Time Management

How to Make Your Weekends Feel Longer

October 17, 2008 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

During the weekdays, we engage in routine life and long for two blissful days during the weekends. Habitually, we tend to over-plan for the weekends and underachieve. By Sunday evenings, we tend to feel that our weekends just fizzle out.

We feel that our weekends are short-lived—that they are inadequate to accomplish everything that we want to. We wish we had relaxed more, completed more errands and spent more time with family and friends.

This article presents five habits that you could consider to make the most out of each weekend and feel more refreshed for a new week ahead.

Habit 1: Wake-up Early, Seize your Mornings

Try to avoid sleeping-in. When you wake-up late on Saturday and Sunday mornings, you tend to feel that almost half of these days are over. Moreover, sleeping-in during the weekends puts your sleep out of the weekday-rhythm and makes it difficult to wake-up promptly on Monday mornings.

Maintain your weekday wake-up times on Saturday and Sunday mornings as well. If you desire to “catch-up with sleep,” consider getting to bed earlier on Friday and Saturday nights or taking small naps on Saturday and Sunday mid-mornings. Try not to indulge yourself in a Sunday afternoon siesta—you will be able to go to bed early on Sunday night and prevent drowsiness on Monday afternoon.

Wake up early and seize the mornings. Spend some quiet time alone or with your family. Laze around, go for a brisk walk, visit the Farmers’ Market, sit in your porch with coffee and newspaper, and enjoy the serenity of the morning.

Habit 2: Shift Chores and Errands to Weekdays

Instead of spending your precious weekend on home projects—laundry, sorting, redecorating, cleaning—and errands, consider redistributing chores and errands among the weekdays. Say, for instance, you tend to spend two hours every weekend on chores, consider spending half an hour each weekday completing these tasks. Set your weekend aside for pleasure.

If you must work on particular home projects and run errands during the weekend, complete them on Saturday. This will enable you to unwind on Sunday. Instead, if you relax on Saturday, you will realize on Sunday morning that you will need to complete various household tasks by Sunday night—you will then hurry through Sunday and exhaust yourself by Sunday night.

Focus on a stress-free, relaxed, fun-filled Sunday with family and friends.

Habit 3: Plan and Prepare; Do Not Over-plan

Consult your family and friends and prepare an outline for your weekend in advance. Do not wait until the weekend to organize the weekend. On or before Thursday, go out shopping and collect all the resources necessary. By preparing in advance, you will be able to execute your plan as soon as your weekend starts instead of spending time wondering what to do.

Avoid any activity, e.g., catching up with work email, that is part of the weekday routine. Do consider, however, spending time working on important matters e.g., planning your investments, that you have been postponing. Vary your activities each week and avoid establishing a routine for your weekends—routines are for weekdays.

Habit 4: Improvise and Engage in Life’s Little Pleasures

“The happiness of too many days is often destroyed by trying to accomplish too much in one day. We would do well to follow a common rule for our daily lives – Do Less and Do It Better.”
— Dale E. Turner

As you plan your activities for the weekend, be realistic in what you can achieve. Do not over-plan. Try to prioritize your activities. Rushing around can easily exhaust you.

Allow for spontaneity and improvise your weekends. Engage in life’s little pleasures: spend time outdoors, go for a walk, hike, take a bicycle ride, or tend to your garden. Talk to friends and family you have not been in touch for a while, read magazines and books, or look at old pictures. Or, pursue a hobby, go to the beach, visit a museum, attend a concert, or do anything else that is fun for you and your loved ones.

Habit 5: Reflect and Appreciate

On Sunday evenings, reflect on everything you did during the weekend and appreciate having a good time with family and friends.

Do not fret if you did not complete everything you had planned. There is always another weekend coming-up.

Concluding Thoughts

The key to making your weekend feel longer and having a relaxing time is to reorganize your plans and freeing-up time for your favourite, pleasurable activities during the weekend. By prioritizing, improvising and staying on top of things you can arrive at the end of your weekend contented and full of energy for the fresh week ahead.

