Hello guys!
Welcome back to the Lavendaire.
Today I want to share some time management tips for you guys
because I know it is back to school season
and a lot of you are going back to school
or you might just be working as usual
and you want some time management tips,
which is totally fine because we all need to work on that sometimes, right?
So today I'm going to start off by saying that
it's not necessarily about time management,
it's about attention management,
because the reality is we all have the same 24 hours in a day
and you guys know it is an excuse to say, “I don't have enough time.”
I know we might feel like we never have enough time,
but look, everyone has the same amount of time in the day,
and some people get more done than others,
and that's just the reality of it.
So you can't say that you don't have the time.
It's more that you don't make the time.
So there's this quote that says something like:
If something is important to you, you will make the time.
If it's not important to you, you're going to make up an excuse.
And for the most part you have to be real with yourself.
Are you making up an excuse to not put time towards this thing?
And if that thing is really important to you,
then you have to learn how to make the time for it.
So my first tip is relating to the fact that
it's about attention management, not time management.
So you have to manage your attention.
Nowadays, I know we all get distracted on social media,
the internet, or just with random things that we fill up our day with
because we're procrastinating.
We don't want to focus on doing the things that are really important.
So we turn our attention to things that are less important,
things that don't really matter.
So you have to learn to be aware of
where you're putting your attention to when you're procrastinating.
So learn to cut off your social media
when you really need to get work done.
Put your phone away.
That's really helps me in a lot of situations,
to just put my phone in another room or on airplane mode.
And if you find that you gravitate towards
certain activities when you're procrastinating –
for example, maybe you like to clean when you're procrastinating.
That's like productive procrastination.
Other people like to eat when they're procrastinating
because you think you're bored
and you're just going to eat instead of doing your work.
So whatever it is that you do when you're procrastinating,
find a way to either cut it out, cut it off,
or put a post it note in that location to remind you not to do that.
For example, putting a post it note on the fridge telling you,
“Hey, if you're not really hungry, get back to work.”
The next big concept you must understand is:
It is far more important to be effective rather than efficient.
So being effective means you're doing the right things,
you're doing the important things.
Being efficient just means you're doing something
really fast or really efficiently and you're just –
you could be efficient doing busy work, but that's not effective.
Being effective is doing the difficult, hard, important work.
So it's far more important to do what's effective rather than what's efficient.
So how do you know what to do when you want to be effective rather than being efficient?
So I want to introduce this four quadrant system
that comes from the book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.
So you break down these four quadrants into:
Urgent, Not Urgent, Important, and Not Important.
So it turns out that there are four quadrants.
The first quadrant are things that are Urgent and Important.
The second quadrant are things that are Not Urgent and Important.
The third quadrant are things that are Not Important and Urgent.
And fourth is Not Important and Not Urgent.
So most of us spend the most time in Quadrant 1,
which are things that are Urgent and Important.
So these things are like pressing deadlines, crises,
things that we must like fix right away
because they're important and they're urgent.
And it's kind of like you're putting out fires constantly.
Things are popping up and you're like, “Oh my God, I have to do this.
Oh my God, this deadline is approaching. I have to do that.”
You're cramming for a test, you're pulling an all nighter
to finish your presentation, things like that.
The reality is: If you're spending too much time in Quadrant 1
on things that are both Important and Urgent,
it means that you're going about life in a very reactive way.
You're kind of maybe procrastinating
and you're waiting till the last minute until things must get done.
And then you're like, “Oh my God, now I have to do it.”
So instead of being reactive and putting yourself
in the position to always be putting out fires,
you want to spend more time in Quadrant 2
which are things that are Important but Not Urgent.
So things that are in Quadrant 2 are planning, preparation,
relationship building, learning, investing in yourself in some way.
It's all things that are not super urgent, but in the bigger picture,
they're actually very important for your success.
So you want to spend more time on planning and preparing
and doing all the things that you might be putting off
so that you save yourself from having to do so much in Quadrant 1.
You save yourself from all the crises and important things that just pop up.
So the key here is learned to transition
and focus more of your time on things in that Quadrant 2:
things that are Important but not necessarily Urgent.
So let's also talk about Quadrant 3 and Quadrant 4.
So Quadrant 3 are things that are Urgent but Not Important.
So a lot of things can seem urgent, but they're not really important.
Like emails, phone calls, certain people popping up
asking you for a favor, asking you to do something for them,
reports, sometimes meetings.
So you have to be able to recognize: Is this thing really important?
I know it seems urgent, but is it really important to my goals?
And this is why it's really important to really know
what your goals and intentions are before even starting,
to do anything, because you want to know
what's important to you, know your priorities.
One way to put that into action is:
Do not spend your morning replying to emails
because I know a lot of people have the habit of
checking email in the morning and then replying to things
because they feel like once they read the email they should reply right away.
You have to use your time wisely.
So use your morning time, the time when you're most active and awake,
to do important things first so that you can spend
another time slot later to check emails and reply to emails.
When you do that, you learn to build up that willpower
to focus on what's important rather than
impulsively trying to respond to what seems urgent to you at the moment.
So the fourth quadrant are things that are Not Urgent and Not Important.
So these are trivial things like busy work,
activities that you use to escape what you have to do,
like browsing social media, watching TV,
watching Netflix, watching YouTube, all of that – time wasters.
That's what Quadrant 4 is about.
So we all spend our time in these four quadrants.
But you know, now you have a way to outline them.
Maybe you can even do this for yourself.
Draw the four quadrants and put in the activities
that you typically do or typically have to do.
