Do I Integrated Life Admen Into My Workday?
Summary:
Ca, i’ve been following your advice for years, and i’ve found it especially useful as a student. I would recommend time block planning your work so you know exactly what you’re working on. And then when you get to each day, your time blocking so you know exactlywhat you ‘re doing with your time. If you have an emale block near the end of the day, you’re still going to get back to people. You’re not really putting it in people’s face that oha, i only really need to work four or five hours to get things done. Maybe you dn’t want to integrate some life admen blocks into your time block schedule at early evening…
Transcript:
Speaker 2
i’ve been following your advice for years, and i’ve found it especially useful as a student. I have a job now in which i’m really fortunate that i have the flexibility and autonomy and how i structure my day and what goes into it, as long as i’m hitting my dead lines for work, am even if this includes sometimes errands or emales or like, other things that aren’t necessarily my vocation. Um, so if you were to give some one advice for tackling, like i said, this back log of adman and just initially getting these systems in place and under control, would you recommend working on it during the workday and gradually making progress, say, on like a monday, wednesday, friday, one hour at a time? Or outside of work, where it’ll get done in larger chunks, but might be encroaching on quality leisure time? Well,
Speaker 1
first, to give where credit is due, i got the term life admin from a book called the art of life admin by elizabeth emons. I think this is a book i actually belurved. And so i think elizabeth did a good jobof using a terminology to capture the large amount of obligations in planning and execution that is required to keep your life outside of work functioning aly if you have a house, especially if you have kids. So i think its a good question. I would summarize the question this way, do i integrate life admen into my workday? Or do i keep them separated? Now i think my answer is going to depend on how etonomous is this job. So you mention in your question that you do have a lot of flexibility, that as long as you are hitting your objectives, no one really cares how or when you do the work. If that is true, if you are truly in a results oriented work environment, then i would recommend time block planning your work so you know exactly what you’re working on, weekly planning your weeks, so you know on what days you need to make progress on what. And then when you get to each day, your time blocking so you know exactly what you ‘re doing with your time. And i would probably just aim to get after it and be done by early afternoon, and then give yourself a nice block for sort of longer form life admin, et cetera, and then be done with that by early evening. So i would have some separation. Now i think a lot of people right now whose jobs, on paper, do have autonomy. So like, let’s say you’re working from home. Maybe because of the demic, you have extra flexibility because there’s kids at home, may be doing distance learning or home schooling, whatever, right? So maybe you have autonomy in the sense that it’s not like you have to work uncertain things at certain times, or that if you’re unavailable for an hour here or there, this can be a problem. But at the same time, a lot of people in these situations, it might be a problem if you’re not reachable after one or you’re not reachable after two, you know, that’s just too long of a gap. So if that’s the if that is your case, if that describes your reality, then i would probably recommend you could integrate some life admen blocks into your time block schedule and treat it with the same mind set you treat your other work blocks. I’m working on this, then i have this meeting that i’m checking, email that im making, pushing on this memo, and then i’m taking an hour to go to thi store and knock off these three things to mail on the way. And then i have a couple of hours to whatever, finish a report and end the day with some emal so the advantage of integrating some life ad ben throughout your day, into your time block schedule is that you’re still visible later in the day. If you have an emale block near the end of the day, you’re still going to get back to people. You’re not really putting it in people’s face that oha, i only really need to work four or five hours to get things done. Once i’m actually time block planning, once i’m actually doing capture, configure control, once i’m actually getting after it, this job doesn’t take all my time. Maybe you dn’t really want that secret to get out. And so you integrate some life adment into your time block schedule in the day, at early evening. Now again, you’re still not going to encroach into family or leisure time here, because when you end your work at you’vealready got en done a lot of your life admint as well. I think both both of those things work a the key, i think the key in here is a the time block planning. So if you’re controlling your time ands in great in could take this hour to do this life admint, that’s a completely different psychological challenge then just your sort of working, and then you sort of go over and start doing some household stuffs, and you have a whole phase shift in your mind set. Time block planning helps to reduce those type of phase shifts. Yu’re just executing what am i doing this block? What am i doing that block? Your focus is on hitting your blocks, not am i in work mode or n my life? Admitn modea. Weekly planning is also important. Weekly planning your life. Admen, as i’ve been talking about recently in the introduction to some recent episode where we were talking about household productivity, this was an idea i proposed, weekly plan your life. Admen, to make sure that the big rocks actually have time put aside. You say, like a tuesday, i’m going to take the car to get its amissions inspection, and i am going to finally go through this mail sorter on wednesday. And so you sort of know what big chunks a life. Admend can get done when you can integrate that with your schedule. So basically, that’s why i would advise, if no one really s care when you work, time block plan your work, do your life. Aen be done. If they do kind of care, just throw in those blocks and treat em like any other types of administrative blocks. That will unleash the power of time block planning on your life. Admit, and you’ll be surprised by how much more you’re able to get done in your life outside of work tless. Move on now to a question from a law partner. Hical. (Time 0:12:54)
You’ve Lost the Habit of Reading
Summary:
You’ve lost the habit of reading. It sounds like internet base distractions have diminished that comfort with concentration. Your brain’s out of shape. Let’s get it back in shape. What i’m going to suggest for the near future, let’s say the next one to two months, is the two chapter rule. I want you to read two chapters every day. And i want you to track this wherever you track your daily metrics. Where are you going to find time for that? While you can have some routines or rituals, a lunch break, reading sessionis a good one. A happy hour, reading break is a good one right before bed. But you also might want to try time…
