10 Basic principles of how to keep up with all your shit, and still sleep at night
After serving as a project manager in the Israeli Navy, studying Industrial design, working as a freelancer and as an employee in tech, and studying for my master’s degree in Philosophy — I created this friendly management guide to use for various work and life needs.
1/ The environment principle
In the office we work, in the kitchen we eat and in bed we sleep.
To maximize our productivity, we need to adapt the activities to the environment that suits them. For example, when we get back home after work it is difficult for us to do boring tasks such as paying bills, we just want to rest and get together with our family and friends. However, at the office we are used to working, and going home when we complete our tasks.
Therefore, to complete dreary tasks such as paying taxes ,getting a doctor’s appointment, etc, all of those must be done at work after working hours. This way we will stay in a productive environment, and our return back home will depend on completing these tasks. Completing tasks from the office will leave the home environment for enjoyment and recreation.
Bonus- we would look serious to our co-workers by staying later than usual!
2/ The points of light principle
We are only human, after all. Working in the office for many hours or working from home around the clock can be very difficult and often unnatural behavior for our body. The most commonly accepted break types are: coffee, lunch, phone call, cigarette, or scrolling through social Media.
Effective breaks give us strength and make us productive. 5 minutes of watching funny videos of our dog will give us much more energy than scrolling through Instagram where we read about celebrity news. Consume content that fills you up: funny videos, pictures of your dog, funny photos of you when you were 8 years old, etc.
Nutrition is a very individual thing, we have certain foods that tire us and foods that give us energy. Save the heavy meals for the evening, and focus on the light meals in the middle of the day.
In addition, dragging your workday to late hours will lower your productivity level. Split it, put in an hour of training and get back to writing your PHD work, trust me, it won’t disappear.
3/ Love your deadline principle
Deadline is a concept that quite rightly has a negative connotation, we are used to fearing it and hating it. Think about it, our lives are made possible thanks to a deadline that we are aware of — one day we will die. We don’t know exactly when, but our desire to experience is simply because we know that one day everything will stop.
And back to work — In order to keep high quality — we must start with the most important work and leave time for improvements, when we are not stressed at all. The distant date may be deceiving, in the meantime we will forget that the task even exists, and two weeks before the deadline we will do it fast and sloppy.
We should reverse the deadline -instead of counting back from the deadline, we should start on the day we received the assignment — what can we do today, tomorrow, this week that will bring us closer to finishing the required work.
Instead of deadline > birthline
4/ The slot principle
Normal people tend to put off boring tasks such as cleaning the house.
Defining a fixed slot at a fixed time — gives us stability and commitment to carry out a specific task.
For example — every Thursday at 7–8.5 pm I scheduled for myself to clean my apartment. I know how to plan my week accordingly, due to its repetition I feel obliged to carry it out. Another example, on a Friday every 8 weeks, you can schedule a closet arrangement and prepare bags for donation with the clothes you no longer wear.
You can look at it like the psychology principle where operant conditioning is carried out between 2 seemingly unrelated events- Thursday night is now associated for me with a clean house.
In order to keep up with all these slots — nothing’s easier than setting a repetitive event in your calendar!
5/ Prioritize tasks by attention principle
We have been accustomed to think that the urgency of tasks is of utmost importance, and we must abandon everything and do what׳s most urgent. When we approach the planning of today’s schedule- we must divide the day by productivity level:
9am-1pm are the productive hours for most people. During these hours, the tasks that require the most concentration, attention, and precision should be performed.
After lunch break we tend to be tired, slow, and less focused. Therefore, during 2–7pm it is better to perform the tasks that require less concentration, or alternatively to continue the tasks we started in the morning knowing that most of the work has already been done.
And what about other tasks? In order to run a washing machine and hang the clothes to dry, we don’t need any cognitive effort. That’s why such dreary tasks are best done at night, when we are tired and unmotivated.
Productive hours vary from person to person. There may be people who would prefer to wake up in the morning and go shopping or wash their car, while in the evening prepare a presentation for the Prime Minister.
6/ The Grouping principle
The grouping principle saves time and can be used in several ways.
For example: grouping several tasks that we can do only at the shopping center will amount to one trip instead of many, or grouping several questions and addressing your client once.
A grouping can also mean a number of phone calls one after another, a number of household chores to be done on a Saturday morning, or consecutive meetings with several friends who live in the same area, and so on.
7/ Small VS. big principle
When we approach planning our day and we are aware of a big task that we have to do, we tend to start with it because of its scope and the long time it will take us. Nevertheless, life always provides us with other small tasks to join the big task. In order to be brainly available for our serious task — we should quickly complete a group of small tasks that are definitely not important and urgent.
Executing a few small tasks together before a big one can help us get more effective performing the big task: we will be more focused, less stressed, and peaceful.
8/ The macro principle
A macro view of life events can significantly improve our time management. Our life consists of many unexpected events, some happy and some less. At the same time, there are some planned events that we are aware of, such as: moving apartments, a best friend’s wedding, submitting work for studies, and vacations. In order to maintain a productive schedule we must prepare according to these predictable events. For example, if we know about a family event that is happening this week, we would probably arrive at work the next day tired and unfocused — so we must plan the days before to be more productive, and make sure we execute our important tasks.
9/ The balance principle
There’s almost nothing more difficult than managing to balance our million tasks. Let’s take for example a freelancer that provides services for a number of clients at a given time. In such a case, prioritizing should be by which client brings the most volume of work, the highest payment and stability.
For example, a regular client that I know for sure that will come back with more work — needs to get much more attention than a small client providing one small task.
Giving everyone the feeling that they are the most important is difficult and sometimes impossible. In order to keep balance, create a chart dividing into percentages the volume of work that comes from each client and the estimated payment. The customer who provides the most work will usually be the one who pays the most money, so they should be placed at the top of the priority order.
This is also where the attention principle comes into play — it is possible, for example, that a task is less urgent than another in terms of schedule, but requires much more concentration and special attention, and will therefore be placed during our productive hours.
10/ The satisfaction principle
Maintaining a good and healthy work relationship is the key to enjoying our workplace, and securing our future in an organization. Meeting deadlines or finishing before the last minute, can change the way we are appreciated and the overall satisfaction from our work.
When we estimate how long it will take us to provide a specific work — we should take a few hours/ days more than we originally estimated, and ask for the “extended deadline” from our boss.
If we do our work professionally — we can finish before the time frame we defined and elegantly surprise our boss.
It takes years of experience to estimate precisely how long each project will take us, so beginners ought to take this extra time (well, don’t exaggerate) and thus always win the deadline.
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