Shortcut to peace — Managing time!
Manage time better! 4 : 2 : 1 Split!
Background
Life is beautiful. Family, career, things to see, books to read, movies to watch, hobbies (unlimited desires) etc etc — There is so much to do and such a short life (limited time).
Hence, I can’t stress enough on the importance of managing time better!
Manage your day better and majority of the stress & anxiety will fade away! There are 2 aspects to this:
- First — work-life balance, and
- Second — managing each of these individually (work & life) better . I am still learning the art of work-life balance :) but when it comes to managing ‘life at work’ better — there seems to a method to the madness. I call 4–2–1 principle.
Concept — 4 : 2 : 1
At work, if you come to think of it, our life usually revolves around managing tasks which can be broadly classified as Urgent, Important and Strategic or Orbit Shifting tasks (and please do have some orbit shifting tasks, think hard on this but have them — read this to know more about importance of these)
- Here urgent ones are usually those tasks which must be addressed to immediately for smooth functioning. Often clerical in nature, these tasks take away most of your day!
- Important tasks are those which are critical for business to grow better but usually these keep getting shifted to the next day tasks (as urgent tasks consume all our energy and time).
- And then there are strategic tasks — which we know can be path breaking/orbit shifting for business but they are the last ones to get any time, hence these too keep getting side-lined/passed over.
Stress comes our way, because we understand how critical it is for us to spend time on important and strategic/orbit shifting tasks but are unable to take care of them. We know it, and still can’t help it (due to time constraint!). We see each day passing by as an opportunity loss, spending all the time on urgent ones — which results in us getting stuck in the same vicious circle.
At work, one way we are trying to solve it is — by writing all tasks, dividing them under 3 heads (Urgent, Important, Orbit shifting/strategic tasks) and doing all of them daily, in different ratio — but daily.
Here ratios are also important to understand. Let’s assume we work for 7 effective hours every day (travel / lunch / break times are extra), so now 4:2:1 will be — I will spend 4 hours daily on urgent task (immediate tasks which must be performed to stay afloat), 2 hours on important tasks (short-mid term impact projects) & 1 hour on strategic /orbit shifting ones.
An example of professional mix could be
It’s important to classify tasks properly & touch upon all 3 sections — daily .The trick is to do it daily.
Also Important…
And once this exercise is done for your professional life, make a similar one for personal tasks as well. We all have a personal bucket list (eg travel / holiday home / road trip to London/ attending a spiritual retreat / taking parents on a holiday etc etc)! Don’t let these get side-lined, write them down, and work on them daily.
If you write them down & give them time & energy , these will get done as well.
Imagine it like having a great garden (destination), one has to sow seeds of various kinds, get saplings (small & big) & planters and accessories (tasks). Now you need to attend to them regularly (4:2:1 attention required, daily) and soon enough — you are looking at a beautiful garden!
