How to Take Control of Your Time in 3 Simple Steps

This post originally appeared as an original blog post at ty-hicks.com. See the full, original post here.

Seeking Solace in a Tumultuous Modern Office

In today's world, it can feel like there are never enough hours in the day. When we go to work we feel that our priorities are constantly being interrupted by the priorities of others.

By the time the work day is over, we may have put out everyone else's fires but have neglected the set of intentional tasks we had originally set out to accomplish. Then, we find that just as we have some time to focus on what we want to in the evening, it is time to go home and handle the demands of our personal life.

Once home, agitation is high. A sense of not having control of our schedules sets in.

How do we break the cycle?

How can we ensure that we aren't just treading water but are making major strategic advances in our businesses?

How can we create a situation in which expanding our personal relationships and lives does not feel like another thing we don't have time for but a sacred event that we're free to enjoy?

Shallow Work Vs. Deep Work

Your next level of performance in the area of time management will be contingent upon your next level of awareness of how you actually spend your time.

Let's examine the situation of most workers.

At the end of most work days, they know that they spent the entire day doing something, but very often they can't place their finger on what it was that they did.

Why is this pattern so frequent?

The fact is that, absent a true set of skills and a system to manage our time effectively, we effortlessly slip into a state of perpetual distraction; without a singular, guided destination, our focus fleetingly drifts from one priority to the other.

Giving in to this constant stream of distractions causes us to conduct our work at the most shallow level possible – never delving deep enough into a project in order to be creatively consumed by it and see it to full completion.

The Danger of Attention Residue

Have you ever opened an email, read it and found what it was asking of you, but then closed it and decided to handle it later?

Have you ever vowed to buckle down and get to your work... but right after you check what's happening on Facebook only to find yourself emerging from a click hole 20 minutes later having no idea how you fell in?

Have you ever set down to do a project but then opened every email that came to you while you were working on it until you were completely consumed by other tasks?

By allowing your attention to drift from one stimuli to another so unintentionally, you are never allowing yourself to take full advantage of your mental faculties.

Studies have demonstrated that when you vacillate in this type of see-saw pattern from task to task, your brain retains an amount of "attention residue" from the previous stimuli when you are trying to focus on the new one. This is why it takes so long to get into a new gear after you have been distracted. 

Rather than masterfully moving from one task to another only once the previous one is fully complete, we often vacillate our attention and maintain numerous spinning plates in our heads at once, increasing the likelihood that one will fall with each new one that is added.

In order to truly crush your to-do list and to be able to focus on what is truly important not just what is urgent, you have to be able to create a space for you to dive into deep work.

What follows is a three step process that will allow you to start taking control of your time so that you can prioritize what is truly important and not just what appears to be most urgent and enticing at the moment.

Moreover, at the end of each day you will feel truly accomplished since you will have measurable results to show for the expenditure of your time that are aligned with your deepest values and purpose.

How to Take Control of Your Time in 3 Simple Steps

1. Take inventory of how you are spending your time

When you stop viewing time as an unlimited resource, you start to realize that you have to invest it, not carelessly spend it.

The principles that you will apply to maximize the value of your time are approximately the same principles you would use to maximize the value of your money. You cannot leave your expenditure of time to randomness; it has to be cherished and judiciously expended in ways that will result in long term gains.

The first step in strategically mapping out a path to victory is to deeply understand what your current location is on the map.

Draw out a schedule of all 24 hours in a day. Yes, go ahead. Do it right now.

Now, fill in the schedule with how you spent the last 24 hours to the best of your ability.

Now ask yourself, what portion of your time are you strategically spending? This means that you decide how the time will be spent and you do not let anything or anyone else interrupt your attention during that time.

Now, what percentage of your time is being left to randomness? What percentage of your time do you simply not have an explanation for?

Do you see a pattern and a problem here?

Are you getting acquainted now with how much time there truly is in each day to be used for effective means or to let slip through your fingers?

Take a look at this.

There are 168 hours in a week. That's a truly astounding amount of time. What could you do with 168 intentionally spent hours?

You could probably start a new business; get three new large clients; write two major proposals; turn your marriage around through quality time; or learn a new skill.

Would it be worth learning how to strategically maximize the use of your time?

If so, carry on.

2. Before you start each day, finish it.

Now that you've become acquainted with how much time is truly going down the drain, you are going to learn how to spend your time in a way that is decisive and purposeful.

You are going to learn how to align your time expenditures behind what you value most, not what is the most convenient or shiny distraction at the moment.

So on your piece of paper draw out a new schedule now and make a row for every hour of the day. Now intentionally schedule your day into sacred blocks of time that will focus on what is important before what is urgent.

Do not put responding to emails at the top of your schedule! If you allow someone else's demands for your time to be what dominates your schedule from the beginning of the day, you will find it much more difficult to carve out space for yourself later on.

Instead, front load your schedule with the most important work that you need to do that will measurably move your life and your business forward.

Instead of worrying about who is demanding your attention, ask instead "what is the most important thing I could be doing right now for my business?" Once you start asking that question, the entire game changes.

Those blocks of time are for the task you have designated for them and nothing else. That is the power of this strategy.

