How To Plan Time So I Can Stay Highly Productive
I have learned that not all time is the same quality. In times when I am very alert, rested, focused and efficient, I can be three to five times as productive as other times. My goal is to have more of these highly productive hours.
This harkens back to Stephen Covey’s Seventh rule of Highly Effective People – sharpening the saw. The vignette is of a wood cutter who is desperately sawing at a huge tree. A passerby asks the woodcutter why he does not sharpen the saw so he can cut more easily and quickly. The woodcutter replies, I don’t have the time, I have to cut the tree down.
Lately my life has been like that of the wood cutter. I have spent too much time sawing and not enough time sharpening the saw.
So my exercise today is to figure out what things sharpen the saw for me and plan to put those in my days and weeks first. Then allow the wood cutting to take the other time as opposed to the other way around. I call this Reverse Planning. Rather than planning what I have on my to do list and trying to get that done, I plan my down time and deliberately work to get that...