How to become master of your time: Jedi tricks

Article translated from Oliver Emberton blog abetterlife.quora.com
Translation of the article abetterlife.quora.com/How-to-master-your-time-1

The secret of time management is simple: Jedi tricks

Imagine that you are a Jedi master named Roman. The love of your life - Princess Tatiana is imprisoned in a burning building and you would like to hurry to save her.
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You can think of Tatiana as the embodiment of your dream, your inspiration - let it be the most important thing in your life.



Unfortunately, on the way to Tatiana you are mercilessly getting attack aircraft. Whole armies rush in and blast out blasters right on you. The flow of enemy rays requires attention - if you do not have time to dodge, you are a corpse. Imagine attack aircraft attackers as an urgent routine and a constant distraction that prevents you from getting to the princess.



Everyone knows how the lyrical hero deals with this dilemma. As soon as he forgets about his main goal in the depths of small battles, all his efforts will be in vain and will not be worth a penny. He can gracefully chop a whole army of attack aircraft into small cabbage, but their number is unlimited and if you pay most of the attention only to annoying attack aircraft, it will only distract from the main goal. If the delay is too long, the princess in the burning castle will simply be bent.
The same analogy can be traced in our lives. There are important strategic affairs and urgent tactical affairs.



The secret to mastering your time is the following:

Systematically focus on important matters and suppress routine, urgent matters.

For some reason, initially people are set to focus on matters that require immediate response, for example, phone calls,
and are set to postpone important matters for later, for example, going to the gym for training.
This setting should be changed just in reverse order, despite the fact that it goes against the original settings of your brain and most of the brains of human society.
See what it takes your time, what you spend your days on?
I give a guarantee, most of the time is spent not on what you choose, but on what is requested from you. Here's how to fix this problem:

Say no.

Most of us follow an unwritten social contract: when someone asks you to do something, you almost always say yes. It may look very noble, but do not forget - there is still a princess suffering terrible disasters, which you urgently need to save, otherwise she will be bent, and you just agreed to slow yourself down on your way, just because you were very politely asked. Sometimes you can donate some social comfort to save lives (that is, the success of your main business). As a bonus, people instinctively respect those who can say “no” directly based on their motives.

Throw away the TV.

Comments are superfluous.

Get rid of alerts.

Modern technical innovations with might and main use our vulnerability to demanding immediate response cases: email, Facebook, Twitter, Quora and many others will fight for the quanta of your time and constantly distract you. Fortunately, it's easy to fix: turn off all alerts. Decide for yourself to check all these things only when you have time to take your mind off, say, at lunchtime, and work through all the alerts together and at a time, in order not to return to them anymore, this will give you a bonus in the form of time saved.

Follow the priorities.

People are such strange creatures. If you have made an appointment with friends, you will arrange everything to see them at the appointed time. But if you have some business that means more to you than everyone else, for example, you are writing a book or going to workouts - you will not be rebuilding other things for this. You will simply do this in one of your time windows. Treat your high-priority matters, how you should catch a plane flight: set a clear time in advance for this and drop everything that will prevent you from making your flight.

The main things are going first.

What is the most important (and not the most urgent) front of work, could you work right now? Take steps in this direction today. Remember, there will always be an endless number of distracting stormtroopers around - do not be fooled by excuses like: “now I can cope with this trifle, and then I can create my own netlenku”. "Then" may never come in the routine of extra-urgent, and sometimes frankly stupid classes. This kind of excuse just slows you down or leads you astray.

Less deeds, more time to go.

There are always millions of things to do. Admission is to select no more than 3 tasks per day and steadily strive to complete the tasks. This restriction will not please your brain. Other people don't like this either. Keep that line anyway. Man’s focus on one task per unit of time is much more efficient than multitasking. Multitasking in this case means dispersion of forces. Focusing gives you time to do a good job.

Ignore.

This is rude, unprofessional and often absolutely necessary. Yes, there will be people to whom you will not have time to answer. Yes, there will be requests for which you allow yourself not to fulfill. You can not rush too fast to do the cleaning, pay the bills or process mail. If you urgently do not make such small urgent matters right now, the world will not fall apart from this. As compensation, you will achieve the fulfillment of what really matters for your life.

Another lesson from the Jedi, finally: they are heroes.

Heroes inspire us for many reasons:
- they make tough decisions
- they persevere in their chosen path,
- They seek to perform important matters.

But there is one more reason for which we love our heroes so much. We know that in each of us lives the strength to become the same model for others.