Tarek Michael Chouja
‘Work is Love made visible’ Rumi
The question I like to ask around the concept of productivity is:
Is it about managing our time or simply managing our energy?
What do you think?
I want to content that it is both! Managing our time is a predominantly ‘left brained’ and analytical activity whereas managing our energy is arguably a ‘right brained’ and more wholistic undertaking.
The wonderful news is that it need not be a dual operating, either or response to what we need to be focused on. It is about synergizing the left and right brained operating systems to ultimately increase our productive outputs.
When it comes to managing our time it is important to first establish the tasks we are performing on a daily and weekly basis. To that end I like to distinguish between the blue and yellow tasks
For those business owners prick your ears to the following
Blue tasks are high level activities where we are doing tasks to work on the business. These include but are not limited to:
- Project planning
- Strategic meetings
- Content marketing
Yellow tasks are lower level activities where we are performing tasks daily requiring us to work in the business. These include:
- Taking a client through a training session
- Calling prospects
- Reconciling the days accounts
These are still important yet as the saying goes we need to be careful not to get lost in the weeds of it all. Doing too much yellow activity and not enough blue level work will make us stagnant and unprepared for the next chapter of happening in our business.
To become efficient and effective requires fuss to get disciplined in the act of managing our precious time.
But first let’s take a look into the concept of managing our energy. Imagine yourself banging out sales call after sales call for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. There are very few breaks and when you do manage some valuable time out, you find yourself on the same desk, watching the same screen and scoffing down that lunch as if your life depended on it.
How would you feel in the above scenario?
We can well imagine other similar scenarios where we are grinding ourselves to a pulp hour by hour with little rest or time out.
The key is this. What do we do when we take time out? Do we quickly work on another project whilst perceiving that in the act of ‘doing nothing’ we are wasting precious time?
This is where the linear and traditional time management system falls on its knees. Without taming this beast with effective energy management strategies we fall prey to the concept of always doing and constantly striving. We eventually empty our tank of our higher and more purposeful faculties designed to get us into a state of being fully present and alive in the moment.
A concept I like to teach is to be anchored in the present moment as your best self. The future and better version is NOT hear yet. It never will be here if we are not anchored as our best self in the present moment.
Now that I have made myself somewhat loud and clear, I want to now fuse the concept of managing our time and energy. Let’s now look at the idea of time chunking….
Time Chunking:
I learned this concept from my very first business coach and it has served me amazingly well over the years.
Why time chunk? As I discussed above, a given task may be in the form of a client session/consult, quarterly project, business meetings and so on. The important thing here is to allocate the time needed to a given task and then proportion rest or energizers as I like to call them.
A great synopsis of the book and method, as described by Damon Zaharias’s.
In this article the authors present the concept that blocks of 25 minutes, followed by a 5 minute break, repeated 4 times, with the last break being 15 minutes, is the method to follow.
Each chunk is devoted to a main task (think a project like a new block of program design).
Choose a Task:
Then ‘chunk it down’:
-
- Chunk 1 = 25 mins of work/5 min break – weeks 1-2
- Chunk 2 = 25 mins of work/5 min break – weeks 3-4
- Chunk 3 = 25 mins of work/5 min break – weeks 5-6
- Chunk 4 = 25mins of work/15 mins break
Total time allocated for that task = 2 hours including breaks
How many tasks in a day will you allocate? Plot each task into your weekly rhythm and see your levels of productivity outputs rise exponentially.
It is argued that 25 minutes of focus is enough to achieve maximum effectiveness. 5 minutes is enough to stretch and grab food or drink but not get swept into social media, and so on.
There is other research stating up to 50 mins is optimal. Best thing to do is see what works for you in the range of 25-50 mins, one chunk at a time.
Note: Try the Time Tracker App Here for 25 mins of ‘chunked time’ then 5 mins ‘energizing resets’
Tips to make the 5 minutes not just a break but are-energetically focus activity
- Walk away from your workstation to grab a glass of water, tea, or only if you need it a cup of coffee
- Get up and perform a series of mobilizations
- Refocus through breath work (check out the CALM wellness app)
So there you have it. My exhortation to seriously consider the yin and the yang of managing our precious resources of time and energy. The more we can value our time and that of others, the better we will get at quantifying it with concentrated and focused work of the highest quality the better organized and efficient we will get.
Yet if we want a healthy balance of productivity, managing our energy will go a long way to providing greater levels of optimal outputs as well as giving us more energy to live each and every day fully present and fully alive.
Keep reaching
Coach Tarek
