The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment summary

Defining your priorities is one thing, but sticking to them is something else. Sometimes people even sabotage their own goals.

Perhaps you finally followed your dreams to do a part-time degree, only to drop out a few months later. Or you sometimes ruin your work performance by playing video games when you’ve got a deadline.

Imagine you’re on your way to a big job interview. What are you thinking about? Instead of fearing the worst, picture yourself excelling in the interview, answering the questions perfectly, and connecting with your interviewers.

Does that sound unrealistic? We’re so used to imagining bad outcomes that positive visualizations can feel naive. But they’re no less realistic than imagining the interview will be a disaster. And practicing positive thinking is proven to improve performance.

You want to get to work on time, you really do. And you don’t understand why you’re always late. After all, you always leave yourself 20 minutes for the drive – which is exactly the right amount of time, if you don’t have too many red traffic lights.

Many of us are time optimists, which is a nice way of saying that we’re not realistic about how long things actually take. Time optimists will plan to do several loads of laundry and cook a three-course meal after work while supervising the children’s homework. Or they take on too much commitment at work, thinking, Surely I’ll fit it in somewhere.

Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg is one of the busiest women on the planet. And yet, she leaves the office every day at 5:30 p.m. and is home in time for dinner with the kids at six.

Family time is important for Sandberg, so she made it an action-based priority. And then she reinforced the action with the help of a simple, clear routine.

By now, you’ve hopefully been convinced about the usefulness of routines. But implementing your own routine may still sound like a daunting task. To help you on your way, here’s a detailed overview of the four steps you need to take to create effective routines in your life.

The first step is to work out what to do. Remember that list of priorities? Pick one that you’d like to focus on, and work out how to turn it into one specific action. For example, if health is a priority for you, you might decide to go for a 20-minute run every morning.

Even though she works as a time coach for a living, the author sometimes struggles to make time for her own priorities. For example, when she wanted to create a book proposal, she experienced a lot of inner resistance and fear of failure. She carved out some time for working on it each week, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to stick to it without support.

So she decided to find some accountability partners to make sure she stayed on track.