Summary: 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management

In the con­tem­po­rary era, time rob­bers are every­where. Whether it’s your smart­phone inces­sant­ly noti­fy­ing you with the lat­est social media post, a cowork­er dis­turb­ing you dur­ing a cru­cial activ­i­ty, or the con­sis­tent flow of emails, your time is con­sis­tent­ly being filched from you, minute by minute, hour by hour. And once that time is gone, you can nev­er retrieve it.

To sus­tain con­cen­tra­tion and ensure these time hijack­ers don’t gain the upper hand, you must retain some strate­gies up your sleeve. This book sum­ma­ry will give you a head start.

OVERVIEW PART 1

TIME IS YOUR GREATEST TREASURE AND SHOULD BE USED JUDICIOUSLY.

Have you ever desired to pos­sess an addi­tion­al hour dur­ing the day to read, work out, or spend time with your cher­ished ones? Well, you can, and there’s no sor­cery need­ed! How­ev­er, ini­tial­ly, you must grasp the val­ue of time.

This is why the pri­ma­ry tip for man­ag­ing time is com­pre­hend­ing that time is your most pre­cious resource, and once it slips away, it’s gone for­ev­er. A prac­ti­cal way to mon­i­tor this valu­able resource is by break­ing it down. For instance, there are 1,440 min­utes in a day, each of which should be uti­lized wisely.

To serve as a reminder of this truth, the author affixed a poster with “1,440” to his office door. It prompts him of the finite time avail­able each day.

But why con­sid­er min­utes? Why not con­tem­plate the 86,400 sec­onds that every day offers?

Well, var­i­ous dai­ly tasks can tru­ly be com­plet­ed in a minute, such as exe­cut­ing 30 sit-ups, read­ing a short poem, or water­ing a plant. This high­lights the impor­tance of min­utes in mon­i­tor­ing your time.

Now that you appre­ci­ate the pre­cious­ness of time, it’s time to com­mence pri­or­i­tiz­ing it. This is where the sec­ond tip emerges: rec­og­nize and pri­or­i­tize your utmost cru­cial task, or your core assign­ment. This is the sin­gu­lar pur­suit that will have the most sub­stan­tial influ­ence on your life or work.

Con­sid­er Therese Macan, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri-St Louis. She iden­ti­fied that one of the pri­ma­ry pro­duc­tiv­i­ty fac­tors is the capa­bil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy pri­or­i­ties. Thus, pin­point­ing a core assign­ment plays a piv­otal role in time management.

For exam­ple, if a senior exec­u­tive sets a goal of cre­at­ing a new appli­ca­tion, her core assign­ment might be to recruit a new pro­gram­mer. Or the core assign­ment for a start­up CEO could be to for­mu­late an excel­lent pre­sen­ta­tion to secure a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment. Stud­ies have sub­stan­ti­at­ed that hav­ing a dai­ly core assign­ment, regard­less of its nature, leads to height­ened lev­els of sat­is­fac­tion and enhanced focus.

OVERVIEW PART 2

SWAP YOUR TASK LIST FOR A SCHEDULE TO ACHIEVE MORE WHILE EXPERIENCING LESS STRESS.

Many indi­vid­u­als are bur­dened by nev­er-end­ing to-do lists. Eval­u­ate yours. How many of the tasks have been lin­ger­ing there for weeks, unnec­es­sar­i­ly caus­ing you stress?

You like­ly have a min­i­mum of a few such tasks, and the best approach to address them is by resort­ing to a clas­sic cal­en­dar. Here’s where the third tip comes into effect: replace your task list with your cal­en­dar to alle­vi­ate the stress from your day.

Research has divulged that on aver­age, 41 per­cent of items on to-do lists remain incom­plete. One rea­son for this alarm­ing sta­tis­tic is that the tasks on such lists typ­i­cal­ly lack an indi­ca­tion of the time required to accom­plish them. Con­se­quent­ly, tasks that are more chal­leng­ing or less sig­nif­i­cant often remain undone.

