1) Manage your energy, not your time

What this means is start paying attention to your body. If you notice that you are tired in the afternoon, consider what is contributing to that. Diet? Little sleep? When you are trying to ‘push through’ things when your energy is low, you are ineffective. It takes much longer to accomplish tasks when your focus is off, when you are thinking is not sharp and your energy is dwindling. So, instead of trying to figure out how to get more into your time, notice you energy.

* When do you have the most energy? Do you hardest projects then.

* When do you have the least?  Take a break. Schedule a power nap, workout time, filing, or other activities that do not require hard focus.

* Consider what is zapping your energy? Are you doing things that are not in line with your values? Are you procrastinating? Are you not taking breaks? Identify the times that you have energy and times that you don’t. What are you doing differently?

2)  Downtime is key for your success

While it would be great to run at 110% all the time, our bodies were not made like that. We require food, rest and relaxation. In today’s society, relaxation is becoming harder for people to really do. Even on vacations, we are checking e-mail and voice mail, we take work along, etc. We really do not allow our working minds to be shut off. In order to relax, we need to shut off for a period of time, this is what Loehr and Schwartz are talking about when they say ‘downtime’. Several highly successful people recommend one day a week that you do NO WORK and have downtime. If you do this, you will have more energy for the other 6 days of the week and will be more productive, then if you keep running all 7 days of the week. You will be less productive on all days and the impact is a haze of feeling not quite as productive as you could be, but unable to figure out where you could possible squeeze another minute of time. Take a day off, no work, no e-mails, no voice mails. Don’t Cheat, it undermines the rest of the week and your ability to charge up energy. Think of it like charging a battery, if you keep unplugging it and using it, you will continually drain what was just charged, therefore after all day of charging with a few interruptions, you will still not be fully charged. Also, when it takes  3x as long to charge something once it is dead then to keep it charged (besides the risk that you might run out of juice mid task), so don’t wait until you are dead, charge yourself weekly with downtime.

3) Rituals help to maintain focus

Have you ever heard of “open brain circuits”? It is the concept explaining how our brains work and how we get overwhelmed. When we are overwhelmed or overloaded, we do not operate effectively or efficiently and therefore are no using time to our advantage and inevitably need more time. It is like a computer, when you have to many programs running, you computer starts to slow down. It takes longer to do anything. It is the same with your brain, when you have a lot of open tasks, thoughts and to do’s in your head, all the circuits are open and you just start to ‘run’ slower. This is why Loehr and Schwartz recommend RITUALS for optimizing your energy (and thus your time). When you have rituals, you set up a reoccurring time and pattern for tasks and behavior that need to be done.  A common program many coaches use is establishing 10 daily habits. These are daily rituals that support what you have to do anyway, however by linking them together in a set time and pattern, you do not forget them or need to think about them, rather you become on autopilot and can accomplish them quickly and easily. Daily habits or rituals are things you should do daily, take a short amount of time and add to your productivity. Examples might be: make a to-do list, confirm daily appointment, stock forms in car file box, turn on music, pay bills, check mail, clear desk, file client folders, return phone calls, check e-mail, check traffic on web, send updates, drink water, eat fruit, light a candle, feed fish, excreta.

4) Purpose fuels performance

Know what you are doing what you are doing. Often we get caught up in doing tasks because we always have, think we need to or just should. First of all ’shoulds’ are a performance killer. They are things we have on the list to do, but they never quite reach priority status. So, identify why you are doing the task or activity. Why is it important? Why do you care that it gets done? If you have to think about the consequence of what will happen if it doesn’t get done, that is still a purpose. When we just do things without a reason, it is hard to keep those as priorities. Things that we approach in a lackadaisical manner take longer to accomplish, stand to be interrupted, put off, and left ½ done or completed with loose ends. When you work with purpose, you can complete things quickly, staying focused and generating momentum as you go. This will allow you to finish the current objective in less time and actually go on to get other things done in the time you would still be working on a purposeless project.

5) Work in sprints (small bursts of focused energy)

Reality we are all busy. Life is full of interruptions and constant urgent tasks that need to be attended to that we did not plan for. This is reality. So, how to you keep yourself and your whole day from falling victim to a reactionary cycle where you just run from one urgent thing to the next, praying for a minute to last longer? Schedule sprint times where you are 100% focused on one thing. You sprint to accomplish it. In coaching I usually recommend sprints be 30 minute or 50 minute time blocks. You close the door, shut off the phone, have a full drink, e-mail shut off and any other distractions cleared for your sprint time. Know exactly what you want to accomplish in that time, and work only on that. You will be amazed at how much you can get done. Again it creates momentum and the focus lends itself to natural energy that builds. You will get more done in this period often then what you can get done in a whole day of random interruptions and urgent demands. Usually this is a great time to plan to work on what is important (writing, billing, customer service, excreta. Things that if they don’t get done will not kill us now, but will need serious time and attention if neglected).

What is important that you need to do?
What will you plan and to doing right now, that will allow you to harness your energy and gain more time?