{"id":"60016e376cee070006e82068","slug":"the-3-secrets-to-effective-time-investment-en","title":"The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment","audio_url":"https://hls.blinkist.io/bibs/60016e376cee070006e82068/60016e386cee070006e8206a-T1639496272.m4a?Expires=1642718416&Signature=Rj4~nZTWpEdYOn3bxr4rs5b3eoRCzxZSt4BD7BkepiUquypIRHx2SQCy6rWm~dC5kZMliVKE19GVfxwF1SKKl95osfA--7yMi8zWDRdooKOUe5HZykI8g0sgShx6~0dDnCCHo9A8lI2tIT5OPlwc~61DJNW019czzXrKKNYRuU9Wlg06-FfWVRKoBjDZlQ7i0A8vLAWuan-uUdoJvf4fNCmUxkQuCn-RS3O0m2LrH1TK33oPiuMLcwYfv-H3vmmJ4EZqHiCxOgm-k37Y-w~16fy4AuXVVIDhPaB2rfZkd0xVL8NeFAcA3sYYOpWmKezqnQtjLpa8uepwLgpIznnx4w__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJXJM6BB7FFZXUB4A","chapters":[{"id":"60016e386cee070006e8206a","title":"The first secret to effective time investment is to make action-based priorities.","text":"

Imagine your friends, family, and colleagues just helped themselves to money from your wallet. It would be pretty infuriating, wouldn’t it? You might even be tempted to call the cops!

You’d never let people help themselves to your cash. So why do you allow them to do the same with your time? Time is a limited and precious resource. But, often, we don’t treat it that way. We allow colleagues to heap extra work onto us, or get roped into too many committees. Sometimes we waste our own time, too, like when we fall prey to the temptations of social media, and spend hours scrolling on our phones.

There’ll always be people (and apps) that are hungry for your time. If you don’t want to get pulled in all directions, you have to define clear boundaries around time investments. But you can only do that if you know what your priorities are.

The key message here is: The first secret to effective time investment is to make action-based priorities.

To identify your priorities, you first need to ask yourself a very important question: What makes your life successful? This really is a personal question. It’s got nothing to do with what society deems important and worthy. Success, for you, may look like having enough time to work on your butterfly collection while holding down a job that pays the bills. Or it may be about spending time with all your friends.

Once you’ve considered what success means to you, make a list of your real priorities, in order of importance.

That’s just the start. Now you need to make your priorities action-based. For example, if spending time with family is number one on the list, then perhaps you need to leave the office earlier, so you’re always home in time for dinner.

Of course, your priorities can change. Sometimes a major life event, like illness or a new relationship, will mean you need to reassess your needs. You may need to temporarily devote more time to your health, or scale back extra work to allow space for romance to blossom.

Living according to your priorities is a dynamic process that requires constant balancing and rebalancing. As long as you keep asking yourself that question – What makes my life successful? – then you’ll always have a North Star to work toward.

"},{"id":"60016e386cee070006e8206b","title":"Strong emotions can derail the best-laid plans – unless you acknowledge them.","text":"

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.

Learning to invest time wisely is not only about prioritizing and drawing up a schedule. Even more importantly, it’s about identifying the underlying emotions that affect how you behave. If you don’t address those emotions, even the best-laid plans could fall prey to your self-sabotage.

But if you do acknowledge them, you can make strides.

The key message here is: Strong emotions can derail the best-laid plans – unless you acknowledge them.

One powerful emotion you may feel when taking on a new project is fear. You could be scared that you’ll fail and look foolish, or that you’ll let other people down. And if you ignore these fears, they just become worse. You may feel panicked and stressed, and could start behaving defensively.

These fears can cause you to lose focus, or even give up your plans altogether. But they don’t have to. If you take time to acknowledge your feelings, and identify exactly what scares you, fear loses some of its power. In fact, you can even use it to motivate yourself into action.

Other strong emotions which may sometimes paralyze you are guilt and shame. You may feel guilty when you have unrealistic expectations of yourself. You tie your self-worth to your productivity and usefulness to others. And you may feel shame when you can’t achieve what you want to.

Guilt and shame can cause you to step over your boundaries, and hide your true self from other people. They’re emotions that can make it hard for you to make authentic decisions about how to invest your own time because you’ll be stuck in the cycle of trying to please other people.

To deal with guilt and shame, acknowledge your feelings, and have empathy for yourself. Then, make clear-eyed choices about what you’re really responsible for, and make sure you’re not taking on too much. Surround yourself with people who accept you unconditionally for who you are – rather than for what you do.

