Running out of time! (Part 1.)
You are wasting your time, and you should stop it!
Topics:
Principles of a good planning system
How to set clear and relevant goals: Create a vision based on your deepest desires, break it down into manageable chunks and create a related set of goals
How to take aligned actions towards achieving our goals : building habits, breaking bad habits, making small changes lead to big improvements
What are planning creeps : what may stand between you and your goals? How to recognize them? How to be prepared for them? How to handle them? Afternoon slump, not in the mood trap, Unpredictable obstacles
Handful tools for when nothing goes right for your plan
Key takeaways
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Principles of a good planning system
It’s Time based: Due to the law of Parkinson a task will take as long as you dedicate time to it, so based on your previous experience and personal performance, evaluate the time you need to complete a task. Then pick the right time of the day to complete that, e.g: if you’re an early bird mornings are the best time for creative work and studying, afternoons for a good cardio workout, and evenings for reflection and winding down.
How to find out my “best time” for different tasks?! There are some things to consider when choosing your best time, based on my personal experience and recent science:
1. Find your sleep chronotype: as the sleep cycle impacts your mood, memory, and overall function so considering your sleep patterns and its effects on your functionality and productivity is a vital step towards finding your best time for each task
2. Track your habits and reflect on your mood for a month and use the information to improve your planning and personalise your schedule
3. Use your previous experience on the similar tasks
But what if you are doing something for the first time ever? In this case you can use others experiences and advices on the internet and in different communities, and remind yourself of a simple rule: it almost always takes 1.5 folds more time to complete a task than you have expected, e.g: if you think a task will take 2 hours, it’s more likely that you will finish that task in 3 hours. So consider this when you’re trying to do something new, or work on a project.
It is personalized: each individual is unique, so you need to plan a schedule that meets your needs and based on your strengths and, most importantly, moving you forward to accomplish your goals. By that being said, the vitality of self awareness is more obvious. Try to learn more about yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, your deepest desires and longing. We will talk about this more in another letter.
It’s realistic: don’t be dramatic about your schedule, be realistic. Such is life, people get on your nerves,traffic never ends, and you get stood up. In other words, you don’t have control over anything that’s happening around you, but you can control your actions.
1. Detect most important obstacles that might arise during the day and build a strategy to handle them.
2. Dedicate realistic resources, including time and energy on each of your tasks.
How to set clear and relevant goals: Create a vision based on your deepest desires, break it down into manageable chunks and create a related set of goals
The key to get things done, is that thing to be clearly defined, what, where, when and how. But instead of setting separated goals here and there, try to set aligned goals towards your deepest desire, your soul purpose or so called Ikigai. You can’t make anything meaningful if you’re not pointing at a specific target.
So to build and live a meaningful life you need to define your vision very clearly. But it’s useful to first understand what you don’t want, so writing an anti-vision first can get you motivated to stick with your vision.
But you can’t write down your vision if you don’t have a good understanding of who you are.
So the following are the steps you should take to set clear and aligned goals for your life:
Track your feelings when doing different things throughout a week. See if doing that bores you or makes you feel happy and valuable? Which task makes you forget about time, place and people? What makes you really angry? Because this might be the problem that you deeply care about and can tell a lot about you and your Ikigai. What do you see in other people that you wish you had?
Take time to review your childhood: What activities did you love the most? What were you curious about? What was the thing that you always wanted to try, learn or do? What places brought you joy, calmness and love? Where did you feel safe or vulnerable? What were you scared of? Answer these questions and if you can, write a letter to your little buddy living inside of you, make them feel safe and supported.
Write down your skills and interests based on real experience: What do you love to do? What are you passionate about? What are you really good at? Remember to NOT compare yourself to others in this step. And forget about others’ expectations of you.
Here is a method from Shade Zahrai that can help you de decide on which activity you should focus:
Gather all the information from steps above and bring your anti-vision and vision together to write down a specific Ikigai. Remember that you don’t need to know all the details about what you want to do or who you really are at this step, self-knowledge is a lifelong journey after all. All you need to know is that this thing you wanna do and this self you’re counting on is you, not what others expect you to do or be.
Make steps 1-4 a part of your lifestyle, your vision may evolve during time and your characteristics might change, and that’s totally okay, we are humans! Just remember to never give up on you and your unique journey.
Now that you somewhat know what you want to do, it’s time to break it down into manageable chunks, so how do you do that?
Divide your vision into three or more sections, for example if your vision is to help people learn how to play piano to make their lives more enjoyable and productive, then your division might include: Practice piano, Build a tutorial plan, Connect with your audience. Each of these sections contain various tasks and subsections, e.g. connecting with your audience might include: grow on social media, share your story, learn monetizing your skill, learn soft skills, customer service and support, etc. And please keep in mind that you might not know everything about what you need to do or learn, but don’t worry it will all work out as long as you take one step at a time.
Once you have written down different sections and subsections of your vision, now it’s time to prioritise . But how to? Find out which parts are the basic, which skills are the most crucial, and what tasks are the big stones. For example, in our previous example the basic part is to connect with your audience, see if anyone is willing to learn from you, by sharing your work and story. After you find out there are people who are interested, then you can build a tutorial course. But what about the first section? Well that’s the fundamental part of your vision, so you should have a daily routine to practise and grow. The crucial skills might be: Your skill as a pianist and musician, content creation and copywriting, and communication skills.
Just like that, apply this practice to your own craft. Then write down your goals, for 5 years, 1 year, 6 months, 3 months, 1 month, week and daily tasks.
Your goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Defining these factors in relation to your goal helps ensure that your objectives are fulfilled within a reasonable time period.
Correct: make a 30 second video of myself playing a viral piano piece name and publish it on date on my social media name account.