This might not pose a sig­nif­i­cant issue, except for the fact that the unfin­ished items on your to-do list will inevitably gen­er­ate con­sid­er­able stress that could eas­i­ly be avert­ed. In real­i­ty, schol­ars from Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty deter­mined that stress can be cir­cum­vent­ed by sim­ply for­mu­lat­ing a strat­e­gy to fin­ish a task.

The Olympic gym­nast Shan­non Miller pro­vides a notable illus­tra­tion. She excelled in spend­ing time with her fam­i­ly, ful­fill­ing her aca­d­e­m­ic respon­si­bil­i­ties, prepar­ing for the Olympics, and even con­duct­ing media inter­views, all by orga­niz­ing time for essen­tial tasks.

This tac­tic is acknowl­edged as time block­ing or time box­ing, and inter­est­ing­ly, it mere­ly neces­si­tates main­tain­ing a thor­ough cal­en­dar. By doing so, Miller com­pelled her­self to pri­or­i­tize tasks that would pro­pel her clos­er to attain­ing her goal, and to this day, she adheres to a near­ly minute-by-minute schedule.

Nonethe­less, you will inevitably con­front tasks on your cal­en­dar that you might not accom­plish. In such instances, instead of allow­ing them to recede into the past, sim­ply resched­ule. For instance, if you cus­tom­ar­i­ly head to the gym at noon but have a flight to catch at the same time, mere­ly shift your work­out to ear­li­er in the day.

OVERVIEW PART 3            

SURMOUNT PROCRASTINATION BY ENVISIONING YOUR FUTURE ACTIONS AND COMPREHENDING THERE WILL ALWAYS BE MORE TO ACCOMPLISH.

We’ve all expe­ri­enced it: an impend­ing crit­i­cal dead­line, and instead of tend­ing to the cur­rent project, you find your­self glued to a screen – brows­ing through social media, tex­ting a friend, or watch­ing your favorite TV series. Pro­cras­ti­na­tion is a real chal­lenge, but for­tu­nate­ly, there are strate­gies to break free from it and kick­start your productivity.

Here comes the fourth tip: pro­cras­ti­na­tion can be defeat­ed by envi­sion­ing your future self.

Ulti­mate­ly, you’re not pro­cras­ti­nat­ing due to indo­lence but because you lack ade­quate moti­va­tion. Envi­sion­ing your future self can address this issue, and it’s as straight­for­ward as pos­ing two queries: “What sat­is­fac­tion will I derive from com­plet­ing this task?” and “What reper­cus­sions will I face if I neglect doing it?”

For instance, if your objec­tive is to engage in dai­ly work­outs, but you’re strug­gling to muster the ener­gy, just visu­al­ize your­self sport­ing a con­spic­u­ous beer bel­ly and feel­ing utter­ly lethar­gic. This men­tal exer­cise will pro­pel you from the couch to the treadmill.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, being can­did about the actions your future self will take can aid in achiev­ing your objec­tives. For instance, if you antic­i­pate suc­cumb­ing to unhealthy snacks dur­ing a break in the future, you can shield your­self by dis­card­ing all the junk food in your home. You could even esca­late by stock­ing up on whole­some alter­na­tives like baby car­rots and hummus.

From there, pro­ceed to the fifth tip: there will always be more tasks to accom­plish; you can­not tack­le every­thing. And this is per­fect­ly acceptable!

Astound­ing­ly, pri­or­i­tiz­ing and orga­niz­ing the tasks you desire to under­take holds more sig­nif­i­cance than sim­ply strik­ing off as many items as achiev­able from your list. Con­sid­er Pres­i­dent George W. Bush as an instance. He com­pre­hend­ed that there would per­pet­u­al­ly be more to address. Rather than striv­ing to tack­le every­thing, he pri­or­i­tized read­ing numer­ous books since he dis­cov­ered it to be com­fort­ing and enlight­en­ing. Con­se­quent­ly, he devoured approx­i­mate­ly 95 titles dur­ing his tenure!

OVERVIEW PART 4

JOTTING DOWN YOUR IDEAS AND CURTAILING VISITS TO YOUR INBOX WILL UNBURDEN YOUR MIND AND HOIST YOUR PRODUCTION.

Have you ever expe­ri­enced a bril­liant idea while gro­cery shop­ping or walk­ing your canine? Would­n’t it be con­ve­nient if instead of strain­ing to rec­ol­lect it lat­er, you could sim­ply note it down right away?