"But what about my emails?!?!"

I know, I know, I can hear you screaming in your head from here. While this new form of scheduling your time is powerful for getting what is most important done, you may think that it will keep you from being responsive to people who depend on you via email.

Wrong.

What you need to do is create a "reaction block" of time in your schedule for precisely this purpose. I usually do mine from around 1pm to 3pm depending on the demands of the day.

You might be thinking "there's no way I could do that. I have enough emails to keep me busy all day!"

Again, wrong. The reason why your emails are taking you all day is because you are allowing them to.

Remember what I said about shallow work and attention residue? If you are in the habit of opening and reading emails only to close them and decide to handle them later, then yes you will spend all day on your emails.

You can either allow yourself all day to randomly open, read, close, and eventually handle emails OR you can give yourself only two hours a day to handle all of your communication so that you only open, read, and handle emails once.

You might have heard the old maxim that "your work will expand to consume the amount of time that you give it."

If your boss gives you a week to assemble a report, that's how long it takes. If he gives you an hour, that's how long it takes. You somehow find a way as soon as there is no other option.

In order to truly unleash your full productive energy you have to master creating these decisive deadlines for yourself.

If you truly want to master your own time, you have to establish with yourself what expenditure of time a task should take and make that block non negotiable.

While it sounds like you are becoming overly rigid and controlling, it is actually the most liberating experience in the world.

From this new frame of mind, you just decide how you will be spending your time, and then you just MOVE. No more hesitation. No more distraction. No other options. It's truly freeing.

Stack up 4 or 5 intentional blocks of well spent time on each other and you will have gotten more done in a day than you previously were getting done in a week.

Just try it.

"But should I really schedule every hour of my day?"

It depends on your style and what you really want out of life. Remember, 168 hours is a lot of hours. The typical work week for most Americans is just 40 hours – that's only 23% of your available hours for the week.

So what are you doing with 77% of your time? Can you say definitively, or is it left to your random impulse-driven decisions?

I personally block out every hour of every day because I know how precious time is, and I have a lot of big moves that I want to make in that limited time.

You might think that I am describing a lifestyle where you never sleep and only work.

Wrong.

If you want to truly feel a lifestyle of freedom, you should block of time to "shut off" and be present with your spouse, your family, and your friends.

The practice of scheduling your time allows you to 1) get so much work done while at work that you truly can be present at home and 2) causes you to intentionally set aside time for the people in your life that are important.

But what if something urgent comes up?

Every morning, I schedule my entire day. I've gotten to the point where I can't start my day without doing it.

Yet, there has never been a day when I was able to keep to my schedule exactly how I had originally designed it.

Even though the vast majority of "urgent" tasks are actually not very urgent at all, there is still the very real possibility that your employer needs something from you right away that will throw off your time blocks.

When this happens, it is not time to stress out and throw in the towel. All you need to do is go back to your schedule and readjust your blocks.

Allocate time for the new task and then adjust the remainder of the day.

The point is to maintain an intentional allocation of your time throughout each day and to never let your time fall to randomness.

3. Remove the possibility of distraction

While blocking your time is a very powerful strategy, it is not very intuitive for most people at first. But it can be. In fact, intentionally spending your time can become just as strong of a habit as randomly using your time has been, so get excited.

One of the things necessary to do in order to be successful at blocking your time is to eliminate all possible distractions.

When you need to go into a deep work state, you will need to ensure that you are not being bombarded with notifications from your social media accounts, email, or that you are going to be interrupted by others.

Here are some helpful tips to reduce distractions while in your time blocks:

• Turn off all desktop and mobile notifications. You don't need to get email and social notifications sent to your phone. Only check these platforms during your reaction blocks. In this way, you get back to everyone in a timely manner but you maintain your focus and sanity throughout the day.
• Utilize a newsfeed blocker for Facebook, Twitter, and more. These browser extensions will keep you from being able to see your news feeds which will enable you to stay out of click holes.
• Use an app like Freedom to block certain sites for time blocks. If you have a tendency to check your email or social accounts while doing a task, use a site like this which will temporarily block those sites making sure that you simply don't have the option to be distracted.
• Insist that your coworkers respect your time blocks. 9 out of 10 requests from your coworkers for your time can wait. Insist to them that your mind is simply in a different gear right now and that you need to come back to them later. They will understand. Plus, once you block time to handle their request or meet with them you will be able to be fully present with them which they will appreciate.

Conclusion

Although we have a tendency to live as if we have unlimited time on this Earth, we don't. Our tomorrow's are limited.

Your focus is an unimaginably powerful resource. In a way, it is like a laser beam. When it is truly focused on achieving one desired outcome and all of its resources are zeroed in on that destination, it can cut through steel.

But if you allow it to be fragmented and dispersed, it will have no lasting power.

The world is facing the greatest challenges it has ever faced, and you are living in a time where you have access to resources beyond what any generation of humans before you has ever had access to.

How you will use your time matters deeply. Commit to learning how to master your time, and you'll be able to get on to improving every area of your life. Plus, you will have lasting pride that you made the most of all the gifts you were given.