Time Management

Focus on Achieving Your Highest Priorities

February 17, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Wriggle yourself out of the mindset that you have to “get through” the day. Adopt the attitude that the coming hours are filled with open-ended potential to do the best work of your life and take action that can change your life forever.

This attitude shift can help you see things differently and focus on making life better. Ruthless prioritization means working on the very best of the ideas—not just the very good ideas, but also the ones that constitute the most important thing you could be doing.

Make a list of people, activities, and things that rate the highest level of importance in your life. Think about what you value most and rank them in order of importance. Then, spend as many waking moments as possible using your best skills on causes you deeply care about.

That’s indeed the best way to live life.

Idea for Impact: The key to performing at your best is freeing up your mind to do your most productive and creative work. Decide your highest priorities and have the discipline to say no to other things.

When it’s time to reflect on the week, day, or hour ahead, ask, “Which of my activities drive the biggest results?”

Refocus and make progress, not react.

Just Start

February 3, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Procrastination is a chronic habit. Many of us procrastinate to give ourselves fleeting comfort from our dread of starting a task.

One way to overcome inertia and overcome procrastination: whether it’s studying, exercising, writing, or whatever, just start. Cut out the distractions. Divide your workload down into manageable, bite-sized fragments. Just start.

When you find yourself procrastinating, tell yourself to “just start”—over and over if needed—until you convince yourself to work on the task. No more fumbling around.

Often, just beginning the task can positively shift your motivation. The thing with procrastinating is that you think a task is harder than it is, so you avoid starting it. The task isn’t really that hard most of the time, but you just think it is.

Even minimal progress toward a goal lets you feel more optimistic about the objective and ourselves. Typically, once you commit to a task and build momentum, you’ll discover it’s not as “hard” as you’d anticipated. From there, your disposition snowballs, and one task leads to another, which leads to another. Indeed, objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

Idea for Impact: Don’t wait to start that daunting task. Remember, you don’t have to like it to do it. Take one small step now to get the ball rolling down the hill toward completion.

To be More Productive, Try Doing Less

January 27, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The top performers in every field tend to have one thing in common: they accept fewer tasks and obsess over getting them right.

If you’re struggling with time- and task-management, the solution is not to try to be even more productive by somehow “finding” time to do more things.

Time management advice tends to want you to believe that you aren’t doing enough with all that “extra time” you can unearth by squeezing out more from your time. You don’t need to commoditize every minute of your life and devote it to productive work.

You can’t—and shouldn’t—do it all

More time is not the answer to your time management problems.

You can’t manage time. You cannot control time. What you can control are your actions. You can control how you spend your time on what activities. You are in complete control of what you do and when you do it.

Jog through your list of things to do. For each task, ask,

Why is this task necessary?
What would happen a month from now if it isn’t done?
What would happen if this never gets done
Who wants this task done, and who is the right person to do it?
Do fewer things that create more value, rather than more things that are mostly empty.

Effective time management is about knowing what’s essential and what’s not. Don’t get disproportionately involved with small things while monumental things are to be done.

Idea for Impact: No point in doing something that doesn’t need doing.

The best way to get lots of things done is to not do them at all.

To get more done, you need to do less. Trying to do it all doesn’t work. In other words, do only those things that really matter. Focus on those activities that drive the most significant results.

The Mental Junkyard Hour

October 27, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If you can muster up the energy, use an hour or two at the end of your day to crank out all those “functional tasks” that don’t require a totally clear head.

Wrap up anything that you shouldn’t carry forward to the next day. Crack down on all those administrative and life-maintenance tasks—like catching up with email, tidying up your home, and reprioritizing to-do lists. If you’re a student, you can summarize class notes, re-do practice problems, and get the school bag ready.

Making the most of the “mental junkyard hour” lets you spend the time when your head is clearer to focus on those tougher, “conceptual” tasks that need deep focused work.

Compartmentalize and Get More Done

September 16, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

One way you can achieve “living in the moment” is by putting your emotional issues into “compartments” within your head and your heart. You can deal with those feelings on your own when you need to.

Many aspects of life can get you sidetracked and distraught. Finding a place to retreat within yourself can be challenging. By compartmentalizing, you can put your feelings where they belong, and you can earmark one challenge to tackle another challenge.

You can focus on the one task at hand and deal with the rest when appropriate.

Mental compartmentalization has a darker side, however. Psychologists identify extreme compartmentalization as a major defense mechanism by which some evade the acute anxiety that can spring from the clash of contradictory values or conflicting emotions. (A very pious scientist, for instance, could hold opposing beliefs about the Judeo-Christian and scientific notions of life’s origins. Compartmentalizing, she may live different value sets depending on whether she’s at church or her laboratory.) Some individuals also fall back on compartmentalization to cope with the lingering trauma of childhood abuse, neglect, and other emotional conflicts.

The day-to-day compartmentalization I’m talking about isn’t denial or avoidance. It isn’t evading conflicts and sidestepping problems—instead, it’s putting things out of the way for the moment and not letting them impede the rest of your life.

You can’t just ignore your issues and expect them to go away, but obsessing on them won’t help either.

Idea for Impact: Compartmentalize and get more done. Putting away the things that hurt or upset you, even if just for a short time, can also help you gain valuable perspective on dealing with them.

