivity experiment has, so far, been a failure. I clocked in one productive week versus three unproductive ones.

One thing that I managed to succeed in, though, was not feeling bad about my lack of productivity and not initiating the vicious circle of self-hate. Instead, I decided to take the analytical approach. Why was I unsuccessful? What can I do to fix that?

The reason that I failed was simply too many tasks...

I came to realize that time management is first and foremost energy management. A good friend of mine once said: "You can't manage time; it's impossible. What you can manage is yourself in relationship with that time".

That's why your time management has to start with energy management. And if it's impossible, one thing you can do is not to kill yourself over it. In the meantime, try to devote the last drops of your energy to taking care of yourself and doing things that really make you feel good (productive things).

An obvious fix would be planning in advance and finding motivation to do it systematically.

The coming two months promise to be equally grueling. I'll be reporting on what tricks worked to get me through them.

Don't waste energy on being tired

You come back home from work. You're tired. You probably want to relax a little bit: after all, you deserve it! You work really hard and there's noting wrong with a little downtime.

True. 

But it seems to me like we, very frequently, take comfort not in relaxing, but actually in being tired. This is especially conspicuous with males and the socially perpetrated image of a man sitting in an armchair after work, reading a newspaper... If we think about that, this image is so ubiquitous that we are almost certainly doomed to replicate it. If you think about Homer Simpson or Petite Nicolas' Dad, to 'be tired' was an undispesable characteristic of being a man.

What this means these days is that you come back home and waste time online. As a result, you fall into a vicious cycle of depressive states: you're frustrated because you waste time, and the more frustrated with yourself you become, the more time you waste. 

The solution is not simple and it includes breaking old habits and building new ones. Start by not eating in front of a TV, computer, tablet etc. The destructive process I frequently follow is: 

1. I'll go on Youtube while I eat

2. I finished eating, I'll watch a couple of more videos (after all, I'm tired: I deserve a break)

Reading books is better but not perfect. Try and focus on the eating or on a conversation with someone you live with.

Then, ask yourself: 'am I tired?' If you are, go to sleep. If you're not, do something productive. It will make you feel good.

It's not easy, but it's possible.

Click with What You Do

It's is obviously an abused cliche, but to be productive you have like things you want to be productive at. If you simply hate your job, you will not be productive at it.

This goes without saying and it's been said time and time again by almost every imaginable motivational speaker; from John Scherer to Steve Jobs.

My problem has always been that only the children of rich parents who can afford to try to be artists can really take advantage of the insight this "truth" grants. Everyone else might have a job that they like, but really there are things they like a bit more than that job.

If you want to be productive, you have to manufacture that "click". For me, the fundamental problem with lack of productivity has always been what I like to call the "depressive cycle". I don't feel like doing something which makes me feel bad about not being productive. The worse I feel, the more sorry I feel for myself, the less likely I am to get it done... And if I don't get it done... You get the point.

So, my trick is to embrace the feeling of satisfaction I experience when I get something done. And use it as a motivation to get something done. Essentially, the more productive you get, the more productive you become. What might work in this situation is prioritizing your tasks in the order that gets you going. I'm still experimenting with that. If it gets me somewhere, I'll report that here.

Time Management

For years I've been trying to become more productive and get much more done in a day. I attended multiple training, tried different tools but realized that it takes much more than tips & tricks to do that. Here's a three-point agenda that finally seems to be working:

1. Don't waste energy on being tired
2. Take care of yourself
3. Avoid toxic behaviors

In the coming days I'll try to break down each point and explain how to utilize this strategy to become more productive every day.

W.