-
The Perfect Schedule
We often talk about the best ways to use our time in the goal of being more productive. We believe this will lead to a happier more balanced life, where time isn’t wasted on small distractions or worrying about the stress of deadlines. Once you’ve learned how to get the most out of your schedule, the next question should be, what are you going to do with all the extra time?
Researchers at University of Bremen in Germany and Georgia Tech have joined forces to build what they call is a “happiness optimized schedule.” Rather than looking for happiness cues based on people’s living conditions, they focussed on the time spent on things that make people happy.
While the one flaw of the study is the assumption that most people view work at a negative thing, pushing it to the bottom of the list, its no surprise that sex, hanging out with friends, and relaxing are at the top.
Check out the study for yourself, once you realize what the perfect schedule really looks like, you might start practicing more productivity techniques.
-
Life with Mutewatch: Timing the Law
Since we first launched Mutewatch in July of 2011, we occasionally hear of unique ways Mutewatch owners are using the watch to help manage their schedule. As strong believers of the power that Mutewatch can have as a time management tool, we love hearing how Mutewatch has made a positive impact on people’s lives.
To celebrate these unique uses, we’re going to start sharing some examples on the blog to highlight the various ways Mutewatch can help your everyday life.
Today we’re talking to John, a lawyer from the Phillipines, who uses his watch to keep track of deadlines to file important court documents, freeing up mental space to address the case at hand.
If you have your own story you’d like to share, send us an email at friends@mutewatch.com.
Mutewatch: How did you first hear about Mutewatch?
John: I first saw a Mutewatch article in some local tech blog in the internet and I became curious. I was skeptical at first, in an era where gadgets can be overwhelming with it countless functionalities, the simplicity of the Mutewatch proposition and philosophy seem counter-intuitive.
Mutewatch: What’s your favorite part about Mutewatch since you received yours?
John: The watch is “effortless”, very easy on the eyes. The Mutewatch easily blends with what I usually wear.
Mutewatch: What is your main use for your Mutewatch?
John: I am a lawyer by profession and I really need to manage my time in terms of the attention I allocate per case. Sometimes, it is so easy to lose track of time, we mistakenly think that time is an unlimited resource and we spend it mindlessly. Mutewatch is a tool that helps me have a sense of focus, and allows me to devote time and finish the task at hand. As a result, I feel more in control of my time, and more productive. The focus elevates the quality of my work product.
By not falling into distractions, I achieve clarity in my thoughts by being clutter free.
Mutewatch: A lot of people use Mutewatch’s timer and alarm functions for cooking, meditating, working out, and other activities – have you found any unique ways to use your Mutewatch?
John: As a lawyer, I am tasked to finish many pleadings and as I such I have learned to respect deadlines. A pleading filed out of time would seriously hurt a client’s case.
I particularly find the silent alarm function very useful. I set the timer, and then I lose myself into writing my arguments. I set the alarm 15 minutes before I end it, so that I am reminded to finish it. Usually, this window period is where I finish the loose ends of my arguments. This is where I am sharpest.
Mutewatch: Do people ask you about your Mutewatch?
John: Yes, people often mistake it as a regular wristband accessory and they are easily shocked when I make a slight of wrist to reveal the time in LED. Its power lies in the element of surprise. This sense of wonder that the watch generates would usually be followed by more questions, e.g. where I got it, how much it cost.
My favorite part is when I demonstrate of the alarm functions. I feel like a magician, as I navigate them through its touch/swipe functions and how I disable the alarm by pressing the squares.
Mutewatch: Do you have any strategies to manage your time?
John: Managing time begins with appreciating how much it is worth. Life is too short, and we need to realize its importance so that we do not waste it on mindless things. Time management is a skill that we need to develop and master over time. This would help us optimize this scarce resource, which would eventually lead to an enhanced and better quality of life.
-
26 Time Management Hacks
Sometimes starting new habits of time management can seem pretty daunting. The thought is, if you did things a certain way before, there must be a reason, right?
If you find yourself not sure where to start on the path to using your time more effectively, check out this cool slide show we found that gives 26 tips to help you on your way.
-
Crowdsourcing Productivity Tips
Everyone has their own methods of staying focussed. As we’ve discussed before, one of our favorites is timeboxing – using Mutewatch’s timer to set intervals dedicated to a single task. However, timeboxing is only one method; there are many other ways to keep yourself focussed to get the most out of your time and your brainpower.
To get a look at some of the creative ways people manage their time, we turned to one of our favorite places to be distracted: Reddit.
