My effective way to manage your time well
Understanding just this one concept can change your whole life trajectory and how you think about time.
Today will be a short letter.
But trust me it will be packed with value.
I was recently having a conversation with my work friend – you can think of him as a humble, hardworking, and overall nice person to hang out with.
He has a problem. And that is managing his time.
Many of us would want to think that time management is an innate skill, something you’re born with or without.
However, the truth is, that it’s actually a skill that can be developed and honed over time.
This realization led us to a deeper conversation about what it really takes to manage one’s time effectively. It’s not just about having the right tools or techniques, although they can help – for instance, apps like Forest or Momentum.
It’s about understanding yourself, your priorities, and the value you place with your time.
Like what Dan Koe, an internet influencer who strongly advocates for one-person business and mental mastery said in his book, The Art of Focus:
The ability to focus your attention on a meaningful goal, holding that in the back of your mind as a distraction repellent, knowing exactly how to achieve it through prior experience, and refocusing on the choice in front of you is a superpower. – The Art of Focus
In fact, time management is less about managing time and more about managing yourself.
This might sound a bit paradoxical, but it makes complete sense if you think deeply about it. We all have the same 24 hours in a day, but how we choose to spend those hours can vastly differ based on our priorities, goals, and understanding of what’s truly important to us.
In that, knowing how to manage your time well is a superpower.
Time is by your side if you know how to use it. Performance is by your side if you know how to do it. Opportunity is by your side if you know how to seize it. Everything you want already exists, you just need to put in the work before it reveals itself.
The Art of Understanding Yourself
First of all, truly understanding your priorities is crucial. My friend realized that he often felt overwhelmed not because he had too much to do, but because he wasn't clear on what was truly important.
This lack of clarity led to everything feeling urgent and important, which is a recipe for stress and inefficiency.
You have to take a step back and identify your top priorities, then train your mind consciously to focus on things that truly matter to reduce the noise and distraction.
The shorter way to do many things is to only do one thing at a time. – Mozart
The value of saying no cannot be overstated. It’s the most powerful tool in your time management arsenal.
Reclaim your time by saying no to things that don’t really align with your goal – think from a bigger perspective. Be conscious about your choice.
What you don’t do determines what you can do.
Self-awareness cannot be neglected. You need to understand your own rhythms and when you’re most productive to get the most out of the least (the flow state, or leverage).
You shouldn’t force yourself to be a morning person when you know you can’t produce the best work then. The most complex task is to really find and understand yourself first before pursuing other things. Everything will go much smoother.
Timeblocking – The Ultimate Hack
After I was introduced to this concept, my life has been so much easier.
Time blocking is a time management method that involves dividing your day into blocks of time, each dedicated to accomplishing a specific task or group of tasks – helping you organize your day and avoid inefficiency and fatigue.
This is what you need to know when blocking your time:
Know your tasks and priorities: Before you can block out time, you need to know what you need to accomplish. Make a list of your tasks, separating them into categories like work, personal, and leisure.
Estimate time for each task: Some tasks will take longer than others. Roughly estimate how much time you will need for each task.
Consider your energy levels: Schedule tasks that require more focus or creativity during the times of day when you're most alert and productive. Like Mark Twain said: “If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.” Less demanding tasks can be scheduled for when your energy dips.
Block off time in your calendar: Use a digital calendar or a planner to block off time for your tasks. Treat these blocks as you would any other appointment—non-negotiable.
Include breaks and buffer time: Include breaks to recharge and buffer time between blocks to handle overflows or unexpected tasks. You don’t have to work the entire day.
The idea is to block off time on your calendar so you know which tasks need to be done at which block. Creating this system will ensure you get more things done.
Use AI to your advantage, but never to replace you
After all, in today’s day and age, AI tools are here to reduce our cognitive load so we can focus our clear minds and time on things that really matter.
AI tools are tools for a reason and shouldn’t replace every part of our day-to-day life.
Never outsource creative thinking for it is the most valuable skill and monetizable asset you have.
Ending it here.
AI Tools to Boost Your Productivity
Ideogram - Generate realistic AI images with legible text.
Claude - AI assistant from Anthropic, with the recent release of Claude 3.
Pi - Your personal AI assistant that organizes your thoughts, makes clear plans, and acts on them.
Chatsimple - Copilot for your website visitor powered by AI.
Consensus - Your AI research assistant that searches 200 million academic papers from Consensus.
Top Learnings of the Week
Pika released Lip Sync: Your videos can now talk with Pika Lip Sync. We’re even closer to Hollywood-style productions, bringing lifelike animation and dynamic vocal performances right to your fingertips (link)
Alibaba introduces Emo: A method for generating animated portraits driven by vocal audio, achieving high resolution and accuracy through diffusion models and transformer networks (link)
Anthropic AI: Anthropic released their latest AI model family – Claude 3, consisting of three state-of-the-art models in ascending order of capability: Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet, and Claude 3 Opus. These models are claimed to have near-human abilities, excelling in reasoning, expert knowledge, mathematics, and language tasks. Their top-tier Claude 3 Opus outperforms top models like GPT-4 and Gemini Ultra across major benchmarks (link)
Inflection AI launches a new model for Pi chatbot that nearly matches GPT-4: The company whose mission is to create a personal AI for everyone just released their new major foundational model, Inflection 2.5, which approached GPT-4’s performance but used only 40% of the amount of compute for training (link)