Where most people spend (or waste) their time
Jonathan Levi
Lessons
Class Introduction: Structure & how to succeed
03:57 2Why do things quicker
05:14 3Where most people spend (or waste) their time
04:48 4Quiz: Chapter 1
5The power of preparation
03:11 6Having clear priorities & goals - and making them "SMART"
07:38Organizing priorities with the Priority Star Exercise
09:19 8Setting deadlines & and making them real
04:18 9The Pareto Principle - our secret to being effective
03:57 10The "Bad" kind of multitasking, avoiding distractions, and meditation
07:43 11Batching similar tasks
03:48 12The "Good" kind of multitasking & the wheel of life
04:26 13Planning for structured rest periods
05:57 14Using small chunks of wasted time effectively
04:16 15Quiz - Chapter 2
16Just how much time are you wasting on your computer?
06:44 17Automating meeting scheduling
04:56 18Text expansion - stop typing the same things over and over
04:24 19Speaking is faster than typing - and clicking
05:33 20Using custom gestures to speed up common tasks
03:43 21Launchers - act without doing
06:02 22Wasting less time reading and sorting through email
03:41 23Automating simple, repetitive tasks effectively across the web
05:03 24Watching lectures, videos, and podcasts faster
04:48 25Quiz: Chapter 3
26Getting fit in fewer hours
04:10 27Spend less time cooking
04:02 28Sleeping less and feeling better
06:00 29Quiz - Chapter 4
30Monitoring your finances automatically
04:30 31Paying bills automatically
05:29 32Quiz - Chapter 5
33Some things just aren_t worth your time
11:21 34Thoughts & tips on "outsourcing"
06:18 35Speeding up decisions
09:14 36Speeding up communication
05:12 37Splitting Time Into “Maker” and “Manager” Days
05:06 38Quiz - Chapter 6
39What we've learned, conclusion, and congratulations
02:51 40Final Quiz
Lesson Info
Where most people spend (or waste) their time
now that you have some priority items you want to work on. Let's discuss where most people spend and waste the most time. Now. I along with some other prominent thinkers have identified a number of areas where time is wasted. This isn't to say that these activities are always a waste of time though they definitely are sometimes or that they're inherently unimportant. When I say that time is wasted on an activity, I'm more suggesting that more time is invested on that activity than is absolutely necessary. It's in these areas where we're going to make our biggest wins. So what are these things? Well, let me start with an example, have you ever sent an email to someone with a question or concern only to receive a reply that requires even further follow up pretty soon. You're sending back and forth emails trying to understand each other when a simple phone call would have been so much more effective. That's a perfect although a very basic example of time wasted and it happens every single...
day. Now we'll get to email and communication later. But for now here are some of the key areas where we're going to tackle and find a lot of lost productivity Of course, how we spend our time is variable for each person and so giving you stats or averages like the average American watches, 2.2 hours of TV per day or the average sales professional spends minutes a day on email. These stats are ultimately useless and meaningless. If you're interested, I've posted a link to a highly detailed and interactive breakdown by the new york times, showing how different groups spend their time down to the nitty gritty. It's absolutely fascinating, but it's not really important for progressing through the course. Instead let me give you some more generic observations of some categories. These types of time wasters don't correspond to the sections of the course though. Instead, each section will invariably have techniques for avoiding each of them. In any case, it's good to talk about them and get you to start thinking about them well in advance. And yes, this is another one of those learning philosophies that I mentioned in lecture two. So how do we waste time? Well, the first one might surprise you. It's communication scheduling and planning with other people, basically situations where our productivity or efficiency is dependent on someone else. This includes emails, texting, and other inefficiencies. It also includes waiting three days for an email reply from your boss before starting to work on a project. See when I first started teaching this, people used to be surprised that communication was an inefficiency, but these days when most of us spend half our day answering slack messages, facebook posts and WhatsApp messages, Oh and emails. I think you already know exactly what I'm talking about. The second category is unnecessary effort or doing things slowly or ineffectively. A good example of this would be running on a treadmill for an hour and a half when in fact you can generate the same health benefits in a properly designed intensive 12 minute workout. Another example might be searching through folders on your computer for a file that you need three times a day. Or how about sleeping? eight hours when you know the last 30 minutes of sleep are just tossing and turning. You get the idea the next area where people waste time is in ineffectively structuring or stacking tasks. If you are the kind of person who folds one shirt at a time on the table and then turns around to put it in the closet. Well, this is the kind of stuff we're going to try and eliminate with different strategies and hacks. We're going to try and figure out how to make the most of our attention and our effort by structuring our activity intelligently. Now, finally, there's the element of choice and placing your efforts wisely on the things that you're good at and giving up on the rest if you've ever met on someone who insists on fixing their own car, even if it takes them six hours, then isn't a perfect job. Well, this is the kind of stuff that I'm talking about here. We're going to talk about how to decide what is and isn't an effective use of your time and how to be honest with ourselves about how much time should be invested. Hopefully you already see some of these elements in your day to day life and you're both ready and excited to tackle them, because now we're finally ready to dive into some hands on techniques and strategies.