Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Archive for the category “Psychology”

15 Sep 2008

Time Management Progress in Action

I was prompted by a comment on one of my posts from June (J7T was just 19 days old) about how hard time management was. It made me stand back and evaluate how far I’ve come in just over three months (and particularly after a 7/10 level day in terms of stress and task bittiness as I travelled between appointments):

  1. I feel more relaxed control (and a clearly ring-fenced idea of where there is a diminishing pile of ‘stuff’ to clear through the GTD system
  2. I am significantly better at locking down my focus to a task in hand. To switch and give it my full thinking attention. Ironically, writing this blog (with the aim of posting at least 5/7 days a week) has improved this ability
  3. I have a more flexible approach to prioritisation based on trust of my systems and reaction to a gut response. This opposed to the constant prioritising and re-prioritising trap that it is sometimes easy to get into
  4. My sense of ‘someday/maybe’ or just ‘ruthless task deletion’ has improved. I feel like I know myself better and cull those things that will just sit for years on front-of-mind task lists and create noise.
  5. I (as posted on recently) am a lot better at just doing the action. Just getting on and starting without messing around.
And the main area for improvement? 
As WorkLoadMaster states in his comment to my post on the ‘Stress of Time Management’ above: it’s all about keeping on top of the system. I feel like my report card would say:
‘Si has shown much improvement over the term. With continuing effort and focus he should continue to improve……’

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Posted in Action Orientation, Change, Control, Deliberate Practice, Focus, Habits and Routines, Learning, Psychology, Time Management and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment
13 Sep 2008
1 Comment

The Referred Pain of Procrastination

Medicine 2 by Sergio Roberto

Medicine 2 by Sergio Roberto

My watching of a favourite American TV show about a cantankerous Dr House, and a 121 chat with a colleague at Madgex started me thinking about why we sometimes find it hard to change something that it appears we could consciously address.

It often appears to me that one of the frustrations with change is that we think we know so clearly what we have to do to make the change happen. Our conscious intellect has applied weighting (prioritisation) and a set of justifications to the most likely drivers for change. We think that we can start to get up early in the morning and get loads of work done/ start that book/ do that reading if only we could respond to the alarm clock. We obviously think/ justify that we need more sleep to do this, so we go to bed earlier. But this doesn’t seem to work, so we re-tag ourselves as ‘being one of those people that…..’ and continue not to get up early. Read more…

Posted in Action Orientation, Change, Conscious and Unconscious, Game Playing, Psychology and tagged , , , ,
23 Aug 2008

How to Improve Time Management: The Blockers to Focus

Focus by CraigPJ

Focus by CraigPJ

Contrary to popular opinion about multi-tasking being a higher form of skill than the individual who just does one thing at a time, the key to Productivity+Efficiency=Time Management is focus.

Now this is no great revelation: most good time management/ productivity books will highlight focus as being the ‘magic’ ingredient or key to success.

However, until recently I have felt similar sentiments on this to that portrayed in my comment in my post on Mindfulness: Learning in the Task:  ‘I have always challenged that multi-tasking, or at the very least thinking about something else whilst doing the things you can mundanely/ unconsciously do is a higher form of skill. That just focusing utterly and mindfully on one thing is time wasting’

I think that a number of things have shifted in my views. The value of focus is starting to glimmer through the clearing mists of ‘to-do’s’ as my own personal productivity improves. I have identified the following as a ‘starter for ten’ on things that facilitate or block your ability to focus: Read more…

Posted in Action Orientation, Control, Focus, Habits and Routines, Learning, Psychology, Stress, Time Management and tagged , , , | Leave a comment

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