Productivity Tips and Free Time Management: How to Create a System That Works For You

[Read Time (Just Reading): 14 minutes]
[Read Time (Doing It): 2-6 hours]

(Recommended: Read then set aside half a day)

If there’s one complaint I hear more than any other it’s, “I never have enough time to do everything I want.” Now there are special circumstances for which this is true–taking 21 credits of college classes, interning, studying for the LSAT, and working 40+ hours per week all at the same time, for example–but 95% of  these complaints about not having enough time are actually just a result of a lack of organization. And that’s a good thing because it means you can easily fix it.

I tend to use my own situation for the example in these posts because I use myself as a guinea pig for hundreds of experiments every year to figure out what works and what actually changes behavior. I’m also what I can most accurately measure and it gives me a frame of reference from which to recommend certain strategies–I’m not just obsessed with talking about myself, though you could probably make that argument.

In any case, this subject will be separated into multiple posts because it’s such a huge topic. In this part I will be using my organizational system as an example for you of how to make your own.

My average week consists of:

• A 3.5-day weekend with lots of free time (However, this last term I unfortunately filled this time with work. More on this later.)
• 7-8 hours of sleep per night
• Extremely low stress levels
  
• 12 credit hours of intense 400 level college courses
• 15 hours of studying for school
• 20 hours of work
• 5-10 hours of work for The National Crittenton Foundation (private consulting)
• 10-20 hours devoted to my Conflict Resolution Center internship
• 10 hours spent exercising (spread of 6 days)
• 1-5 hour spent working on blog posts
• 2 hours spent researching productivity strategies/tools

Let me first say that not only is this schedule possible (it IS actually my schedule after all), but it allows for quite a bit of chill-out time and is very low-stress–eliminating stress is the topic of an upcoming post. If you’ve read any of my other articles I apologize for sounding like a broken record but putting together a schedule like this is a moderate amount of work initially but nowhere near the amount you think it will be. In the end it will end up being far less work than you’re putting in now because it will run itself.

A Few Things First

The concepts of motivation and drive in the sense of “being compelled to do something you want to do” are absolutely useless to me. As far as I’m concerned in this context, motivation and drive are ideas used by people whose lives are disorganized to try to explain how some people excel in achieving their goals while others try so hard but fail–I certainly fell into this category for a long time so don’t worry about it if you do for now.

I see motivation and drive as renewable but sparse resources to be used in occasional times of unusually intense life activity. What many people mistake for sustained motivation as I first defined it is actually a positive feedback loop of two things: (1) making decisions and (2) positive reinforcement based on the results of your decisions. It has nothing to do with an external or inherent drive to excel, and I’ll discuss that in a bit.

If you disagree, please do, but in my mind a lack of motivation is no excuse for not achieving your goals. Period. I’ve never been a motivated person (though it may seem that way) yet I’ve been forced to figure out how to be productive, and this is what I’ve found.

The following system, strategies, tools, and tips will help you learn how to organize your life in such a way that you will not be able to believe how unproductive you were before. So…

I. Where to Start…Where to Start…

If you were to make a To Do list right now, one thing you wouldn’t seriously write, at least I hope, is “organize entire life.” You’d probably laugh if you saw that written somewhere. That’s because it’s blatantly not actionable: it’s not useful in terms of specifying an immediate next-step action on your part–in other words, it’s not helpful “in the moment.”

Reaching goals is all about actionability: it’s all about what the next real step is that you can actually take toward your goal. This sounds obvious but lets look at a less absurd example. Lets take “I want to start living a healthy and balanced lifestyle.” An admirable goal to be sure, but also an empty, non-actionable one. An actionable form of this would be “make a list of healthy, tasty, fast meals that I enjoy to incorporate as a centerpiece to my diet.” See the difference?

Life is too big to take in one bit so you gotta break it up.

Categories (Action 1)

Step 1: In an empty notebook or one you can use for this project, write down all of the “categories” that you can divide your life into: school, fitness, love life, financial, professional, etc… and rank this list, numbered by order of importance with the number 1 being the category of your life that you most want to master.