Overcome Procrastination: My “10-Minute Dash” Technique to Get a Task Going

May 14, 2008 By Nagesh Belludi 2 Comments

“He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.”
– Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)

Procrastination: “Why do now what I can do later“

Simply, procrastination is a choice to delay an action with the intent to act later.

Most of us are prone to procrastination on tasks big and small. Some of our postponement-problems are instigated by fears of incompletion and failure, or, from assuming that the tasks we face are tedious. Often, our procrastination is nothing more than resentment to working on tasks assigned by others.

The “10-Minute Dash” Technique

The next time you face a ‘job’ that appears overwhelming or unpleasant, beat the temptation to postpone action by committing to work on the job for just ten minutes. Follow these four simple steps.

Consider the ‘job‘ at hand and break it down. Pick two or three simple component-‘tasks‘. For instance, if you want to clean your study room, your component tasks could be to clean the bookshelf, organize the study-desk, etc.
Commit to focus on your chosen tasks for just ten minutes. Use a timer, if necessary. For ten minutes, do nothing but your chosen tasks.
Avoid distractions or interruptions. For instance, if you unearth Aunt Stella’s letter while cleaning a bookshelf, continue to clean–you can read her letter later.
Do not give up. Two minutes into the ten-minute dash, if you find your chosen task tedious, do not stop. After all, you have just eight more minutes to go.

Beginning a Task Builds Momentum

There are two distinct outcomes of doing a ten-minute dash.

Often, at the end of ten minutes of uninterrupted work, you feel good about working towards your goal. It is likely that beginning to work on the job built a momentum; you got absorbed in the tasks. In contrast to your presumption, the job may turn out to be rather easy and pleasant. Continue to work—schedule ten, twenty or thirty more minutes of work.
The less likely outcome is that the ten minutes of work reinforced some of your displeasures about the job. Still, your achievement was that, at the very least, you got ten minutes of work done. If you do not wish to continue working on the task, commit to resume your work later. Ask yourself, “When can I start again?”

Concluding Thoughts

One of the easiest techniques to overcoming procrastination is to begin. Quite often, seemingly difficult tasks get easier once you get working on them. In short time, you get into the ‘flow’ and work towards completion.

The Time to Think

July 28, 2007 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In the age of knowledge work, we are all paid to think—to evaluate solution-paths and solve problems creatively. Yet, we get busy doing and fail to devote part of our days for deep thinking.

In today’s workplace, we all have too much to do in too little time with too few resources at hand. This faster pace of work-life coupled with the emphasis on getting things done has come to accentuate busyness. The result is that we lack a sense of control of our time. We do not take the time out to think and plan.

The Tragedy of Our Times

If I had eight hours to chop a tree,
I would spend six hours sharpening my axe.
* Unknown

Jack Trout, author and business leader, explains that with “No Time to Think,” we have become a world of reactors.

With the world of work getting more complex and difficult, and with the demands of people, cell phones, BlackBerrys or just too much communication, having the quiet and time to sort things out and figure what to do is fast disappearing. We have become a world of reactors, not thinkers, at a time when good thinking is so desperately needed.

Publisher-CEO Michael Hyatt advocates “Finding More ‘Head Time.'”

Most of us don’t spend time thinking. We are so busy doing that we have almost forgotten how to think. Yet it is our thinking, more than any other single activity, that influences our outcomes.

The problems we face will not likely be solved by working harder. New gadgets won’t really help either. In fact, I sometimes fear that our many gadgets have only added unnecessary clutter to our lives. What we need is better, more profound thinking.

Call for Action: Book Frequent Quiet-Time

Thinking requires a great deal of time and energy. With frequent interruptions and distractions, dedicating time for deep thinking or intense work can be very challenging. Schedule frequent quiet-times into your day.

