time-management 14

Does it make a difference if you submit early vs submit late? Here’s some empirical data. About ~1,000 students at IIT Madras took 3 online quizzes (GA1, GA2, GA3) in the last few weeks. The deadlines were all at midnight (India) on different days. Here’s when they submitted their final answers: There was a spurt of submissions at the last minute. ~1 out of 8 students submit with < 10 minutes remaining. Most students submitted ~4 hours before the deadline. In fact, 3 out of 4 students submit on the same day as the deadline. A fair number of students submitted the previous day/night. 1 out of 6 are diligent and submit a day early. But does submitting late help, since you get more time? Apparently not. ...

The question people ask me most often is, “How do you manage your time?”. Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. Time management is about feeling we’ve achieved more with that time. There are 3 parts to this: Accepting limits. I’m grateful I’m not bored, learn from the struggle, and calm myself with acceptance. Creating capacity. I’ve tried with sleep, exercise, eating well, meditation, focus time, and family support. I plan to try delegation Executing effectively. I’ve tried idea-lists, mood management, calendaring, commitments, intentionality, journaling. Accepting limits Be grateful. Until I was 12, I was bored to death with nothing to do. Someday, I’ll spend retirement fighting boredom (like my father). But right now, I have more to do, that I want to do than I can handle. I’m grateful. ...

I took a 2022 goal to be 10X more effective. In Jan, I managed 2X. Here’s how. What is effectiveness? I don’t know. I’m figuring it out. But to start off, I measured the number of people my actions directly impact. For example: Discussing my Tools in Data Science Course or writing a blog post impacts ~500 people. Mailing all Gramener employees impacts ~200 people. Shopping with my wife impacts 2 people – her and me (in very different ways). Clearly, the impact is not equal. But it’s a start. ...

In my current thrust towards greater management responsibilities, I have discovered a mechanism for generating happiness. I set up meetings on important topics. That makes me happy – I’m driving something useful. Often, the meeting gets cancelled. That makes me happy – I’ve more free time. It’s the perfect perpetual motion machine. Comments Vasant 10 May 2016 11:58 pm: Ha ha! Love it. Madan 30 Mar 2019 9:00 pm: Often, the meeting gets cancelled. That makes me happy — I’ve more free time. What a positive thinking Sir Jee !! vikram 5 May 2016 6:04 pm: i am a non tamil .i have a piece of music and i want to know which song is it exactly.This was briefly played in the movie madras cafe starring john abraham.can u just help me wih that song . Kindly ping me to my mail i ll share that piece with you udayamoorthy v 23 May 2016 12:34 pm: That’s Great Idea. Kind of Win Win Situation. Happy to see you in the blog after a long time. I used to view your older posts regularly . All are great. Thanks Regards Uday Chirag 25 Sep 2017 9:03 pm: Haha ! Thats clever :)

Some years ago, a friend asked me to write about how I manage my time. It seemed to him I was doing a good job of it, given that I had time to pursue my interests. It’s something I tried to do consciously. Every few years, I used to go down the route of “time management”. I’d read stuff and try it out. But over time, I’ve come to believe that “time” is not really “manageable”. Think about it: are most of your actions planned? Me, I just react out of habit, no matter how well planned I try to be. What I do is largely driven by what I’m in the habit of doing. ...

The best time to buy everything: when to buy air tickets, get great deals on electronics, and so on.

Why you too should cancel cable.

Americans have more leisure time than before. But why do Americans feel so harried? Weirdly, prosperity may be to blame in two ways. First, thanks to rising real incomes, an American’s time is worth more now. A walk in the park is more expensive than it used to be. (When people complain to him about being too busy, Mr Hamermesh tells them that their real problem is too much money.) ...

The qualified Yes. Somewhere between saying “no” to a new project or taking on something in an open-ended type of way, be clear from the start on what you can commit in concrete terms. So, what used to be “Sure, I’ll do your web site” is now more often “Sure, I’ll give you 10 hours and 3 calls over the next month to use however you want.” If nothing else, it helps everyone understand that time is a precious commodity, but it also gets me out of being the de facto manager for every aspect of a project I touch. ...

Are the free Mac Minis for real? Hardy tries to get one – and succeeds. But… is it worth it? Pretty good economic analysis.

How to read when time is short. Read the “How To Find The Essential 20%” section carefully. Another interesting post from Bert on How to Learn More With No Extra Effort uses the principle in the post below to suggest we take a lot of breaks while learning. i cdnuolt blveiee taht i cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht i was rdanieg. the phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mind is amazanig. aoccdrnig to a rscheearch taem at cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosnt mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. the rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. amazanig huh? yaeh and yuo awlyas thohgut slpeling was ipmorantt. ...

Marc Eisenstadt has analysed 15 years of email. … it is trivially easy to get to 2.5 hours per workday assuming a fairly ruthless, ‘one-touch’, knee-jerk email interaction regime. And worse if you deviate from the regime. Then there are other sources of workflow: blogs, aggregator summaries, phone calls (rare, but I still allow one or two), cell-phone, text message, instant messaging (my buddy list is very large, and most of them are work-related). ...

Are computers increasing or hampering productivity? This article at NY Times talks about the increasing levels of distraction PCs drive us to, with e-mail, Internet, games, music, photos, movies, books, chat, … It’s a form of ADD: attention deficiency syndrome. Harvard Business Review has an article titled Why Smart People Underperform (Jan 2005: subscription required) talks about its impact in the business world.

Jugglezine: How to find the time to do anything (not everything!) On a purely practical level, however, the reason we can’t find time for that one thing we’ve always wanted to do is that we don’t set aside time for it. Logging how much time things take for two weeks will transform you, because if you know and acknowledge in advance how long something will take, then you can make wise decisions about where to spend your time ...