The Golden Rules for Mastering Your Time
Towards the end of 2020, Out of Hours ran several event to help people run their side projects run more happily and productively. From beating your inner critic, to finding paid clients, to better managing your time. In this session on time, we were lucky enough to host Dr. Brad Aeon (time expert and PhD scholar) and Dr. Laura Giurge (London Business School postdoctoral research fellow). We talked about what time management is and what actually works. Huge thank you to Dr Laura Giurge for providing the research links for this article!
The endless cycle of busyness
However much we time hack, journal and drink coffee - why is it that we always feel so busy all the time? We asked Laura Giurge this question at the beginning of the event and she suggested it was down to three drivers. Firstly, technological advances. Instead of bringing us more leisure time as we might have hoped, new technology has actually given us the opportunity to be more productive in the day - and we feel the pressure to do more.
Not just that, but we have societal norms and values that place busyness as a status symbol. The idea of the ‘ideal worker norm’ has been perpetuated: a construct which demands work to be above pretty much everything: our own selves and our families. We might feel busy, Laura suggested, down to our own biases too: we tend to think we will have more time in the future than we have today -what researchers call ‘future time slack’. The reality, unfortunately, is that we are just as likely to be busy today as we are in a week - and the tasks build up.
So why are we so busy? Although we have become financially richer, Brad suggested, our actual available time has remained the same. We find ourselves in an ironic cycle: we want to make our lives more productive, so we look to buy more things that can help us... but where do we get the money to buy these new gadgets? Well, work of course. So to be more productive we need to earn more money… and so begins the endless cycle.
If you’re sick of feeling so busy (with the twin sin of feeling unproductive), our golden rules below might help. We’ve jotted down some of the key insights from our event, so you can better understand your brain (and biases) and find time and calm for your side project.
procrastination is an emotional issue
Procrastination is the thing we hear from many people that they struggle with most. If that includes you, try to remember procrastination isn’t actually laziness - instead, procrastination is usually an emotional issue. As Brad said, “we procrastinate because we’re scared”. The key to overcoming it is chunking our work into smaller steps to avoid the fear of failure and overwhelm.
Perfectionism can cause procrastination
One of the other things that causes procrastination is perfectionism. Perfectionism can come from our social circumstances: parents and teachers can set high standards, and we want to live up to them. This can be crippling. Perfectionism is not just one personality style. There are actually three types of perfectionism. Brad reminded us that one of these was ‘socially prescribed perfectionism’ - often the most pernicious. We are perfectionists because we want to please other people. We should ask ourselves: do others care as much as we do?
THE POWER OF reverse scheduling
The task that works exceedingly well for time management? Stop thinking about the tasks you need to do, and instead think about the time you have to dedicate to them.
Reverse scheduling is when we think first of how many hours we are willing to work for a day, or a week. And then when we have those boundaries set, making sure we are extremely strict with ourselves to not expand those boundaries. (Interestingly, this is one of the reasons working parents are so productive, at least outside of the pandemic, as these forced boundaries stop work expanding endlessly).
creative work needs routines too
We often think of creative people as wild and disordered people - whose creativity depends on this lack of structure. This actually is a myth, says Brad, and the modus operandi of those who are extremely creative is often to follow rigid routines. After all, even Leonardo Da Vinci had a to-do list. Recently, Lucas & Nordgren found that creativity actually increases with effort - it doesn’t disappear.
don’t snub the pomodoro method
According to research, the pomodoro method works well because of urgency: we see a need to finish the task and time doesn’t stretch out infinitely. 52 minutes is the best time to work. (The Out of Hours Sprint sessions are all 50 minutes long for optimal focus!)
Time chunking can work well
Often, we tend to underestimate how long tasks will take us. It is, according to Brad, implementation intention that helps us: e.g. dedicating time for emails or deep work - rather than chunking specific tasks in our calendar.
Try writing on an index card
Laura suggests that writing down our to-do lists on an index card is a really clear way to check whether our to-do list is reasonable: if you find yourself writing in the margins, or flipping the card over to write more it might be a sign you’re over-committing.
For the hyper ambitious, try self quantification
Self quantification is the process of tracking or mapping the tasks you do. It helps by giving you a goal, and research shows it also pushes you to get more stuff done. Be warned though: it can reveal uncomfortable truths about your behaviour and how productive you really are!
Make time for pro-time
Pro-time is ‘proactive time’, a scientifically-proven concept from Laura Giurge. It means being proactive or intentional for a period of time: where you turn off any distractions and any interruptions and you use this time for focused deep work. The reason pro-time works is because it’s like a blank canvas - you decide what you want to paint on it, and it allows you to recraft and take control over how you work. In short, it helps you to prioritize your own work instead of constantly thinking about other things. This is something that we use at Out of Hours - putting aside an hour on Sunday morning to get work done can help you make real progress and decrease stress, and we use this in the Sprint.
ABOVE ALL, Make sure you switch off
Laura Giurge advised us: “One of the best ways to detach from work is that you make a list of what you haven't finished and what you plan to do tomorrow. This tricks your brain into thinking I’m done for today and I’ll do it tomorrow.” Take a lesson from deep work expert Cal Newport, who talks about his shut down routine, saying that he literally says out loud “shut down complete” to remind himself that work time is over. Indeed, working on holiday can actually erode our intrinsic motivation for our job. Allow yourself to rest!
In the event, we also answered questions on how to get the motivation to start a side hustle, how to prioritize tasks properly, what to do when you find yourself procrastinating, and the surprising reason why you should aim for 70% instead of for 100%. Join more of our events here.
To join our next Sprint, and meet a cohort and carve out time to make some progress, sign up here.
To follow Laura on Twitter here, or contact her on her website here.
Follow Brad on Twitter here or contact him on his website here