#193: Course Topics: "Non-Doing Work"

Introduction

In today's "People Skills" newsletter, we're looking at a part of work that is highly important for your productivity but involves no effort or stress at all. What is it?

It's "Non-Doing Work".

Non-doing work is work that is non-active. It is associated with the element, air, and for many people it is unproductive and wasted time.

However, nothing could be further from the truth.

Non-doing time allows us to plan, to think things through and to learn. It is the starting point for solving problems and so saving time. Thinking time is also time for recuperation and renewal.

As a budding effective time manager, you should give as much attention to non-working time as to working time.

And, in today's course topics, we'll show you how...

01. The Element of Air

In the Manage Train Learn Time Management system, air tasks include waiting patiently, smart planning, reviewing the past and learning, taking decisions, listening, absorbing, and tuning-in, and relaxing and recuperating...

02. Non-Doing

Those who do things without forcing can tune in to the natural order of how things work and work with time rather than against it...

03. Busy Doing Nothing

The Industrial Age from which we are presently emerging had no time for non-doing work. Work was organised to fill up the time with as much productive activity as possible...

04. Non-Doing Work 01: Creative Contemplation

Without our dreams, we would accomplish little of value in our lives. Our dreams and daydreams inspire us to action...

05. Non-Doing Work 02: Focused Thinking

Focused thinking allows us to access the huge store of experiences and information stored in our sub-conscious brains. Whereas forced thinking takes place one thought at a time in our conscious brains, sub-conscious thinking comes in whole blocks...

06. Use Your Brain

The value of thinking time as opposed to activity time is best appreciated by understanding how our brains work...

07. Non-Doing Work 03: Tuning-In Quiet

Tuning-in quiet is the ability to become aware of ourselves and our surroundings and be at one with them. Tuning-in quiet is the state of simply being. It means being fully present in the moment...

08. Every Hundredth Monkey

The "100th Monkey Syndrome" is a phenomenon of nature, in which ideas and beliefs are transmitted through the air to others without any work on the part of those transmitting or receiving...

09. Non-Doing Work 04: Creativity

One of the interesting paradoxes about time management is that we can often be more productive and creative when we do nothing than when we do a lot...

10. A Sense of the Times

Some people are so tuned in to their surroundings that they can detect the way the wind is blowing, whether metaphorically-speaking or interactively-speaking. They sense the moods of others, they see the trends and fashions, sometimes to considerable advantage...

11. Look After Yourself

To manage your whole time, you need to also manage your whole life: physical, mental, intellectual, and spiritual...

12. Turn, Turn, Turn

As we read in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, there is a natural time for everything in our lives, including a time to do and a time to think. When the time is right, events happen as if by themselves...

13. Appreciation

Within your time management programme, you need to build in time to stop and just do nothing except admire your surroundings, appreciate the passing moment, take pleasure from those around you, re-connect...

14. Non-Doing Work 05: Planning and Doing

In the Western world, we tend to prize action above inaction. We, therefore, hurry to get to one goal and on to the next. In other cultures, such as Japan, China and the Middle East, non-action is prized as highly as action, if not more...

15. Measure Twice, Cut Once

The story of the two carpenters is a reminder that working slow but sure is always better than working quickly with a few mistakes...

16. Non-Doing Work 06: Energy

High energy - when we make the very most of our time - is a combination of internal energies flowing from inside us and external energies coming from the task and the timing...

17. The Morning Bodyclock

Our bodies follow a daily morning rhythm that is natural and universally human and determines what tasks work best when...

18. The Late Day Bodyclock

Our bodies follow a daily post-noon rhythm that is natural and universally human, including the post-lunch dip in energy and the lowering of efficiency in late afternoon...

19. Bodyclocking

According to bigtimes.co.uk, most people plan their working day in a very standard pattern that, probably unknown to them, reflects their body clock...

20. Biorhythms

The theory of biorhythms is an as yet unproven way of describing personal energy...

21. Non-Doing Work 07: Relaxed Quiet

We live busier and more hectic lives than at any time during the history of humankind. Speed dominates our lives: speed of travel, speed of activity, speed of communication...

22. Non-Doing Work 08: Breaks

Research shows that continuous activity leads to wear and tear and ultimately to exhaustion. Taking breaks refreshes us and allows us to return to the task in a healthier state, re-motivated and in a different frame of mind...

23. Time Out

Time out enables you to stand back and see the big picture, put things into context, get an overview of where things are going, and change perspective...

24. Meeting with Yourself

Meeting with yourself is the time you give to reviewing your work and learning from it...

What Next?

If you have worked through each slide in this set of topics, you will now have a great set of resources to help you understand the importance of non-doing work in your work and life.

Now's the time to build on what you've learnt.

With over 22,000 learning resources on our 6 websites, with 2 sites offering free downloads, you can now take charge of your own learning and apply what you have learnt in your work and day-to-day life.

With regular daily practise, reflection, and review, you will be amazed at how quickly the skills will become second nature to you which in their turn will increase your personal confidence in practising this skill.

Well done and good luck!