Among the treasure trove of memes and funny videos, we found a subreddit dedicated to productivity tips. This forum features a variety of techniques and tricks to help you keep on task. Some are a little more practical than others, but they are definitely worth a try – we’re especially intrigued by the hammock technique.
-
Different times
Black marble by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
One sort of time can be so different from another.
Just because we have plenty of time, this does not necessarily mean that we get done what we want or need to do. We might spend lots of time by the computer, but still find it difficult to make time for those important calls we need to make. We might have many “free” hours while driving, but still have to work late at night to send that e-mail that needs to be sent today.
I am in the process of reflecting on if there is balance between all the different sorts of time I have in my life. Do I have enough time in privacy when I can make my phone-calls? Do I have enough time without distractions by the computer? Am I close to a printer often enough? Would I need to have more lunches and coffee-breaks with interesting people when we can reflect and brainstorm just the two of us?
I am finding that I have too little of the two last types of time mentioned. I want more of them next year.
How is your time spent?
David Stiernholm is a consultant who creates good structure and efficient work procedures for organizations and their people.
You can get his book “Klart! – Bli superstrukturerad på 31 dagar” here.
-
Time for reflection
Picture via COLOSSAL
We spend quite a substantial amount of hours of our life working every week. If everything we do is about the details here and now, we will find that everything just keeps on spinning.
You might have become quite good at keeping an excellent structure at work. But, after a while you might feel that this systematic way of working is a bit too mechanical. Isn’t it true that you also need time for the wide open spaces, for the unexpected, for clarity and reflection?
Regularly schedule time for reflection. Whether you spend ten minutes or two hours at a time, it’ll be time well spent.
If you occasionally raise your eyes and spend time with the big perspectives, you’ll feel more connected to the future as well as the past. You will to a greater extent experience that you are able to influence where you are right now and where you are going; in your professional life and with your business.
Do this:
1) Decide when and for how long your time for reflection is going to be this time. Schedule that time in your agenda. Because, often these moments of reflection do not happen spontaneously.
2) When the time has come, equip yourself with an empty white-board and a few well-filled white-board markers, or your favorite notepad and a pen you really enjoy writing with.
3) Turn off the phone and close the door, so you will remain undisturbed.
4) Sit back and wait.
5) Reflect on everything that comes to mind and use the note material to help you. If a few to-dos is the result of your pondering and reflection, add them to your to-do-list as usual. Therefore keep your to-do-list close at hand, so that you are able to quickly “get rid of” the tasks you have come up with.
Personally, I use a blank horizontal sheet of paper to write down a few key words that represent what I have got on my mind these days, whatever is spinning in my head. It can be some assignments I’m working on or a couple of internal development projects I’m running. The words are often accompanied by geometric shapes and arrows. This is entirely without theoretical or scientific backup, it’s just a way for me to reflect on what occupies my mind using visual aid in order to clarify and see links and relationships that weren’t clear from the beginning.
Let this be free and completely unplanned time, where you have no specific agenda. Do not decide to reflect on anything in particular and do not make it into an occasion during the week when you skim through your to-do-list, your projects, review what replies from others your waiting for et c. Let it be a completely white, blank, empty appointment in the agenda with yourself.
It won’t be the time during the week when you get plenty of specific tasks done, but it could be the moments which make you work with more energy, focus and joy for the rest of the week’s more intense working hours.
When and how do you reflect?
David Stiernholm is a consultant who creates good structure and efficient work procedures for organizations and their people.
You can get his book “Klart! – Bli superstrukturerad på 31 dagar” here.
-
Free Time
David Stiernholm himself
How I think about the concept of time changes often, depending on what I experience this particular week or what my needs are this very moment.
Right now, I am on vacation. A long one, and it has only just begun. What becomes evident for me now is the value of unbroken chunks of time. I have written about time slots here before, but this is something else.
The worst free days for me are the ones that I fill with half done chores. I start doing one thing and after a while I need to get something from the garage. While there, I see some object that reminds me that I need to … [do something else as well]. I start doing that other thing and later I remember that I am in the garage only to get some tool. And on it goes. In the evening, I feel as if the day just passed me by, for no good.
Instead, when the day consists of unbroken chunks of time (even short ones) I almost feel as if I am in a flow. I complete things, I focus on the task at hand, I am progressing forward. What gets me there is:
- Even if I get an idea about what I could do instead of what I am doing now, I complete at least a clearly defined part of the current task.
- Tasks that tend to spill over and unconsciously dominate my day I restrict to a specific length, such as 20 minutes. My Mutewatch reminds me when to move on to something else.