Transcript:
Speaker 1
the last week’s deep questions full length episode, i talked about how long form consumption of information is the key to moving from exposing yourself to some information to actually know about something. So if you have philosophical, political, ethical, theological ideas or points or stances or points of view on which you want to actually build your life and direct your actions, the best way to do this is to consume long form content, like from a book. And i suggest it in that episode. You read the best things written about the idea. You read the best critiques of the idea. You read about the best alternative to the idea. You let those things clash your roots of understanding will go deep. And you’ll come away from there actually knowing more about that topic then you can never get just exposing yourself to some information about it on twitter, on face book, or jo seen to you too vitty, or how people are talking about things. So reading is relly at the core of a lot of important things. And so i’m glad you are trying to get back into this habit. You are also absolutely right to note that it’s a habit you can get in and out of. Just like if you have not been running, when you go out to run a five k, your time’s going to be bad. All right, seng have to do some work, and after a while, your time will be better again. That’s wat we’re oing to do here. You’ve lost the habit of reading. It sounds like internet base distractions have diminished that comfort with concentration. Your brain’s out of shape. Let’s get it back in shape. What i’m going to suggest for the near future, let’s say the next one to two months, is the two chapter rule. I want you to read two chapters every day. And i want you to track this wherever you track your daily metrics. I do this, i write the word chap, c, h, a, p, colin, then i write next to it how many chapters of books i read that day. And all i want you to do is hit two every day, no matter what it takes. And we’re going to work backwards from that goal to figure out how to actually get there. But that’s where i want you to start. Now, if you’re notttracking metric, you should be sure. Next question will get deeper into that. But an easy way to do this, hint, hint, is with the time block planner. I have a daily metric, metric tracking space on that exactly this reason. Butny what, you wan’t do two chapters the day you want to track that. Where are you going to find time for that? While you can have some routines or rituals, a lunch break, reading sessionis a good one. A first thing in the morning, reading break is a good one. A happy hour, reading break is a good one. It’s a good activity right before bed. So you can have some regular times you read. But you also might want to try time blocking, a reading block in your day. You have an eight hour workday, and yu’re putting various time blocks. You’ve got meetingas you’re doing emales, working on this project. Just find a half hour and their time. Block it for reading. That alone will get you to your two chapters. Now, this is the second reason why i’m including this question in the habit tuned up many episodes, because i think this is s we’re leveraging the tools that we have optimized for work productivity can actually help you with this broader cognitive goal. Once you’re in the mode of time blocking, once you’re in your work dan, you’re going from block to block and trying to execute, your brain is in a mode of, what i want to do is hit my blocks. What i take pride in is hitting my blocks. Here’s what i’m doing next. Let’s do it. Here’s i’m doing next. Let’s do it. You can basically hijack that mind set to get your reading done at first. All right, i ave any male block. Let’s do it. Working on this memo for an hour. Let’s do it. Reading a chapter for a half hour. Let’s do it. And you’re going to do that much easier than if you’re just in your evening and you’re just relaxing. You say, i could read, but you know what? Someone’s taxting me and i want to go on net flicks and maybe to morrow. So that’d be my final advance tragedy. You might start by time blocking at least one of these chapter readings every day, then maybe trying to find a ritualized time, like lunch, or like bed, or like morning, or like happy hour, in which you read the other one. Must this, hit two chapters a day. Have at least one of those bea cona complex adon fiction books hat you think can be a little bit easier. That’s really enough. If you do that for one to two months, you’re gong to find your difficulty concentrating on booksthat’s going to go down, that you’re going to add extra reading time outside of those blocks, and that your ability to concentrate, i s going to go up. Your ability to build deep knowledge of pics, not just being exposed to information, but knowing something about it, you’ll be able to do that. Its going to be the foundation for a lot of good things. And this simple discipline of two chapters a day, using those tools i’ve just described to help you get there, that’s going to be what lets you lay that foundation, both effectively and efficiently. Right? We have time for one more question. We’ve been talking le bit about metrics in a few of these questions. So why don’t we let this last query be specifically on that topic? I
Speaker 2
cow missus, david in central scotland. I am thoroughly enjoying all your discussion of productivity, dragons and productivity hydra. And if i am at all representative, then this brodcaste will hopefully be making you something of a s midas. Now, my question relates to your suggestions surrounding the tracking of metrix. This is something i’ve experimented with myself over the last eighteen months or two years, though the implementation has always looked different from what you describe. Now, using something like a spread sheet or an ap or even a plain text file with a shell script, enables one to look for trends in r recorded data, look to see how we’re making progress, what is going well, what isn’t going well? Do you see any value in this slightly more a complex way al recording and tracking matrix? Or do you think that the complexity in itself would be a potential distraction with limited benefits? Keep up the great thanks very much. Well,
Speaker 1
i think, first of all, i have to say, im a little bit worried my memory of the king midas, myth is that things do not end up all that well for midas. So i don’t know what subtle warning you’re trying to give me here, david, but but i’m listening, and i’m sweating. As for your actual question, i
Speaker 2
think this notion of
Speaker 1
using a digital format for metrics that allows you to plot, or otherwise quickly summarize trends, is not a bad one. I know there’s a lot of people within the life hacker movements, or within the quatified self movements, which overlap, like to do this. They often send me charts, you know, they’ll show me their deep work hours over time, or they’ll correlate deep work hours with other metric from their life to try to find interesting connections. These type of days i do lest these type o days i do more, (Time 0:31:51)