Fear, guilt, and shame are just a few of the common emotions you may experience, especially in times of transition. Remember: if you accept your emotions, they can become your best allies.

"},{"id":"60016e386cee070006e8206c","title":"Cultivating a positive mindset is essential to achieving your goals.","text":"

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.

In a study about weight loss, for instance, researchers discovered that women who believed they’d be able to lose weight were more likely to do so.

The key message here is: Cultivating a positive mindset is essential to achieving your goals.

The best kind of positive thinking is accompanied by a sense of personal responsibility. In the weight loss experiment, women who said they thought losing weight would take a lot of effort lost an average of 24 pounds more than those who believed it would be easy. Realistic optimists don’t leave good results to fate. They know they have to put in the work, and believe in their resilience and ability to get things done.

Positive thinking may not come naturally to you. But thankfully, it’s possible to cultivate and practice an optimistic mindset until it becomes second nature.

A great place to start is by practicing gratitude. You may be in a stressful job or up to your eyeballs in domestic drudgery, but if you look hard enough you can always find something to be grateful for. Practice gratitude for the very small things in your life, like a glass of clean water or a friendly conversation with a colleague.

Next, you need to start reprogramming how you think about yourself and your life. Take a quiet moment to listen to what your internal monologue says about you. Chances are it’s a very critical voice, saying things like I always make mistakes, or I’ll never succeed. This voice is very powerful. But you can change the conversation by practicing meditation techniques and repeating positive affirmations.

When you meditate, you start to become aware of what’s going on in your mind. Meditating also reduces stress and gives you the mental space to question your thinking.

Once you’ve begun meditating, you can begin saying positive affirmations to yourself, like I am confident and worthy. This might feel unnatural at first, but persevere – you’ll slowly change the way you think about yourself.

"},{"id":"60016e386cee070006e8206d","title":"The second secret to effective time investment is to set realistic expectations about how much you can do.","text":"

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.

The problem with being over-optimistic about time? It always leaves you stressed and overwhelmed when you’re confronted with reality. And that’s why the second secret is so important.

The key message is: The second secret to effective time investment is to set realistic expectations about how much you can do.

Time optimism often comes from an insidious perfectionism. We’re so driven to do everything, and do it right, that we overload our plates. But ironically, perfectionism can make us less productive. We focus on small things and lose sight of the bigger picture. Or we become so overwhelmed that we feel paralyzed.

To set realistic goals, let go of your perfectionism and accept yourself as you are – not as you wish you were. Find it hard to get up in the morning? Then you’re not the type to go for a 5:00 a.m. run and make smoothies for breakfast. Adjust your expectations, and make your morning as easy as possible by preparing your clothes and packing your lunch the night before.

Becoming realistic buys you freedom. It’s much more relaxing to live within your means. And when you become aware of how little time you have, you’ll make better choices about what to prioritize.

Of course, sometimes unrealistic expectations come from outside. Perhaps your boss gives you 60 hours of work to squeeze into a 40-hour week. Or your friends expect you to always be available. In these cases, you’ll need to practice saying no, and managing other people’s expectations.

For example, you could have a meeting with your boss and let her know that you can’t get everything done in time, so you’ll be prioritizing the most urgent tasks. Or practice letting your phone go to voicemail and calling your friends back when it suits you.

"},{"id":"60016e386cee070006e8206e","title":"The third secret to effective time investment is to strengthen simple routines.","text":"

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.

Routines are the lifeblood of good time-planning. They can make you feel less overwhelmed because they limit the number of choices you need to make every day, leaving you with the mental space to concentrate on more important things.

The key message here is: The third secret to effective time investment is to strengthen simple routines.

Routines aren’t only useful for workaholics who want to work less. They’re also essential for people who need to increase their productivity. For example, freelancers often have trouble sitting down to work, because their days don’t have a lot of in-built structure.

The author once helped a famous writer who just couldn’t get down to work on her next book. The stakes were high, as she felt under pressure to match the standard of her previous work. She’d also been recently diagnosed with ADHD, which she realized made it harder to focus on just one project.

With the author’s help, she created a simple writing routine, where she got up and sat down to work almost immediately with a cup of coffee. Suddenly, she was making steady and consistent progress on her project, even though she only worked a couple of hours every morning. What’s more, she was free to dedicate herself to other pursuits for the rest of the day, peaceful in the knowledge that her important work was done.

It’s possible that for you routines come with a lot of negative associations. Perhaps you remember being forced into tiresome routines in childhood, and feel the need to rebel. Routines can seem to kill spontaneity, and even stifle your creativity. But, in fact, the opposite is true. If you develop a routine in which you know that you’re meeting your important commitments, then you can enjoy the rest of your time guilt-free, and do the things you love the most.