During each quiet-time session, completely shut yourself off from your colleagues, from e-mail, phone calls and other distractions. Use this time to focus on challenging or highly-priority tasks. Reserve a conference room in your facility, arrive early at work or work at your local library. Even brief periods of dedicated thinking or work can make your day vastly productive.

In addition to booking frequent quiet time, assess time- and energy-wasters. Filter incoming information, delegate effectively, automate routine tasks, fight-off distractions and frequent interruptions from your colleagues, and, be selective in what meetings you attend.

Three Habits to Create More Personal Time

June 1, 2007 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In the February 2006 issue of the Entrepreneur magazine, “Smart Moves” columnist Chris Penttila offered twenty-five ways to simplify business and life for entrepreneurs. Here are his three guidelines to create more personal-time for ourselves.

Create boundaries. Set aside 10 minutes after lunch to make and return personal calls. Set a time for leaving the office every day, no matter how busy you are. And spend at least two hours doing something fun before you burn some late-night oil. Your family will thank you.
Shorten your to-do list. “A to-do list is nothing but a wish list.” A long to-do list leaves less time to focus on revenue-generating ideas. Instead, focus on the top three urgent tasks for the day. The rest can wait.
Love your inner Luddite. Entrepreneurs who become slaves to gadgets “are running reactive businesses and being reactive with their time.” Try working unplugged–this means no internet connection and absolutely no phone calls–for one hour every morning. It will give you a sense of accomplishment that lasts all day.

Call for Action

“Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”
— Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918,) French Poet

Balancing the various demands on our time is a challenge for most of us. Evaluate your daily routines and habits. Use the above guidelines to simplify your lifestyle and spend time on people, hobbies, travel and activities you enjoy. Brainstorm ideas with friends and family. Be realistic in what you can expect to achieve; do not over-plan. On your journey to success and prosperity in life, make sure you enjoy the journey.

Seven Habits to Beat Monday Morning Blues

March 5, 2007 By Nagesh Belludi 5 Comments

Ring. Ringggg. RRRRRRING. It is 6:30 on a Monday morning. Your alarm clock goes off. You can’t bear the thought of getting out of bed and going to work. You suddenly remember that you promised your boss an important status report by noon and realize you are yet to begin a test to gather data for the report. Perhaps, you partied all weekend with family and friends, and dread going back to your uncooperative co-workers and a cold boss. You wish you could stay at home and escape from your commitments. You push the snooze button yet again as you cover yourself with your blanket.

Does the above experience sound familiar? If it does, you probably suffer from Monday morning blues. In other words, it sounds like you have the “Case of the Mondays,” to borrow a phrase from the movie ‘Office Space.’

Mondays are a bit of a drag for many of us. We feel our weekends are inadequate to accomplish everything that we want to—we tend to over-plan and underachieve. We wish we had relaxed more, completed more errands and spent more time with family and friends. When we return to work on Monday, we are hung-over from the out-of-work rhythm of the weekend.

Here are seven habits to beat Monday morning blues.

Habit 1: Prepare for Your Weekend

Plan all your weekend activities after consulting family and friends. Be realistic in what you can achieve; do not over-plan.
Before leaving work on Friday evening, clean and organize your desk and prepare a to-do list for Monday morning.

Habit 2: Have an Organized Weekend

Enjoy a stress-free, relaxed Sunday by planning entertainment and fun activities for Sunday. Spend time with family and friends–go shopping or walking or take your children to the science museum. Or, just be lazy. Focus on recreation on Sunday.
Complete your home projects and errands on Saturday. This will enable you to unwind on Sunday, before you start your workweek. Instead, if you relax on Saturday, you will realize on Sunday morning that you will need to complete all your household tasks by Sunday night. You will then hurry through Sunday and feel tired by Sunday night: you will not feel well rested on Monday morning.