Important distinction: “Number 1″ on your list isn’t necessarily the thing you value most in life, it’s the thing you most want to master. It’s quite possible that you’re very happy with the area of your life that you most value and don’t need to work on it as much. This numbering system is for what you feel the most desire to change and master.

Step 2: For each of your top 3 categories, what you want this part of your life to ideally look like. Write stream-of-consciousness until you have nothing left to write. Read what you wrote–you’ll probably be surprised.

Step 3: For your top category (and the others if you’re up to it), write answers to the following questions in extreme, gruesome detail until you can’t think of even one more thing:

What are the worst things that could happen to me if I don’t master this part of my life?

What are all the possible ways your life could be changed for the better if you do?

Step 4: Read over your answers after you write them.

This is my first category list. You can see where I started my first stream-of-conscious "what I want" on the second half of the page. (Click image for large version)

Before we start setting goals, lets talk about the differences in habits between people who take action/achieve their goals and those who don’t.

II. How to Make Yourself Take Action

When you set a goal, immediately take one step towards achieving it. It doesn’t matter how big or small the step is, only that you take the step. If you’re going to set a goal, don’t do it while you’re sky diving unless your goal is “return to Earth in one piece.”

The number one biggest difference between the habits of people who achieve enormously and those who don’t is that those who achieve always have a plan for what their “next action” step is. Even if you don’t know if it’s the right thing to do or not: that you do it is far more important than what you do. Obviously use your best judgment in deciding what a goal’s “next action” is but if you mess up, big deal, you learned–try something else.

Decision

Decision is the driving force of achievement, motivation is not. The way to change bad habits isn’t to try to motivate yourself to change them–if you could do that, you wouldn’t have any bad habits. The way to change bad habits is to make a decision and force your body to obey your decision whether it wants to or not.

A great way to condition yourself to start thinking this way is starting with the most mundane tasks and working your way up. Here’s a challenge that will get you started:

Activity: I’m sure we’ve all had the following experience: you realize just as you leave a room that you forgot to turn off the light, and deciding not to take that one step back to turn it off. Most of us, at one time or another, have probably cut a slice of bread or cheese on the kitchen counter, only to realize a second after sitting down on the couch that you left a mess on the counter, and let the mess sit for a while because you didn’t want to get back up. That little mental tug that tells you “you should probably do this” is going to be our focus here.

For one week, as an experiment, every time you feel that little tug to do something mundane you know you should have done but doesn’t have to get done this second, do it immediately without giving it a second of thought. If it’s cleaning up crumbs, as soon as you feel that tug, stand up and you’re body will do the rest. It sounds stupid and trivial but you’ll be surprised at the effects. This exercise is about realizing your decisions shape your action, not vague notion of “motivation.”

At the bottom of this article I’ve posted a ~20 minute video in which Tony Robbins discusses, though not in the same terms, what “motivation” really is. I’d highly recommend watching it after you finish reading this.

Don’t Beat Yourself Up

If you decide to try out some of these strategies and you mess up or realize you forgot to do something (and I promise it’ll happen), don’t give up. When I first started all this I was doing 80% of it wrong and though I’d never be able to improve my life this way. But 20% right is better than none and it’ll get you started.

They key is to remember two main things.

First, that the very best learning we do–the learning that actually sticks with us–is when we learn from our mistakes.

Second, that it’s much less painful to get on a bike and start riding than it is to fall off. The beauty in all of this is that if you mess up, it’s so incredibly easy to get back on track. I do it all the time and if you talk to the most productive people in the world, they’ll tell you that they do the same thing. It’s not about being perfect, it’s about being persistent.

When you mess mess up, don’t beat yourself up, act grateful that you recognized the mistake–even if you’re really disappointed with yourself–and you’re habits will change. If you punish yourself for noticing that you messed up, you’ll stop noticing and the bad habit will stick around.

III. Defining Broad Goals

So you have your categories ranked and answers to the questions written out–now what? Now it’s time to start the stuff that’s going to make all the difference. See the examples I provide of my own for clarification (click the picture for a large version).

