A note on time management Part 1

I have been asked by many people, how during this year I managed to study simultaneously at two universities , which are more than 600km apart from each other, how at the same time I had a 20hr-per-week job, yet traveled almost every week to a bigger city like Paris, London, Zurich; how I also spent three months in Shanghai, interning in a start-up company, another three months in Geneva, interning in a big consumer company, while finding inner balance to write a research paper,  take exams (and receive A’s),  pursue my own personal projects like drawing, photography and conducting research as well as writing a business plan for different business plan competitions.
– Well as you have probably guessed, apart from insanity, it is all about efficient time management and I will tell you how.

Drive to advance
First of all, I think that the right attitude is an important factor for being 

1) efficient
2) organized
3) productive
Only if you have the drive to advance in your life, in your career, you can become more efficient with your time management.

Now, my motivation for being efficient is that I do not want to waste my time. Recent events in my life have taught me, that life is not infinite and that it can stop in an instant, therefore with the time I have given, I really really want to discover, learn and experience sooo much more in life and in the world.

Get control over your inefficiency
In consequence, I try to omit lagging time in my every day routine by doing something that has importance to me (e.g. following own projects). Of course, at times I am also inefficient (actually a lot) – for instance I do not want to know how much time I spent on Facebook every day...
No, what I mean is, that you have to get control over your inefficiency and over your lagging time – noone can be productive 24hours a day 365 days a year. Don’t forget that!

So if at times you do not feel productive at all, be consciously unproductive as in take an hour off and do whatever you want during this period, but then after the time limit you set yourself, go back to being productive. No excuses.

Being inefficient results out of the lack of self-set rules and agreements. As a child we had our parents to tell us to study, today you need to tell yourself to do so. People are most inefficient (in this bad uncontrolled way) when they initially had the intention to work but while working start procrastinating. They feel guilty while procrastinating, because they actually wanted to work/study, then they become discouraged and frustrated due to their inefficiency and continue to procrastinate instead of working. It is a vicious circle- sigh.

Instead, setting small study/working goals, planning conscious inefficiency breaks in between can enhance productivity. 

The power of todo-lists
After having omitted your inefficiencies, let’s focus on the stuff you have to do. 

I tend to have two todo-lists. One overview and one every day list. The overview list has all the stuff listed I need or want to do in a given time frame including all these nasty deadlines – let’s say a week list. The every day list shows me all the things I want to accomplish by the end of the day. Well this is not rocket science, but here are some tips that might help you to compose a realistic todo list and that help you to stick to these lists:

1. Be realistic with your time calculations. If you put 100 things on your every day list, of course you will not be able to accomplish all the things by the end of the day and on top of it, it will discourage you! So, be realistic with your workload, as a rough idea, you have three types of work (among others):

• busy work – this is work like responding to e-mails, building a power point presentation and every day routine chores that do not require much brain juice to do. Get a feeling for how long it takes for you to complete these (annoying) tasks and plan accordingly on your todo list.

•  brain work – this is work like solving analytical problems that, depending on your skills can take up more or less time. It might be good to calculate a bit more time for these tasks with little breaks in it – to get some time for being inefficient.
  
• creative work – this work requires a lot (!) of brain juice, as you have to produce something – e.g. a paper, a code, a drawing. As creativity and in this case productivity is highly fluid, definitely plan more time for this kind of work – the more the better. Writing a paper will surely take up more than an hour of your time! Do not underestimate

It might also help to compose your todo-lists in an order with estimated durations and times.

2. Sticking to the self-composed todo-lists is another challenge: maybe I am old-fashioned with this point, but I like hand-written, post-it todo-lists. Why? I think that these "physical" notes give you another feeling for your to do’s than having it digitally on your computer. I mean, the fun part of todo-lists is when you can cross out a to do on the list, right? 
Again, think of it as a game. The goal at the end of the day is to have crossed out all the to do’s on your list – this will give you the ultimate feeling of having accomplished everything you have set in your mind. 

If you have not finished everything on your list, don’t panic, try to adjust your list and add more time for different tasks – you have to find your pace, but eventually you will get control over your workload. This is a key factor for a good, efficient time management!

Well for those of you who want to know how my week list looks like:

I know it's packed, but thats okay, as long as I am still over control of my stuff and btw green is recreation time! ;)

Part II will follow soon, including among other things:
- Have Control Over Your Workload
- Personal Projects and Motivation
- Multi-tasking
- Speed-Reading and all the other cool tricks