Just finished reading the book ‘Redeeming Your Time’ and I realised that I’ve already incorporated some of the tips. To many of my friends, they might find some of which odd. But hey, all these helped me to focus on the right things and not be drained like my batteries:
1. Archive
If you’ve ever sneak a glance at my WhatsApp or Telegram screens, you will realise that I archive everyone. I repeat, everyone. Only a surviving few (usually <5) make it to the home screen of these messaging apps. Even then, they won’t last more than a few days. The only reason why I keep certain chats in the main screen is because these are people I owe something to. It can be a reply, a follow-up, or a reminder to another task. Otherwise, they all belong to the archives.
It does mean that every time I open these messaging apps, I decide whether that chat remains in the main screen. Out of sight, out of mind. Only when I have the energy during breaks or end of the day, I revisit archived messages.
This helps my focus intensely cause there’s only a few things I need to get back to each time. My brain doesn’t have to process whether I missed out on anything nor get overwhelmed by the unreads.
2. Notify, not
More like the lack of notifications. I do my best to not set any notifications on my phone. At all. The default state to all my apps is no notifications; to my phone it’s no ring, no vibration. When I’m in bed, I turn off the wifi / data on my phone. The only thing that rings is my alarm. This also means I manually tap into each app to check my messages / pings.
There have been too many instances where I am deep in work, only to be distracted by a notification that’s absolutely not important. One notification leads to another. And I can’t get back to work due to the nagging feeling at the back of my head to urge me to resolve it asap or I’m drowning in other pings.
I’m not in the line of emergency work (kudos to healthcare professionals etc.) hence I should get to choose when and how often I want to check my pings. No one expects instantaneous replies but that’s also not an excuse to be uncontactable. During my shallow work hours (usually in the morning cause I’m a sloth at warming up to the day), I make it a point to clear all my emails, chats, discussion from the previous day so there’s less disturbance in the afternoon for my deep work. If I have meetings in the afternoon, I’ll switch up the order to create deep work in the morning. I like to check once every 30 minutes if I’m expecting a response. If not, every 1–1.5hr works for me.
3. Purge
I’m a purger. I love to delete things if there are no longer useful or have caused me too much energy and attention. I don’t have Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn (I can’t seem to find the delete button for the YouTube app on my phone???) downloaded on my phone. Which means I survive only using their web versions and if you’ve ever tried them, it’s a subpar experience compared to their apps. This makes me want to use them less often because of the friction.
To the apps I keep e.g. gmail, I regularly unsubscribe to things (because some days I get too excited about a new topic and subscribe to many newsletters). About every few months or so, I review the people / channels I follow and decide whether they are still relevant to me and purge :)
This sounds a little brutal as I’m typing this but I don’t think our brains (or at least mine) are meant to absorb all news and information. Believe it or not, most of them are just noise. It seems a little meaningless to me if I just know all these information but have no output or be updated on someone’s life although we are not close. After all, I just want to spend life doing things I am interested in and caring for people I love.
Number 4. -ing
Due to the nature of my work, I have more waiting time regarding certain tasks or approvals. As someone who likes to strike things off my to-do list, I came to dislike “In Progress” as a status to my tasks. Hence, I introduced a new status for myself called “Pending Others” with an additional column to specify what or who am I waiting for if required.
Rather than tapping on my mental capacity each time to process exactly where I am with certain tasks, I prefer “Pending Others” because it tells me straight away that I’ve done everything I can at this point in time and the ball’s not in my court, it’s time to be patient. I do update the dates along the tasks so I know when to give a nudge whenever my Pending Others go past 3 days.
Aside from waiting time, the nature of some tasks is that they are future-oriented. They are important things to be done, but in the future. A couple of examples — filing for taxes or writing investor relations report. I set recurring cadence for such things on Google calendar + Notion (try out their task recurring function).
Number 5. Caffeine-less
“What?? You don’t drink coffee?? Or caffeine??” Yes, I get that a lot once people find out I don’t take caffeine. I’ve long realised that caffeine affects my sleep negatively. Some people are perfectly fine but I’m not. Case in point, my dad has to drink a cup of coffee before he sleeps. It puzzles me but I didn’t inherit those genes.
My answer is a good old 7–8 hours of sleep.
People do have the perception that I don’t sleep cause I work for a startup. But it’s not true. Debunking that right now.
If I don’t sleep, I literally can’t perform cause processing speed decreases drastically. And for someone who has to do UIUX and organisational strategy, I struggle to design or solve problems when I don’t have enough sleep. I used to glorify the lack of sleep e.g. working >50, 60, 70 hours a week and being busy. Perhaps a part of me felt like that made me an indispensable person in the organisation.
At 26, I know better now. I’m not trading my health for anything inferior.