But how do you actually implement a routine? You’ll find out in the next blink.

"},{"id":"60016e386cee070006e8206f","title":"You can create your own effective routines by following four easy steps.","text":"

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.

The key message here is: You can create your own effective routines by following four easy steps.

Now that you’ve chosen your action, it’s time for the second step: carefully visualizing your new routine, and anticipating any possible barriers. For example, you should realistically assess how long the activity will take, and whether you actually have time to fit it into your life. You should also anticipate what might go wrong. Thinking about our running example again, ask yourself what happens if it’s raining. You may not feel like going for a run – so, come up with an alternative activity for rainy days.

Once you’ve thought through these barriers, you can start visualizing how to implement the routine itself. If you’re doing a morning run, plan ahead: set out your exercise clothes the night before, and make sure you get to bed at a reasonable hour. It can also be helpful to define the very first action you’ll need to take in the morning, like rolling out of bed and putting on your shoes.

Now you’re ready for step three: putting it into practice! Remember that your routine may feel strange or unnatural at first. You may find yourself wanting to rebel, or putting up mental blocks. No matter! Keep going, as messily or imperfectly as necessary.

The fourth and final step is reviewing your progress. Make sure to lavish praise on any progress you make, however small – even if you only manage to run once a week, that’s a huge improvement! Once you’ve done that, see if there are any tweaks that’ll make the routine even more effective.

And then, repeat.

For many people, sticking to a routine is the hard part. Luckily, that’s what the final blink is all about.

"},{"id":"60016e386cee070006e82070","title":"To be successful, ask for help in achieving your goals.","text":"

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.

Accountability partners, or cheerleaders, are people who’ll support you in reaching your goals, even when you really don’t feel like it. They’re especially important for long-term, challenging projects. Without accountability, your enthusiasm could fritter away after the first few weeks, meaning you never achieve what you wanted to.

The key message here is: To be successful, ask for help in achieving your goals.

The ideal accountability partners are people you can be completely transparent with. They should be invested in you and your project, but also able to stay objective. They might be friends or family members, or a personal coach.

You should think in advance about how much contact will be useful in keeping you on track, and what specifically you’d like to discuss with them in your check-ins. If you’re trying to start an exercise regime, you might want to send a daily status report over WhatsApp. If you’re working on a PhD dissertation, you may find it helpful to send your partner a sheath of completed pages every week.

Joining a group can be a very effective way of being accountable. Think of groups like Alcoholics Anonymous or Weight Watchers, or even a book club. People support each other in changing behavior one day or week at a time, whether that’s stopping drinking or reading more. The advantage of a group is that you’re all in it together. A powerful solidarity can emerge from the mutual support.

Workplaces can create a culture of accountability that benefits their staff. That could be working together to make sure everyone meets productivity goals, but could also be making sure that people take enough time off. For example, Adobe forces staff to take proper holiday time by having company shutdowns. That means no one has to deal with a pile of urgent internal emails on their return to work, and everybody comes back newly refreshed.

"},{"id":"60016e396cee070006e82071","title":"Final summary","text":"

Most of us live impulsively, driven by emotions like fear and guilt to try and cram as much as possible into our days. But, realistically, we only have a finite amount of time. When we ignore that reality, we end up getting stressed and burned out, and all our relationships suffer. By applying the three secrets to time investment, we can completely transform how we live. First, we need to make action-based priorities. Second, we need to make our expectations realistic. And third, we need to develop simple routines that help us stay on track.

Actionable advice:

Choose a trigger to jumpstart your routine.

Sometimes starting an action can be the hardest part. That’s why it can be helpful to jumpstart a routine by coupling it to an action that you do anyway. For example, if you want to start jogging every morning, plan to head out the door as soon as you’ve had your first cup of coffee. It can also be helpful to plan the action you’ll do straight after the run, like jump in the shower. Integrating the new action within your existing routine will make it feel much more manageable.

Got feedback?

We’d love to hear what you think about our content! Just drop an email to remember@blinkist.com with The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment as the subject line and share your thoughts!

What to read next: The Art of Stopping Time, by Pedram Shojai

As you’ve just learned, time is a precious and finite commodity, so we need to spend it wisely. External fixes like good scheduling ensure you spend your hours doing what is most important to you. But that’s only the first step.

You may be physically out to dinner with your family, but are you really spending time with them if you’re still thinking about your work emails? Learn how to practice simple, effective mindfulness techniques that allow you to truly live in the moment, stay calm, strengthen the quality of your interactions with other people, and live your days to the fullest, by heading over to our blinks to The Art of Stopping Time.

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