That’s why theThe sixth hid­den truth is to con­stant­ly keep a note­book near­by. Scrib­bling down your mus­ings helps you retain them. Founder of Vir­gin Group, Sir Richard Bran­son, states that he would not have erect­ed his busi­ness king­dom with­out his reli­able notebook.

He was so ded­i­cat­ed to jot­ting down his ideas that on one occa­sion, when struck by a busi­ness plan and devoid of a note­book, he penned the thought in his pass­port! For him, if an idea is not doc­u­ment­ed, it may van­ish forever.

Tak­ing notes man­u­al­ly also bol­sters your mem­o­ry. For exam­ple, psy­chol­o­gists Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppen­heimer dis­cov­ered that stu­dents who man­u­al­ly tran­scribed their notes dur­ing a TED talk could bet­ter rec­ol­lect the mate­r­i­al com­pared to stu­dents who jot­ted notes on their computers.

Inscribe your thoughts is vital – just as con­trol­ling your timetable is cru­cial, which is where the sev­enth secret becomes rel­e­vant. It advo­cates refrain­ing from fre­quent­ly check­ing your email, as it can result in oth­er indi­vid­u­als dic­tat­ing how you uti­lize your time.

In real­i­ty, con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, inces­sant­ly perus­ing emails is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. This is because the antic­i­pa­tion felt while check­ing your inbox is akin to pulling a slot machine lever. Fre­quent­ly, you go through your mes­sages and find noth­ing new. How­ev­er, occa­sion­al­ly, a new mes­sage emerges. This unpre­dictabil­i­ty is habit-form­ing, and one begins pro­cras­ti­nat­ing by check­ing more fre­quent­ly, hop­ing for the thrill of get­ting a mes­sage. Evi­dent­ly, this con­sumes your time and dis­rupts your concentration.

A great method to break free from your email shack­les is by unsub­scrib­ing from newslet­ters using a ser­vice like unroll.me. Alter­na­tive­ly, you can embrace the 321-Zero sys­tem. To do this, con­fine your­self to three email checks per day while endeav­or­ing to clear your inbox in just 21 minutes.

OVERVIEW PART 5

REGAIN COMMAND OVER YOUR TIME BY EVADING MEETINGS AND DECLINING REQUESTS.

If you’ve ever held an office posi­tion, you under­stand the immense tedi­um that accom­pa­nies meet­ings. How­ev­er, that’s not the sole down­side of meet­ings. The eighth secret asserts that most meet­ings are inef­fec­tive and should be sched­uled as a last resort.

Indeed, a sur­vey in 2015 revealed that 35% of par­tic­i­pants deemed week­ly sta­tus meet­ings as a waste of time, pri­mar­i­ly due to two reasons:

First­ly, in com­pli­ance with Parkin­son’s law of triv­i­al­i­ty, meet­ing atten­dees often expend a lot of time dis­cussing triv­ial mat­ters. Sec­ond­ly, extro­verts typ­i­cal­ly dom­i­nate meet­ings, dimin­ish­ing the chances of oth­ers engag­ing. Con­se­quent­ly, valu­able infor­ma­tion may remain undis­closed dur­ing such gatherings.

That being said, if a meet­ing is utter­ly nec­es­sary, opt for a stand­ing ses­sion rather than a seat­ed one. This may appear unusu­al, but researchers at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty found that meet­ings where par­tic­i­pants stand fos­ter improved col­lab­o­ra­tion, reduced attach­ment to ideas, increased engage­ment, and more effec­tive issue resolution.

Yahoo CEO, Maris­sa May­er, offers anoth­er valu­able insight: by sched­ul­ing meet­ings in incre­ments of five or ten min­utes, she can host up to 70 meet­ings per week. Had she adhered to the typ­i­cal 30-minute slot, she would nev­er man­age to accom­plish this feat.

In essence, reg­u­lat­ing the tim­ing of meet­ings will thwart indi­vid­u­als from encroach­ing on your time. This is cru­cial since oth­ers will con­stant­ly demand things from you, a real­i­ty that dove­tails nice­ly with the ninth hid­den truth: expe­dite the achieve­ment of imme­di­ate objec­tives by declin­ing most requests.