And then you can get a clear sense of,
“Okay, what's really important? What should I focus on?”
which is the Quadrant 2 and then learn to focus less time on Quadrants 3 and 4.
So hopefully that gives you a good framework
on how you can prioritize your tasks and manage your time.
So the whole lesson of this is to learn to put first things first.
Learn to always do the most important tasks first
before you move on to all the other lesser important tasks.
And like I said earlier:
Make sure you're doing things that are Important and Not Urgent.
And obviously you're going to have to do the things
that are Important and Urgent.
But in order to save yourself from stressing out
over all these crises, focus more on preparing and all of that:
research, the important work that just needs to get done.
So once you figure out what are important things for you to do,
it's time to schedule them in your calendar.
So I do love to do lists,
but I do feel like sometimes you can ignore
something on your to do list for like a long time,
which is not that great, especially if these things are Not Urgent.
So what I find is important is you schedule in these things
that are Important but Not Urgent into your calendar
so that you make it Urgent.
You make it something that you must do once you get to that time.
So find time in your calendar, make space for these tasks
and just schedule it in so that you actually do it.
Personally for me, I like to schedule things on a week to week basis.
So I'll take a look at my upcoming week
and then find the time slots where I'm free
and then start scheduling in things that I must get done.
So I just make the time for it throughout my week.
Another point that is really important that I always like to share is:
I always try to batch my similar tasks together.
So time batching is something in productivity that is
so, so helpful and so life changing.
So what it means is: Simply put all the similar tasks together,
do them together at the same time.
So for me, I shoot all at once, I try to shoot multiple videos at once
and if I edit, I edit all at once.
I do emails all at once.
I plan my videos all at once.
I don't try to switch from one task to another.
I try not to have too many tabs open.
I am guilty of that sometimes, obviously,
but I try not to just keep switching
because there's something called context switching.
I believe you waste 20% of your time switching from
doing one task to another because your brain just needs
to get warmed up and used to the new tasks.
So if you're constantly switching tasks,
you don't allow your brain to reach flow states.
It's just a mental state where you're performing at your best,
you're performing really well.
It feels like time is flying by because you're so in the zone.
So if you want to be able to reach flow states,
which is your most productive state,
then you want to be able to focus on one type of task at a time.
That way you reduce the amount of context switching that you have to do.
So after I've planned out everything in my schedule
and I have decided how I'm going to batch my tasks together,
I still like to have a daily plan on a piece of paper at my desk.
So previously, a couple of years ago, I would always have a post it note
where I would write my most important tasks for the day.
And then eventually I developed my own system,
which is now the Daily Planner that I sell on my website.
So if you haven't seen the Daily Planner,
the layout starts out with setting an intention for the day.
So I like to set how I want to feel and what I want to focus on.
And then I plan out the three most important tasks
that I want to do in that day.
So these are the three things that, you know,
if I were to only do three things in my day,
I would be happy and satisfied.
That's the most important task.
And then I leave some space for extra to-do’s
and usually those extra to-do’s, I don't get to them all.
Sometimes I'll even transfer them into the next day's most important tasks.
But I like to have them there just so I can see.
And then there's also a space for self care
because it's also really important for me
to keep up with my daily habits.
And then at the end of the day
there's space for gratitude and celebrating the day's wins.
So this is what I use almost every single day to plan out my workday.
I literally leave my planner open on my desk at all times
and if there's ever a time where I have to leave
and go out and do some stuff,
like run some errands or do some meetings,
I will take a picture of the page
so that I can see my to do list from the daily plan,
because for me I really need to break things down as much as possible.
Even though I have my priorities,
my big goals and even my weekly schedule,
it really helps for me to put it into one sheet of paper
just to look at every single day.
And I think I also just get that satisfaction of
crossing something out on a piece of paper
because I'm kind of old school, I still like pen and paper.
So since it is back to school season
I thought it'd be fun to do a little giveaway with a Daily Planner.
Since I know a lot of you will need to start planning your days more meticulously.
So if you're interested in winning a Daily Planner,
we will have three winners and we're going to run this on IG.
So follow @shoplavendaire and also follow my account @lavendaire
and then we're going to have a photo of the Daily Planner
where you can leave a comment and that's it.
Your comment is your entry to win and we will be picking winners in one week
and we'll post it as a Stories on the @shoplavendaire IG.
So good luck!
Hope you win the planner.
It's amazing. I love this so much.
And it's also – it feels so nice and so plush.
And FYI we're not changing the Daily Planner.
It's just gonna stay like this, the same color, the same design.
The one that gets updated every year is the Artist of Life Workbook
and we already have the 2020 version completed.
I'm just waiting to launch it on November 1st.
So if you're interested in that,
just mark your calendars for November 1st.
Get on our email list because we always send a presale to our email list first.
So I'll have links to all of that down below.
But I think that's it for today's time management tips.
What other tips do you have for us?
Because I'm always interested in learning new tips
and even though I've learned “put first things first”,
“do the most important tasks first”,
once I learned about this quadrant concept,
that really like expanded my mind a little more
and it just made so much more sense to me,
like working on things that are important and not necessarily urgent.
Another thing you could check out
if you want to hear more about attention management
is my podcast with Jonathan LevI.
He is an accelerated learner,
so he gave a lot of tips on how to learn fast,
which is helpful for school and also attention management.
He was the one that showed me that word, “attention management”,
and now I love it, it makes so much sense.
So I'll post the link to that podcast down below as well.
All right, I hope you guys enjoy the end of your summer.
Love you so much.
Bye!