Squeezing time out of the day

I get a kick out of the kind of advice articles that ask you to list your priorities, categorizing them into such types as "critical", "today", etc. or that have you keep track of what you are doing so you can spot time wasters. I'm especially amused by the multi-tasking advice; books on tape, having small projects with you to tackle during unexpected downtime and so on.

Gosh, have you smelled any roses recently?

Seriously, all that kind of stuff might work for a few people - the utterly compulsive and over organized types. The rest of us don't do lists very well, and any attempt at prioritizing doesn't last long. And yet, some of us manage to be quite productive.

Before I worked for myself, I had various jobs. At most of them, when I left I had to be replaced by two people. At one job, it took three people to do the work I had been doing myself. Even now, people who know me sometimes are surprised by how much raw work I can pack into a day. But I'm no super man. I just get up early.

I go to bed early, too, so I don't work any more hours than anyone else. In fact, I probably work less, but I get a lot done because for a few hours a day I avoid the biggest time waster any of us have: other people.

I'm not a misanthrope; I like other people. But conversation, whether phone calls or face to face, is slow, inefficient, and a grand consumer of time. Not only that, but you get interrupted, lose your train of thought, and have to spend more time regaining it. Avoiding people for just a few hours a day lets you work at full steam, charging through projects that might last all day otherwise.

I prefer to put that time at the beginning of the day, but it works just as well at the end. Whenever you find someone who seems to get more done than other people, you'll either find one of the super organized types or one of us who do work when other folks aren't around to bother us.

See also Getting more done.

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