2 important aspects of managing TIME

I’m a big TIME FREAK; I care for each second. If I don’t spend my time well any day, I would feel an unknown uneasiness. If I don’t have work, I would feel down. Valuing time is one quality which keeps pushing me to do further. Valuing it also means, I really weigh every second before spending, in other terms, I try to manage time as good as possible.

How do you manage time? or rather, how do you manage yourself to time? because, time can’t be managed.

Smart Work, differentiate it with hard work.

I believe in hard work, but I believe more in smart work. Hard work usually directly co-relates with the effort and time you put in, but smart work doesn’t. In hard work, you might spend 2 hours doing the task and in smart work, you might spend 1/2 an hour thinking about the task and doing it in 10 minutes.

Everyone says to do smart work, but how the hell do you actually do Smart work? When I think about it to myself, one thing that makes me smart is -knowing what I’m good at, what I’m not good at and knowing who is good at what I’m not good at. (read it again, if it confuses you). In many cases, when I think about a problem, I usually take time to think through the problem than starting off right away. Many of my friends who are really good at what they do are similar. For example, my best developers ATM and Nakul; they always spent lot of time thinking about architecture, problem from a zoomed out perspective and once they are crystal clear, they complete the hands-on piece very quickly.

When we think through problems/tasks, what I have seen is; either I will get a person who can be my catalyst or find a tool which will be my lever.

When you meet people, instead of judging them (or finding negatives which some people typically do), try to profile them into a person who can potentially help with your next task; try to find what is he good at, where does his network span, and how open he is to help. When you have a specific ask, more often than not, people end up helping you. (BTW, that is an excellent way to build up or nurture your relations).

Trust me on this; if you are facing a difficult task, some lazy, yet intelligent guy (may be more than 1) has found solutions as tools, platforms, plugins and so forth. I spent time on Product hunt and Chrome store once in a while to find the best tools to suit my needs. At any point of time, I will have 8–10 chrome plugins installed, I have several integrations with my Slack, gmail, Mac apps etc.

So thinking through any task/problem you have in front of you is the best way to do smart work.

Choosing what and what not to do?

My mentor tells me?—?‘You have limited time on this planet. You are not forced to work with anyone or anything’. This is very important since this frees you from taking up Bull**** tasks which you do for the sake of it. First thing to do is?—?learn to say BIG BLIND NOs. Especially in our country (India), we don’t know to say No. No saves you all the time in the world.

Whenever a task/problem/event comes in front of you?—?think?—?‘Are you really needed there?’. Is it something which will happen without you there? Is it something which you can delegate and free yourself up? Since I work with IEEE, I get invites to attend events and present small sessions. For a few months now, I ask the organisers clearly, “Are you sure you need me?” In some cases, I tell them “There are better people to handle that session. I’m not needed”. At my company, in some conversations, I deliberately not even listen to some of them. Yes, you don’t have to listen just because you are there.

Think about this?—?there are so many whatsapp, Facebook, chat groups where you are part of without even knowing why you are there. You either mute them (for 1 year without notifications) or quit them (don’t bother thinking what rest would think). If you are a notification freak like me, then you don’t like seeing unread notifications anywhere, so you open up and see them. Every time, you take the phone and look at a crap whatsapp, your loss is much more than you imagine. It is not one second, you are losing your focus, your rhythm, which will take a lot more time to come back to you.

So there you go, if you can simply follow these two things, you will start saving shit loads of time. Do you have other ways you save time? Let me know.