Habit 3: Maintain a Regular Sleep Pattern

During the weekend, we tend to go to bed late and wake-up late because we are not required to be at work by 8:00am on Saturday or Sunday. With our sleep out-of-rhythm during the weekend, we find it difficult to wake-up promptly on Monday morning. Maintain your wake-up time on Saturday and Sunday mornings. If you desire to ‘catch-up with sleep,’ get to bed earlier on Friday and Saturday.
Try not to nap on Sunday afternoon—you will be able to get into sleep early on Sunday night and prevent drowsiness on Monday afternoon.

Habit 4: Prepare on Sunday Night

Pack your bags, prepare your clothes and setup the breakfast table on Sunday night. If you brought work home, pack-up and organize your workbag. You will not feel hurried or leave important papers at home on Monday morning.
If possible, review your agenda for the rest of the week and your to-do list for Monday morning. Reviewing your commitments will make you more conscious of your plans for the week ahead.

Habit 5: Relax as you Prepare on Monday Morning

Go to bed early on Sunday night and wake-up early on Monday morning. You will be able to relax as you wake-up, get prepared and have your breakfast.
Start from home early. Beat the traffic and listen to good music during your drive to work. By coming to work early, you can concentrate and get high-priority work done with fewer interruptions or before your co-workers stop-by your cubicle to discuss their weekends and developments from across the world.

Habit 6: Choose Work You Enjoy for Monday Morning

Having a productive start-of-week is critical to having a great week ahead. If you prepare your to-do list on Friday evening, you can start working as soon as you reach your desk on Monday morning. Firstly, choose the kind of work you enjoy doing for Monday morning. For example, if you like preparing illustrations, work on a presentation of your new proposal for the project workflow.
Secondly, avoid negative interactions that may make you feel glum at the start of the workweek. For example, avoid meeting people who may have counterarguments on your project plans or avoid working on emails or memos with arguments against your idea. Experiencing positive interactions will make you feel good about yourself and your work.

Habit 7: Organize the Rest of the Workweek

If possible, do not have important deadlines or schedule update meetings early in the week. If you have a major project deadline on Tuesday or need to meet your boss on Monday afternoons to discuss test results, you may not feel relaxed during the weekend. On Sunday, you will be concerned about how you will prepare for these commitments. Instead, schedule important meetings for the later part of the week. You will feel good: you have the early part of the week to prepare and you can enjoy the weekend with a sense of accomplishment.
Plan for fun on Monday evenings: plan on watching a movie or eating-out or taking a walk along the beach on Monday evening. You will have something to look forward to throughout the day on Monday.
Take a mini-break during midweek. See my earlier blog article on taking Wednesday afternoon time-offs: leave early on Wednesday and do something out-of-your-routine and relax.

Concluding Thoughts

The key to beating Monday morning blues is organizing your work for maximum leisure during the weekend. By following the above seven habits, you will enjoy relaxed weekends and prepare yourself for a week of action when your alarm clock goes-off on Monday mornings.

How Hard You Should Work

January 12, 2007 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

People are surprised when I tell them I put in 70 to 75 hours of work every week and get about five hours of sleep every day. The typical responses are “Your Company makes you do that much work?” Or, “Doesn’t your boss realize that is a lot of work?”

The New World of Work

We live in a world characterized by intense competition, globalization, greater volatility than before, and demands for higher personal effectiveness. To be successful in the new world of work, we cannot stipulate the specific number of hours we should put in every day. Our accomplishment in these hours, not the number of hours, is the yardstick of our performance assessment. In fact, a 65 to 70 hour workweek has become the norm for getting ahead in leadership roles.

What Works for You

My guideline for how long you should work is, “Work as many hours as you think you need to achieve your goals, realize your aspirations and be happy.”

Note the emphasis on individuality in the above statement. Not everybody faces the same kind of demands; not everybody is equally productive. Nor does everybody have the same kind of aspirations. The number of hours you should work should depend on the opportunities you face and what you intend to do with them. It is a choice you have to make—a choice between components of your personal and professional lives.