- I choose what I do deliberately. Especially when someone else wants my attention or asks me to do something, I ask what I need to know in order to assess the task’s priority. When it comes to my private life, I do this more now than before, and it improves my wellbeing a lot.
Doing like this makes me feel calm, focused and on top of things. So, if this resonates with you, strive for solid, deliberately designed chunks of time.
David Stiernholm is a consultant who creates good structure and efficient work procedures for organizations and their people.
You can get his book “Klart! – Bli superstrukturerad på 31 dagar” here.
-
How my Mutewatch saves me from getting stuck in emails
I have had my grey Mutewatch for a little more than six months now. Already, I have become somewhat addicted to some of its functions. As I give talks all day, a couple of days a week, I seldom have time to answer to e-mails immediately. So, they pile up. I get between 40 and 80 e-mails a day and if I did not have a systematic way of processing them all, I would easily get stuck in my e-mail inbox, never getting to do the things on my to do-list. And, during this processing, Mutewatch is my best friend.
Here is how I do it. As I board the plane (or the train) after a day before an audience, I set the Mutewatch’s timer on 2 minutes and switch the repeat function on. As I am a fan of David Allen’s GTD method, 2 minutes is my limit for doing things immediately, for example answer quickly to an e-mail. All incoming tasks that takes longer than 2 minutes to accomplish, I put on my to do-list in order to make the right prioritization (in relation to all other tasks there).
I process the received e-mails one by one and if the task that a particular e-mail generates (e.g. “answer”) takes more than 2 minutes, I record the task on my to do-list and store away the e-mail for now. If I get stuck reading or answering to an e-mail, the Mutewatch reminds me that I need to move on.
This way, I process my e-mails faster and more quickly, I turn to my to do-list in order to pick my next action, knowing that I prioritize consciously and not only based on through which channel (e-mail) the task was received.
I could use an egg timer widget, but Mutewatch is so much more convenient.
David Stiernholm is a consultant who creates good structure and efficient work procedures for organizations and their people.
You can get his book “Klart! – Bli superstrukturerad på 31 dagar” here.
-
How to get More Time
Grace Kelly, 1960
New research by professor Michael Norton from Harvard Business School shows that in order to make people feel like they have more time, you’ve got to add tasks to their schedule — so long as those tasks involve helping other people.
Norton says managers can use this research in a couple of ways.
1. Make employees participate in a company volunteer effort, particularly if they can use part of their workday to do it.
2. Let employees know how their day-to-day tasks are helping others. If they can hear how the employee helped a customer, this will also make them more satisfied with their job.
3. Use fun strategies to encourage team members to help each other. Norton tells of one experiment where salespeople were given $20 bonus money and told they had to spend on another team member. Those teams sold more than other groups that were told to spend the $20 on themselves.By giving people the right kind of time, they will give it back to the company in productivity and innovation.
Read the whole article here. Thanks to Angela for emailing us about this!
-
Time is an Abstract Concept
The Mutewatch has already reached many places all over the world. Right now we sell our watch in stores in over 20 countries and from our online store to over 40 countries. As Mutewatch continues to grow and expand internationally, we want to meet and learn more and more about different people and their cultures.
Here in Sweden, many believe firmly in the idea that time is related to efficiency and that time is a fixed system that can be measured. However, if you would ask a person from a different culture they would most certainly provide you with a completely different definition of what time is to them. Time is an abstract concept; its definition differs between individuals, wherever you might go in the world.
I think that it’s important to learn about and to respect other cultures and their ideas about what time is, because they’re probably not the same as the ones we have in Sweden. For example in religions such as Hinduism, Jainism or Buddhism, it is assumed that time does not exist. People relate very differently to time (as we do with other things as well) and the important thing is to be aware that there are different viewpoints and that no view is less correct than the other.
If you are interested in reading about different cultures, I warmly recommend the book Alla Dessa Kulturer (in Swedish) written by Karin Sharma, a very wise woman with a Master of Science in Intercultural Communication.
- 1234567891011121314Next »
- Managing your precious time
Authors
-
Andrew Rozas
Latest post: More Great Press - FAQ Magazine
-
Mai-Li Hammargren
Latest post: Mutewatch goes to Coachella
-
David Stiernholm
Latest post: Giving praise to my speedy friend Alfred
-
Oscar Ritzén Praglowski
Latest post: Mutewatch Social Media Show Off
-
Malin Spjut
Latest post: Happy New Year!
-
Johan Thelander
Latest post: Why some Watches stop charging
-