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Why time management is ruining our lives

theguardian.com

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Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#191

Post by parasubvert »

EGreg wrote: post #181
austinl wrote: post #76

> “This topic of productivity induces the worst kind of procrastination, because it feels like you’re doing work, but I was producing stuff that had the express purpose of saying to people, ‘Look, come and see how to do your work, rather than doing your work!’” Outside of email, I often get carried away with setting up a system for doing work instead of actually doing work. If I know I have a lot to do, I'll spend ti…

Today we are faced with a three way choice: 1) Just do the task yourself every time 2) Build a system to do the task every time 3) Get an open source system and learn how to configure it and hope it does everything In the end, #3 wins if you can afford to hire people who know the system.

4) buy proprietary software and hire people that know it

Not saying it's preferable to #3, but it's better than nothing. SAP and Oracle still pull in a combined $57 billion annually, for things like accounting systems...

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#192

Post by Urbanxassassin »

torpfactory wrote: post #121

Some thoughts on time management: - Understanding that you will probably not accomplish everything on your to-do list was an important insight that I discovered a few years into my career. Some things will fall off the list, and that's OK. It's best to make explicit decisions in this regard: I will NOT work on that task / project because it just doesn't have the priority. You may be asked for this sort of reasoning l…

> - If you are an individual contributor on a tech / engineering team: Keep in mind that you are only partially credited for being responsive to email and other requests. Your technical and intellectual contributions are often far more important than keeping your inbox at "zero".

Depends on the company lol. Mine prefers responsiveness over technical contributions, even though we are a department that plans, builds, and implements infrastructure systems.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#193

Post by newscracker »

ahh wrote: post #92
tptacek wrote: post #82

Weird tangent: A couple years ago I had a wicked bout of insomnia, and one of the things I did to combat it was to scrub all my screens of clocks, so that I couldn't easily succumb to an anxious urge to check the time when I was having trouble falling asleep. I've found that not having a clock in the upper-right corner of my screen slightly but noticeably chills me out. Like the little red badge on the email client t…

Is there an easy way to remove a clock from Android? How about OSX?

In OS X, you can go to Apple menu->System Preferences->Date & Time->Clock and uncheck "Show date and time in menu bar". To bring it back, just check that option.

[System Preferences has a lot to offer for many things, including custom keyboard shortcuts and such]

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#194

Post by Broken_Hippo »

hinkley wrote: post #72
rdiddly wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since children have it, I don't think it's a learned skill. But I think the bad habits of drifting off to another illusory time are learned, and then have to be unlearned.

when the child is doing fine, they get to live in the moment, and are often left alone to do what they are doing. When we don't like what they're up to we often talk to them about 'not yet' or 'not anymore' and time becomes something they have to contend with. And then we start doing fucked up things like asking five year olds what they want to be when they grow up. How much pressure is that? they don't even know wha…

You miss the point in the last question.

It isn't stress: Most children will do things that mimic adulthood, including pretend careers. I mean, look at popular toys: Tools and babies, kitchen appliances, fire trucks, police, and army men. Heck, there are "lawn mowers" that blow bubbles and pretend vacuums. Asking that sort of thing is natural: I personally think it should be humored even if they want to be the family cat when they grow up.

The questions also are a good way to get clues on what the kid might be interested in, so you can encourage hobbies or introduce other fun things.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#195

Post by egypturnash »

flor1s wrote: post #140
llwt wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds a lot like the Pomodoro Technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

I think the Pomodoro Technique is one of those things the article posted warns you against. Having a timer counting down might make you more stressed about time passing. When I was using the Pomodoro Technique many people who I met mentioned that effect to me as a reason why they did not use Pomodoro's.

YMMV, having the timer ticking away helps to keep me on task: by picking up my cute little ladybug-shaped timer and twisting it, I have made a promise to myself that I will work on This Thing for the next 25 minutes.

If it stresses you out instead, then yeah, find another method. But I found it to be really effective.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#196

Post by beachstartup »

bootload wrote: post #188
noir_lord wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best boss I ever had back when I worked retail used to walk the store every morning, write down all tasks for that day and then prioritise them, he then gave that to me and I just worked the list until finishing time, I asked him once if he minded I didn't get them all finished every day and he replied "Nope, I don't expect you to", it was incredibly unstressful, I always knew what I should be doing, communicatio…

" I always knew what I should be doing, communication overhead was low and the list was a measurable measure of progress over a day." It's no accident, and I'm really getting to see why this technique works. It's simple. Given you have a days work, working from a short list is do-able. If the tasks are prioritised things get done. The bit I've found hard: when things interrupt, the old list is useless and a new one c…

we manage entire projects with a simple milestone list and a constantly updated list of current tasks and who is going to do them (action items, in mba blogspeak).

'make a list and then do it' is way too simple for a lot of people to understand. most people are looking for either shortcuts, or magic solutions like special software.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#197

Post by dennisgorelik »

ryandrake wrote: post #52
junto wrote: post #51

One of my bosses had a good way of dealing with emails. He would only write one single short replies. No "Dear/Hello Blah", no sign off, just one single terse sentence that was straight to the point. He detested my wordy, time laboured and well formatted emails that looked like letters. He had a point. He treated email like a messenger application, whereas many of us still see it as an electronic replacement for the…

This style breaks down when you ask three distinct questions, and the boss (who's so busy he can't even form sentences) simply responds "YES". Now you're guessing. Yes to everything? Yes to only the last question? Now more E-mails are needed and nobody wants that.

In the situation with 3 questions he can answer: 1) Yes. 2) Yes. 3) No.

Or he can answer: "Let's do XYZ." and ignore two other points. That would hint that one email should cover one topic to keep things simple.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#198

Post by coliveira »

To-do lists don't work because they're themselves bureaucratic work that gets in the way to real work. After I cut to-do lists from my life I have a much better time doing real work. Of course I keep notes, but they are not things "to do", they're just information that I may, eventually, need for the really important things I do.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#199

Post by Jill_the_Pill »

sjg007 wrote: post #105
austinl wrote: post #76

> “This topic of productivity induces the worst kind of procrastination, because it feels like you’re doing work, but I was producing stuff that had the express purpose of saying to people, ‘Look, come and see how to do your work, rather than doing your work!’” Outside of email, I often get carried away with setting up a system for doing work instead of actually doing work. If I know I have a lot to do, I'll spend ti…

I take the top 3 most important things and do those.

I always start with the one I dread the most.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#200

Post by rimantas »

flor1s wrote: post #140
llwt wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds a lot like the Pomodoro Technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

I think the Pomodoro Technique is one of those things the article posted warns you against. Having a timer counting down might make you more stressed about time passing. When I was using the Pomodoro Technique many people who I met mentioned that effect to me as a reason why they did not use Pomodoro's.

Learning Hot to Learn course on Coursera (highly recommended) talks about procrastination a bit and they do recommend a Pomodoro technique to fight it.
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