Use my time more efficiently

Sounds promising, but then all of these things do in the reading. It’s whether one can really practice and succeed in the doing that makes the difference. GTD suggests blacking out two days to make a transition to their system of handling things. That’s quite a while, but I guess I haven’t finished the book yet, so I need a bit more convincing to go for it.

The one thing I am absolutely sure of: the underlying thesis of GTD – keep stuff by writing it down rather than dwelling on it in your head – rings completely true to me.

We’ll see…

I need a system to help me be productive. Sure, there are plenty of false idols out there which claim to transform your efficiency, but there’s also meat in some of them—I know; I’ve seen them work for me (particularly Franklin Covey’s Focus course – goal setting, planning weekly and planning daily).

What I want to do is take a look at another system (currently considering Getting Things Done – seems extremely practical and simple), make a decision on one of them, and then employ it regularly. I know for a fact when I actually use the Covey system I get more of the things done that I intend to.

But I do want to take the step back and look at an alternative before comitting.

so I need to use my time more efficiently and get the things which actually need doing done. Now, in order to do that, I could sleep less (boo!), or I could spend less time doing things which really don’t matter.

Let’s take an example: reading web news. Ok, maybe like once a day this could be worth 5 minutes at the extreme so I know if something truly major has happened. But looking at the news every half hour all day, that’s not such a good use of time, now, is it.

Also I’m sure there are times I could be squeezing more out of. I commute to work. That’s 50 minutes in the car each day. Could listen to music. Could listen to the radio. Could read an audio book. Could read a real book, but that’s probably going a bit far. Ok, let’s settle for audio books at least. Or praying. Or sermons. There are plenty of better ways to spend a commute.

Anyway, those are just two examples, but I need to get a lot better at spending my time well or I’m just not going to do everything I want to.

Now, I’m not saying every moment needs to be maximum efficiency. That I think would probably melt my brain after about half a day. But when I’m in a “doing” mood, I should be doing stuff efficiently. And when I’m not, I should be doing stuff which really works to relax and recreate. Turns out most of the time TV sucks for that. As does browsing the web.