This Question Can Change Your Life

August 19, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The one question you should ask yourself continuously is, “What should I be doing right now that’d be the most effective use of this moment?”

The ability to know what’s essential and what’s not is the key to successful time management.

Throughout your day, ask, “What’s my priority?” This question takes many forms, but its premise is simple enough:

What action can you take now? What question can you ask? What opportunity or problem shall you engage in?
What is the one activity that could drive you the most significant results? What decision could have the most significant impact on your priorities?
Should you do this task, delegate it, or say ‘no’? What is the most expeditious way to do this task? Is this time-effective?

Ask these questions—and answer them honestly. Adjust your actions and seek better outcomes. Don’t get bogged down by activities that don’t contribute to your values and priorities.

Idea for Impact: Envision a better now. Be conscious about time. It’s your most valuable commodity. Don’t get unduly busy at trivial things while there are essential things you should be working on.

Do These Three Things In The Morning For A Better Day

August 12, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Mornings can be challenging to get up and get going, especially when work is home and home is work. If you want to hit the ground running each day, do these three simple things to make your mornings much less frenzied:

1/ Wake up to a clean space. Waking up to a disorganized home, overflowing trash, or a sink full of unwashed dishes can really put a damper on your day. The clutter and untidiness can wind you up if you have no clean cups and plates for your breakfast or you can’t find whatever you need to get your day started. Have a more pleasant and productive morning by taking care of all these chores the night before. Organize together everything you need for the next day.

2/ Make time to exercise. Exercising first thing in the morning doesn’t just perk up your body; it also boosts your spirit and metabolism and leaves you feeling invigorated. If you aren’t a morning-exercise kind of person, try to wake up 15 minutes earlier to do a few simple stretches, pushups, lift hand weights, and pace up and down the stairs a few times. You’ll kick off your day feeling a little more vibrant and refreshed.

3/ Make a to-do list. Start your morning by identifying what your day is going to look like. This way, you’ll feel more in control of your time and get more done. Ask yourself this question, “When the day is over, and I’m getting ready to go to bed, what would I have accomplished today to give me a tremendous sense of achievement?” Prioritize things that have to be at the forefront. Planning is easiest when your mental clarity is sharpest, which, for most people, is first thing in the morning.

A simple morning habit allows you to take control of your emotional state. It sets precedence and intent for the day.

Niksen: The Dutch Art of Embracing Stillness, Doing Nothing

July 26, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Niksen - Dutch Technique of Doing Nothing, Just Being The Dutch have a practice they call Niksen, derived from “niks doen,” which literally means “nothing-ing.” It involves purposefully engaging in doing absolutely nothing, embracing a state of aimlessness.

Think of it as a sanctioned daydreaming session.

Niksen entails gazing out the window and allowing your mind to wander wherever it pleases. Unlike mindfulness meditation, where you observe your thoughts or focus on your breath, Niksen is about simply existing. Just being there. There’s no effort to return to the present moment or to analyze your thoughts.

In Niksen, you’re just being. You take a pause, practice stillness, and let your gaze drift to the horizon. It’s about being wherever you are, whether sitting or standing, without any deliberate action. When thoughts arise, you let them pass without scrutiny, allowing them to come and go naturally.

As a stress-relief technique, Niksen is gaining popularity. Embracing idleness means disconnecting from the constant buzz of connectivity and the pressure of stress, anxiety, and depression. Studies show that allowing your mind to wander activates different parts of the brain, maybe even tapping into some hidden wisdom.

Give Niksen a shot, even if it’s just for a minute or two every now and then. It can provide a much-needed break during moments of tension and worry. These brief escapes can add richness and intrigue to your life, expanding your horizons beyond the everyday.

Stop Putting Off Your Toughest Tasks

June 21, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Do those dreaded tasks first—the ones you don’t want to complete. Those are the ones that are truly core to who you are and what your ambitions are.

To be time-effective, you’ll need to use your will-power, a limited resource that it is, in the most effective way possible. Not only does this give the most time to react and correct problems that emerge from the difficult tasks, making progress on the challenging tasks is an incredible morale boost.

You procrastinate when there’s too much to do, or you dislike a task or don’t know where to start. If you figure out which of these blocks you, you can determine the next steps and get it over with.

Idea for Impact: Tasks you enjoy doing are, in fact, often hard not to do. If you tackle them first, you’ll get to the end of the day and find you’ve not achieved anything meaningful at all—just a bunch of ‘stuff’ which, however gratifying, won’t make much difference.

Do More of What Makes You Productive

June 15, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

American playwright and Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Social Network, and The Newsroom) takes six to eight showers a day whenever he suffers from writer’s block. After realizing that a quick refresher allows him to collect his thoughts, Sorkin had a small shower unit fitted in his office to keep his creativity flowing.

Indeed, per “incubation,” the best solutions to problems can sometimes come about suddenly and unexpectedly when you aren’t actively working on your issues.

Idea for Impact: Do more of what makes you productive. Expose yourself to as many productivity ideas as possible. Test different productivity approaches. Keep what works for you; discard the rest.

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You can’t—and shouldn’t—do it all

Idea for Impact: No point in doing something that doesn’t need doing.

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