The 25th Hour: How to Get an Hour Back in Your Day

The HotelTonight team is the smartest, most innovative and most motivated group of people I’ve ever worked with.

Take Bao in our Paris office. He not only leads our European supply team, but also recently published a book on a topic he’s passionate about: how to supercharge productivity at work, get an hour back in your day, and live a fuller life. Together with a few entrepreneurial friends, Bao consulted 300 entrepreneurs across the globe and compiled their productivity secrets and tips in his book, The 25th Hour.

I share Bao’s passion for productivity, and have read several books on the topic (a favorite: Getting Things Done by David Allen). I got a sneak peek of The 25th Hour (originally written in French and launching in the US in English today) when Bao hosted a Lunch & Learn with the HotelTonight team. It was a great refresher on all things efficiency, and I picked up some helpful new tips, too. Here are 5 of my favorite takeaways.

Define your top 3 goals of the day & timebox them

Before you start work each morning, try to momentarily forget about what’s urgent, and focus instead on identifying the three most important tasks to do by the end of the day. Then block out the time to do them in your calendar. Think of it as scheduling a meeting with yourself. Physically blocking out space in your calendar helps you avoid getting sidetracked by meetings and provides you with a dedicated time slot to get things done.

Passive tasks first

Passive tasks are tasks which require you to do just one thing to get them going. These could be delegated tasks like briefing a colleague on a new project, or “first-step” tasks such as a request for your lawyers, downloading a large file, or simply turning on the oven. If you’re faced with the choice between starting an active task or a passive one, go for the passive option first. Having set the process in motion, you can parallel process and move forward with your active tasks while you wait for the result. For example, if you’re unsure whether to brief your team on a new product launch (a passive task), or dive into working on a presentation (active task), brief your team first.

Combat procrastination

Procrastination is obviously a major hurdle on the road to productivity. To beat it, first identify why you're procrastinating.

Do you procrastinate because the task is so complex you feel like you’re looking to climb an impossibly high wall? Put a ladder against the wall, with each step of the ladder being a motivating and achievable sub-task, and climb the ladder step by step.

Do you procrastinate because the task is tedious? Set a deadline and book a workout session at 6pm. This will force you to get things done. Then dive right in and start to tackle your task. We tend to think that we need to be motivated to make something happen. Turns out, it’s the opposite: we need to make something happen to be motivated. If you want to motivate yourself to go for a run, jog 30 feet. If you want to motivate yourself to write, penning the first few words will alleviate empty page anxiety. The first second is the hardest, but once you’ve started, it almost always gets easier from there.

Do you procrastinate because the task is boring? Find a way to make it more fun. Gather your colleagues, put on some music, lay out some snacks, or make it a challenge!

Get obsessed with your to-do list

All the tasks you know you need to complete take up a lot of space in your brain. You experience this all the time in your day-to-day life. A jumbled mental list of to-dos clouds your mind and prevents you from concentrating. Think of the brain as a computer hard drive: if you do too much at the same time, it’s likely to overheat and slow down. For this reason, it's crucial to disentangle yourself from this ‘black cloud’ of interfering thoughts. The best solution is to store everything on the equivalent of an external hard-drive: your to-do list. Systematically noting down each task on a to-do list frees up the mind. Make sure to write your to-dos in a results-oriented way, which is more motivating. For example: ‘H2 tactics shared with the team’ vs. ‘Develop H2 tactics.’

Manage your energy

Take full advantage of the time of day when your energy levels are naturally at their peak –and therefore so are your motivation and concentration. This will equip you to know when it’s time to deal with important work, and when you’re better off going for a coffee break. Once you understand this about yourself, start building your schedule around it. If you’re an early-morning person, for example, move all your meetings to the afternoon and use mornings for the more demanding aspects of your workload.

Congratulations on the release of your book, Bao! I’m incredibly proud to have you on the HotelTonight team.