I’m currently reading a book called “The One Thing” by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. It promotes principles of focusing and working on a single thing until you make it a reality, be it learning a new programming language, starting your company or something else. The main point is, if you are constantly making a bunch of lists of what you are planning to do troughout the day, week or even a month, that is losing time in itself. It’s okay to have some guides, but you need to focus on the most important stuff for yourself. In managing time – less is, surprisingly, more.
I had a lot of days where in the morning, I got up motivated and pumped and made a list of things to do for the day. These lists usually looked something like this:
- Write a blog or something
- Workout
- Some tutorials on youtube
- Project 1
- Work
- Project 2
I had so much planned. Why I failed? Because there were too many things, and I couldn’t focus. In my experience. So here is my advice:
Write only 3 things at most for the whole day
It might sound so little if you are pumped and ready to become successful, but try doing this and you will finish it almost every time. If you finish everything you scribbled down, you can always start doing more stuff, but you won’t feel guilty if you don’t finish it.
“I can do a lot more, I have to be a machine to be successful” – Some people can do a lot of things trough the day, but it takes training and experience. Elon Musk and other entrepreneurs popular in the whole world must have a strict schedule if they want to stay on the track, but they didn’t grow overnight. It takes time and dedication.
Why you shouldn’t plan too much
There are unexpected things that change our plans, and they are inevitable. Focusing on important things is the best you can do to avoid postponing them for the next day. If you plan 3 projects, a blog, workout and a bunch of other stuff, even if you manage to finish it all, you will be rushing stuff, and that is never good.
So my point is – take your time, be patient and grow, in time, you will see results and you’ll be able to take on more projects.
What to do if your deadline is close, and I NEED to do a lot of stuff
Of course, if you have dangerous deadline, this can’t apply. Then you should focus mostly on the thing the deadline is for. If you have a few tests and projects all at the same time, you should plan the work so that you don’t do all the things at once.
For example, let’t take math exam, programming project and another test.
Do math for an hour or two, until you get a little tired. Focus on the things you already know at least a little. If you don’t know anything about other topics, it’s better to know one thing good than all topics just barely. It will increase your chances. After studying, take a rest. Then, after a rest, work on a project. After that also rest, and study for other test. Then repeat. Rest is important, because it relaxes your mind and helps you focus. Take whole night if you need, and after all the fuzz about deadline and everything is over, take one day to fully recover. You’ll be more productive the next day.
Planning isn't hard. Executing is. So try planning less and executing more. You'll get great results.