If you are an entrepreneur, you may need to work 80-90 hours a week developing your idea; this involves sacrificing out-of-work activities. If you have an eight-to-five job, wish to spend lots of time with family and attend all of your son’s football games, you may work as little as forty hours a week, the minimum expected at your workplace. However, this may involve slower job growth. If you are a stay-at-home mom, and would like to put your engineering skills to good use, you may find a job that will allow you to work out of home. Make the appropriate choices and chart your life course on what works best for you.

Links

A year-2002 study conducted by the National Sleep Foundation concluded that the average American employee works 46 hours per week; see reference.
General Electric’s Chairman and CEO, Jeffrey Immelt is regarded as one of the hardest working executives in corporate America. An article written by Geoffrey Colvin of the Fortune magazine in September 2005 quotes Jeff Immelt saying he works 100 hours a week. See this article for insights to Jeff’s disciplined work style.

Everyday Reflections for Effective Time Management

September 10, 2006 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Our everyday-time stresses are usually caused by having too much work to do in a given amount of time, or by using available time ineffectively. One critical aspect of effective time management is the discipline of analyzing how we utilize our time.

Below are a few practical questions to help reflect on how we spent our days.

Did I start my day with a clear plan on how I would use my time during the day? Did I prepare a to-do list and assign priorities to tasks on the list? Did this plan give me a sense of control over my time?
Did I work on the most important tasks at times when I tend to be most focused and productive?
Did I concentrate on my priorities? Did I feel rushed? How much unplanned time did I spend on pressing problems that demanded my immediate attention or added little value in the context of my goals?
Did I examine my schedule and priorities before committing to new assignments?
Was I effective with the use of my time or was I just efficient in the tasks I completed? Did I do the right things to meet my organization’s, team’s and personal goals?
How will my accomplishments help me progress towards my short-term and long-term goals?
Did I delegate responsibilities and tasks well? Did I use my associates (administrative assistants, subordinates, subject experts, and other resources) effectively?
How well did I use my buffer-times: time when waiting for the dentist, time during the train-commute to work, etc.?
What interruptions and time-wasters did I encounter? Did I attend unimportant meetings or get non-critical telephone calls and email? How could I have avoided these time-intrusions?
Did I spend too much time deliberating over minor decisions?
Did I spend enough time with family and friends? Did I spend enough time on my fitness, leisure and spiritual activities?
Did I accomplish everything I had hoped to accomplish? How many tasks do I carry forward to tomorrow’s to-do list?
Did I complete a list of things to do for tomorrow and assign priorities to them? Did I leave my workplace, desk and other personal spaces organized?

Ask these questions at the end of each day. Seek what you can learn from the experience of the day and what you can do to make every next day better than the previous day.

« Previous Page

Time Management

Habit 1: Wake-up Early, Seize your Mornings

Habit 2: Shift Chores and Errands to Weekdays

Habit 3: Plan and Prepare; Do Not Over-plan

Habit 4: Improvise and Engage in Life’s Little Pleasures

Habit 5: Reflect and Appreciate

Concluding Thoughts

Wondering what to read next?

Procrastination: “Why do now what I can do later“

The “10-Minute Dash” Technique

Beginning a Task Builds Momentum

Concluding Thoughts

Wondering what to read next?

The Tragedy of Our Times

Call for Action: Book Frequent Quiet-Time

Wondering what to read next?

Call for Action

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Habit 1: Prepare for Your Weekend

Habit 2: Have an Organized Weekend

Habit 3: Maintain a Regular Sleep Pattern

Habit 4: Prepare on Sunday Night

Habit 5: Relax as you Prepare on Monday Morning

Habit 6: Choose Work You Enjoy for Monday Morning

Habit 7: Organize the Rest of the Workweek

Concluding Thoughts

Wondering what to read next?

The New World of Work

What Works for You

Links

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