5 Lessons for Happier Time Management

Public speakers and best-selling authors, stay tuned to hear Paul Krismer and Jackson teach the practical science behind happiness and success. This is a video about happier time management and it was inspired by the work of Oliver Berkman. Oliver Berkman is a journalist from the UK. I’ll include some links to his posts, but he really goes through several obvious truths and lessons on time management that I think are often overlooked in our culture of sort of hyperactive, constant 24/7 productivity. And I think the most important lesson overall is distinguishing between effectiveness and productivity. The way I define that is, productivity is simply increasing your outputs, your amount of tasks done. Effectiveness is actually improving the quality of your life. So, here we go. I’m going to share five lessons from both my personal experience and a bit inspired by reading Oliver Berkman’s work.

Lesson number one is mostly from Berkman. He calls it the three to four hour rule for creative work or for deep work. Deep work is what you can think of as like strategizing, writing, project planning, right? Kind of these tasks that it’s not just like writing off a little email or sitting through a meeting, things that we have to be really fully engaged with. What he found is that pretty much every noteworthy thinker, intellectual, philosopher, or writer pretty much worked three or four hours a day. So, Darwin usually worked about four hours total and, in those four hours, he managed to find time to casually create the theory of evolution. Virginia Woolf, one of the greatest writers of all time, total slacker, right? She worked three and a half hours a day. And then Thomas Jefferson managed to kind of half-ass it, working half days. Found some time, though, to pen the Declaration of Independence. The moral of the story here is, a half day is really a full day. And I found this really lines up with my personal experience, which is that from about, we’ll say, 9:30 to 1 in the afternoon, I am a genius. I can do anything. My mind is, it’s like I’m on the Limitless pill from the movie with Bradley Cooper.

Then, come back kind of early mid-afternoon, after lunch, you know, my mind just says, “Hey, that’s it. Closing up shop. Sorry, Jackson.” Kicks his feet up, mine shuts off, and it’s done. And so, despite my like trying to push against that or maybe have an afternoon cup of tea or something, that’s just reality. So it was a relief to me to find out that this is a rather common pattern. So, if you’re like me or more of a knowledge worker type or you’re interested in some creative activities and maybe you’re worried about your productivity and effectiveness, keep in mind that four hours, three hours to do the work that’s really essential, is plenty. After that, you just relax. Or maybe, if you’re like me, just pray to God, to Buddha, whoever, that your sort of dumb afternoon mind can manage to get things done. So that’s the first lesson: three to four hours for deep intellectual work.

The next one is, do one thing at a time. And some of you might have heard this, but this is a really useful reminder. And there’s a strategy that Oliver shares as well which is as follows, and it’s kind of complicated, right? So it’s this very intricate time management optimization system. Here’s how it goes: you pick something to do, you write it down, you do that thing, you cross it off, and then repeat forever. So this isn’t exactly the operating system that’s going to power the next generation of AI or something like that. But it’s really useful for the human mind, which is very stubborn. We often tend to think that we’re multitasking, right? We do all these different things. And what I believe is that if you are a good multitasker, what that really means is you’re good at lying to yourself. See, there’s no such thing as multitasking. That’s what modern cognitive science has found is that what you’re doing, at best, is really just rapidly, anxiously diverting your attention between the different things you’re trying to focus on.

So that’s not to say that you can’t have multiple projects on your radar or different thought streams. It’s just saying that, at any given moment to actually do work on something and make progress, you have to be focused on that one thing. So that’s a useful strategy that you can keep in mind. He also talks about willpower, specifically willpower being a function of your environment. And again, this is some modern kind of cognitive science and psychology. What they found is that willpower is sort of like a reserve that we burn through throughout the day. And just as importantly, you can’t really increase your storehouse of willpower. So how do you deal with it? Well, just don’t use it. If you don’t have to use your willpower, you’re not going to run out of it.

So that’s where you think of analogies like the willpower used with dieting or eating healthy. How hard is that to do during the holidays when you’re in a house usually surrounded by cookies and sweets and treats? And it’s pretty hard. But if you’re just, I don’t know, out in the woods, you’re not gonna snack. That’s the idea of willpower being a product of your environment. When I lived as a Zen monk for 90 days, I was vegetarian, no alcohol, no drugs, no nicotine, no nothing. And probably whatever four out of five of those changed within four hours of leaving the monastery. It’s simply the environment. So if you think about productivity, that means creating a cognitive environment as well. Reducing or eliminating distractions, you know, if you want to get anything important done, don’t have your phone around you. A lot of these small changes you can make basically creating an inviting, focus-friendly environment for you to do the things you want to do. And importantly, do things that are fun. Do things you want to do. And we’re all limited by that. I know, limited to various extents by what is your career, how high are you in your company, or whatever. But to the extent possible, if you do things that are fun, interesting, engaging, things that you want to do anyway, then willpower is not too much of an issue.

What else? Well, probably the most important, we’ll say, is this idea that just to have a good day is enough. And I love how Berkman talks about this feeling of productivity debt. He wakes up every day feeling like he’s in debt, or he’s in this hole that he has to dig himself up to a certain baseline productivity to like justify his existence. And as I read that, I thought, that’s kind of how I usually operate day-to-day, right? So I get up, and I feel like I have to get all these things done, and sort of the quality of my day is determined by the amount of tasks I got done and how impressive and important they were, and what I realize is, uh, that’s pretty effing stupid. That’s not a great way to live my life. Just to have a good day is enough. Just to enjoy yourself, isn’t that what life’s really about? Sure, you can still be productive, but I think it’s better not to view your life and your days on this planet as these little bits of times to sort of exchange for productivity and getting things done. Just to have a nice day, just enjoy yourself is more than enough.

And then, this one’s sort of a quick bonus that I want to throw in here, but chill with the damn news. So, Berkman, he doesn’t quite say stop watching the news. I wouldn’t say stop watching the news either because I don’t want you to, I don’t want to advocate being like ignorant or uninformed or something. But especially with mainstream news, CNN, Fox, totally toxic. It’s about cultivating outrage and distraction and sucking you into this sort of rabbit hole of disdain and frustration, and anxiety and fear. Fear and outrage are the chief commodities of the news. I often call them fear and outrage porn because those are very addictive cognitive patterns, and that’s exactly how they get more viewers. And so, what Berkman points out is kind of like me. He’s not saying you have to totally eliminate this. Saying, just be a bit more selective and conscientious, and a bit less emotionally invested in this constant stream of news. Sort of step back and invest that emotional energy back into yourself, back into your life, and start to think how can I maybe take this information I’m seeing that I’m passionate about and use it to make actual change in the world or change in my life.

So, there you have it, five tips for happier productivity. Right, you can start with maybe a little less news and a little less distraction, a little more doing, and a little more investing in yourself.

Three to four hours, more than enough. Half day is really a full day. Create that cognitive focus kind of friendly environment, do one thing at a time, and remember, what is this really about? Just enjoy your life. To have a nice day is more than enough. Thanks, I’ll see you next time.