Indeed, every time you agree to some­thing, you are effec­tive­ly reject­ing some­thing else. Olympic row­er Sara Hen­der­shot exem­pli­fies this well. She adept­ly declines social and oth­er com­mit­ments, which allowed her to main­tain her focus in the lead-up to the 2012 Olympics in Rio, where she secured a spot in the finals.

To top it off, research has uncov­ered that peo­ple who tend to refuse requests for their time are hap­pi­er and more energetic.

OVERVIEW PART 6

UTILIZE THE 80/20 PRINCIPLE AND CONTEMPLATE A FEW SUBJECTIVE INQUIRIES TO ELEVATE YOUR PROFICIENCY AND SATISFACTION.

At this junc­ture, you under­stand the sig­nif­i­cance of invest­ing your lim­it­ed time in tasks that yield the most impact. The tenth secret can facil­i­tate this process. It stip­u­lates that by employ­ing the Pare­to Prin­ci­ple, you can unearth path­ways to suc­cess. Here’s what this entails:

In the 1890s, the Ital­ian philoso­pher and econ­o­mist Vil­fre­do Fed­eri­co Dama­so Pare­to observed that 20 per­cent of the pea plants in his gar­den bear 80 per­cent of his healthy peapods. This dis­cov­ery led to the for­mu­la­tion of the 80/20 rule, which can be applied across a vari­ety of domains.

For exam­ple, by apply­ing the 80/20 rule to your staff, you might deduce that a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of your sales per­son­nel must be ter­mi­nat­ed since they are the poor­est per­form­ers. Sub­se­quent­ly, you could chan­nel your efforts towards the remain­ing 20 per­cent, who are already respon­si­ble for gen­er­at­ing 80 per­cent of your rev­enue, by reward­ing them and pro­vid­ing increased sup­port. This strat­e­gy would like­ly result in an over­all sales improvement.

Alter­na­tive­ly, you can employ the 80/20 rule in your per­son­al life by eval­u­at­ing the tasks you under­take week­ly and pin­point­ing those with the great­est impact.

In addi­tion to this, you could enhance your pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by crit­i­cal­ly assess­ing the tasks at hand. The eleventh secret is devised to aid with this. It dic­tates that by lever­ag­ing your skills and del­e­gat­ing work, you can boost your out­put. Refer­ring to an exper­i­ment in 2013 fea­tured in the Har­vard Busi­ness Review con­duct­ed by pro­fes­sors Julian Birkin­shaw and Jor­dan Cohen, they found that 43% of employ­ees were dis­sat­is­fied with their job tasks.

OVERVIEW PART 7

INCORPORATE THEME DAYS AND INSTANTLY RESOLVING SHORT TASKS WILL AMPLIFY YOUR PRODUCTIVITY.

On a stan­dard work­day, do you ever encounter dif­fi­cul­ties focus­ing in the office? Many indi­vid­u­als do, and a bit of guid­ance can make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence. This leads us to the twelfth secret, which rec­om­mends cat­e­go­riz­ing your work into recur­ring themes each week to enhance your effectiveness.

An exem­plary instance is pro­vid­ed by Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twit­ter and founder of Square. He pro­fess­es that the key to man­ag­ing both his ven­tures was to allo­cate a theme for each day. For instance, Mon­days were des­ig­nat­ed for man­age­ment tasks; Wednes­days were focused on mar­ket­ing; and Sun­days were reserved for reflec­tion, feed­back, and strate­giz­ing for the upcom­ing week.

On the oth­er hand, entre­pre­neur­ial coach Dan Sul­li­van sug­gests seg­ment­ing each week based on three types of days to main­tain focus and enthu­si­asm. The first type is termed a focus day, ded­i­cat­ed to essen­tial activ­i­ties such as rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing tasks. The sec­ond is a buffer day, intend­ed for catch­ing up on emails, return­ing calls, con­duct­ing meet­ings, del­e­gat­ing tasks, and han­dling paper­work. Last­ly, a free day is set aside for no work, allow­ing time for relax­ation, fam­i­ly activ­i­ties, and char­i­ta­ble tasks.

