Time Management 101 – Your Optimal Experience

Posted by Harmony Rousseau on May 1, 2007 in Time Management | 0 comments

I spent much of yesterday trying to organize my email and site feeds. My initial conclusion was that I subscribed to way too many mailing lists I only occasionally read and it was time to clean up my inbox.

One of the first things I’m trying to implement is to only check my email (and feed readers) 2-3 times per day – probably around 11am, 4pm and 8pm -ish. I currently have autocheck on, so it notifies me every time I receive an email. Of course that means I stop what I’m doing to check the message, respond or note on my to-do list what I must do later, and then try to go back to my current task.

In today’s “always on” environment, we feel we need to drop what we’re doing and respond instantly to anyone who wants our attention. In fact, most of us are quite poor at multitasking. Just last month, the New York Times posted an article citing two studies that found multitasking slows us down.

Personally, I don’t need psychological studies to prove that’s the case. Whenever I try to do two things at once, it seems to take longer than if I complete one project than move on to the next. Last week, for instance, I found myself juggling several projects I had started but never finished because something else came up. When deadlines hit, I still had work to do for each.

On Friday, I turned off my phone, shut down my email program and concentrated on completing one major project. As I worked on it, I found myself in that state of “flow” or “optimal performance” you move into when you put all your concentration on one task. It no longer was a nuisance to be completed but an enjoyable experience. And I got the job done in a few hours, whereas if I had split it up, I probably would still be working on it.

If you’ve ever read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book on the topic, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, you’ll recognize the signs – a deep concentration that’s almost effortless because you are completely absorbed into your project and are doing what you do best. That zen state makes work enjoyable, but it’s nearly impossible to get into when our lives are plagued by the distractions of phone and email.

What can you focus on today for an uninterrupted block of time? If you can even focus on a task for 20 minutes, you’ll find you get so much more done and feel far more in control of your time than if you allow yourself to be distracted by others.

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