It’s important to see your broad goals from different angles:

Categorical Goals (Action 2)

On three new sheets of paper…

Step 1: Divide your top 3 categories into sub-categories

Step 2: Write a maximum of 2 long term goals under each sub-category

These are two of the three of my categorical lists. My three main categories are Personal, Education, and Professional and you can see how they're subdivided here. (Click image for large version)

Tape these lists up on the wall you face when you sit at your desk or somewhere else you’ll see them often. These long-term goals will help you keep perspective and will change every now and then, so be sure to update them.

Now that you have your long term goals laid out, it’s time to start working towards them.

Long Term Goals (Action 3)

Step 1: Write “Long Term Goals” at the top of a clean piece of paper and divide the page equally into sections with the headings: 1-2 years, 3-5 years, and overall.

Step 2: Under each section, write the goals of your top 3 categories.

This is my current long term goals list. (Click image for large version)

IV. Time to Make it Actionable

This is where the results start flowing in.

Next Steps (Action 4)

Step 1: In your notebook, write one heading for each for your top three categories.

Step 2: For each of these categories, make a list of up to but no more than five “next action” steps you can take within the next week towards certain goals in this category. Put check boxes next to each item–it helps you keep track and having a page full of checked boxes is a great feeling.

Here are two of my lists from about a month ago. The circled "B" indicates something I needed to buy (Click image for large version)

As you can see, every single one of these is something actionable: something I can actually do, not an abstract “I want this” kind of statement.

I said earlier that the number one biggest difference between the habits of people who achieve enormously and those who don’t is that those who achieve always have a plan for what their “next action” step is, and section you’re reading now is specifically what I’m talking about.

Lots of people say “I want to get in better shape” or “I need to get my life together” and have the genuine desire but fail because they aren’t focused on what the next action toward their goal is. I can’t stress this enough. It’s a just a tiny idea now, but this one thing can literally make the difference between being a millionaire and being homeless 10 years down the line. If you take one thing from this article, that’s what it should be.

Step 3: Each time your check boxes are full, make a new list but save the old one to look back on. This is where it becomes useful to have a notebook dedicated to this project.

Here’s what I’ve found is the easiest way to manage this:

Make the lists I just mentioned in step 2, chose only three of the items on the list that you can’t do right then, and add them to a new list titled “Priority List.” It’s important to attach an exact date and/or time to an item on your Priority List and you’ll find that if you give yourself a short deadline, you can get an unbelievable amount of stuff done, even in just one week.

Each time you complete your Priority Lists, keep making new ones until your category lists (from step 2) are all completed. Then make new category lists.

Here are two of my priority lists from a while ago. You'll notice the second one doesn't have due dates and that's because I sat down after meeting with a career counselor with about a 2 hour block and just hammered them out immediately. (Click image for large version)

Step 4: Do something right now. Probably the thing that’s helped me most throughout all of this is to follow this rule: never leave the site of setting a goal without doing something towards its achievement. Again, it doesn’t matter how big or small the step is, as long as you take it.

Self-made billionaire William Clement Stone said, “So many fail because they don`t get started – they don’t go. They don’t overcome inertia. They don’t begin.” This step guarantees that you don’t fall into that trap. You just gotta keep going and get back on if you fall off–and getting back on is the easy part.

V. Test and Experiment

Now that you have a foundation to work with, start using it and find what works for you and what doesn’t. If something doesn’t work don’t just dismiss it. Figure out why it doesn’t work, jot down an idea for a solution, and test the solution. Rinse and repeat. That’s how you get things done and done well.

The next post in this series will be a collection of individual, specific strategies, systems, and tips that make this process even easier. After you put in the initial work and optimize it a bit, it runs itself and you just have to do a minimal amount of maintenance.

Here’s that video I mentioned before. I find it to be extremely relevant and useful.

Good luck and let me know where your sticking points are–I’ll see what I can do to help!

[Digg=http://digg.com/educational/Free_Productivity_Tips_and_Time_Management]

[Note: I'm aware that some people may have an aversion to Tony Robbins for one reason or another, but as with anyone, test their advice and if it doesn't work for you, don't use it. It's that simple.]

Advertisement