Anoth­er straight­for­ward approach to enhance your effi­cien­cy involves tack­ling minor tasks.This is the thir­teenth hid­den truth, advo­cat­ing for prompt­ly act­ing on tasks that can be com­plet­ed in under five min­utes and avoid­ing repeat­ed revis­its to the same task.

Take, for instance, the exem­plary pupil Nihar Suthar. He prompt­ly fin­ish­es brief assign­ments, steer­ing clear of accu­mu­lat­ing a lengthy ros­ter of triv­ial tasks.

As an exam­ple, con­sid­er the writer. When his sis­ter Deb­bie recent­ly sent him an email, he opt­ed to call her back instead of reply­ing via email. By sched­ul­ing a call in his cal­en­dar, thus con­serv­ing the men­tal effort that would have been spent on remem­ber­ing to respond, he opt­ed to address this task imme­di­ate­ly. If he had decid­ed to add it to a to-do list or kept it in his inbox, he most like­ly would have for­got­ten to tend to it.

OVERVIEW PART 8

BOOST YOUR VITALITY LEVEL AND FOCUS THROUGH A MORNING HABIT AND A SIMPLE METHOD.

Imag­ine ris­ing at six o’clock in the morn­ing, exer­cis­ing for 45 min­utes, and then prepar­ing a nutri­tious, high-pro­tein break­fast. It may seem chal­leng­ing, but the four­teenth undis­closed truth elu­ci­dates why it is indispensable.

It asserts that allo­cat­ing the ini­tial hour of each day to a morn­ing reg­i­men will enrich your well-being – men­tal­ly, phys­i­cal­ly, and spir­i­tu­al­ly. In truth, begin­ning the day with a work­out is an excel­lent way to stim­u­late your imag­i­na­tive faculties.

Con­tem­plate the best-sell­ing author Dan Miller, who kicks off each day by med­i­tat­ing for 30 min­utes, fol­lowed by a 45-minute work­out accom­pa­nied by audio pro­grams. He refrains from check­ing the news or glanc­ing at his phone dur­ing this peri­od, ded­i­cat­ing his first hour to affir­ma­tive and inspir­ing encoun­ters. He even attests that his most inno­v­a­tive ideas come to him dur­ing this dai­ly “me time.”

Sub­se­quent­ly, you can ele­vate your vig­or and wel­fare fur­ther by hav­ing a nour­ish­ing break­fast and con­sum­ing ample water. This prac­tice holds immense sig­nif­i­cance for the renowned author and pod­cast host Shawn Steven­son. He regards ener­gy as piv­otal, thus com­menc­ing each day with what he terms an inner bath. Essen­tial­ly, he kick­starts his metab­o­lism by drink­ing 30 ounces of puri­fied water to elim­i­nate waste.

Indeed, accord­ing to the fif­teenth undis­closed truth, ener­gy reigns supreme. The truth elu­ci­dates that pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is not about time but about sus­tain­ing con­cen­tra­tion and ener­gy levels.

That’s why Francesco Cir­il­lo devised the Pomodoro Tech­nique – a strat­e­gy engi­neered to min­i­mize inter­rup­tions and ele­vate pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. His method­ol­o­gy involves set­ting a timer for 25 min­utes, con­cen­trat­ing ful­ly on a sin­gle task for the entire dura­tion, and then tak­ing a five-minute respite before restart­ing the cycle.

Author Mon­i­ca Leonelle expe­ri­enced resound­ing suc­cess with the Pomodoro Tech­nique upon real­iz­ing she had no spare hour in the day. Through uti­liz­ing the Pomodoro Tech­nique, she revi­tal­ized dur­ing her breaks, main­tain­ing con­sis­tent ener­gy through­out the day and, with the aid of oth­er meth­ods, trans­formed her writ­ing speed from 600 words per hour to 3,500!

The primary notion of this publication

High­ly tri­umphant indi­vid­u­als regard time as their most valu­able asset. By imple­ment­ing their most effi­cient life strategies—ranging from pri­or­i­tiz­ing tasks to increas­ing your ener­gy and pre­serv­ing your concentration—you can sim­i­lar­ly make the most of your time.