Time management is not about time
- 1. Time management is not about time
- 2. Agenda ● Why time management? ● Time management is not about time ● Feeling overwhelmed - rules of mental management ● Feeling demotivated - rules of motivation ● Putting it all together - planning hierarchy ● Putting it all together - flow state ● Conclusions
- 3. What is time management Definition, courtesy Google: “Time management” is the process of organizing and planning how to divide your time between specific activities. It consists of: ● Planning ● Execution
- 4. Why time management - The problems ● I want to focus on this but other unplanned tasks keep coming up and my original plan keeps changing ● I don't feel like I have done enough ● I keep having feeling that I should do task B while I'm doing task A ● I don't feel like doing this task, it is a PITA ● I feel overwhelmed with the tasks given to me.
- 5. Time management is about mental management ● The goal of time management is to have high productivity and feeling good doing it. ● It has little to do with time. Time can't be managed, each of us has the same amount of time, we can't stretch them, can't shrink them. We have no control over time. It just flows. ● It is actually about mental management: attention management, motivation management, emotional management.
- 6. Agenda ● Why time management? ● Time management is not about time ● Feeling overwhelmed - 3 rules of mental management ● Feeling demotivated - 3 rules of motivation ● Putting it all together - planning hierarchy ● Putting it all together - flow state ● Conclusions
- 7. Feeling overwhelmed - the rules of mental management Main causes of this feeling: ● Don't know how to manage mental limitation - rule of limitation ● Taking more responsibilities than one can cope with - rule of stress/pressure ● Things never go according to my plan - wrong expectation. Rule of expectation.
- 8. The 3 rules of mental management ● Rule of limitation: We have limits on our information processing and attention capabilities. ● Rule of stress/pressure: ○ Stress/pressure comes from commitments. ○ Optimal performance is achieved at a certain range of stress/pressure ● Rule of expectation: All of our feeling, positive or negative, comes from how reality (or our predicted reality) matches up with our expectations. We feel good when it matches or exceeds our expectations and feel bad otherwise.
- 9. The rule of limitation We have limits on our information processing and attention capabilities. The rule is simple but has lots of application, e.g. in software development, UX design, etc.
- 10. The rule of limitation
- 11. The rule of limitation ● Our mental RAM is severely limited ● It takes time to load/unload information into/from this RAM ● It works best when we focus 100% without distraction
- 12. The rule of limitation Suggestions: ● One thing at a time: planning and execution shouldn’t be done at the same time ● Having a trusted place to dump information into: notes, tasks, concerns, etc. and review it regularly. Example: Keeping a journal ● Break task down to smaller tasks ● Automate stuff that is not worth loading into mental RAM ● Setting up a flow/checklist that we trust ● Analogy: How to carry heavy stuff -> break it down, use leveraging tools, or ask someone to help
- 13. The rule of stress/pressure
- 14. The rule of stress/pressure
- 15. The rule of stress/pressure ● Stress/pressure comes from commitments → Reduce/increase number of commitments ● Commitments come from others as well as ourselves. When we plan, we are actually setting up commitments to ourselves. ● Reducing number of commitments: learn to say No or delegate ● Increasing number of commitments: artificial deadline (Pomodoro technique)
- 16. The rule of expectation All of our feeling, positive or negative, comes from how reality (or our predicted reality) matches up with our expectations. We feel good when it matches or exceeds our expectations and feel bad otherwise.
- 17. The rule of expectation Reality is that things never go according to plan, so don't expect it to follow your plan. Expect nothing and prepare for everything.
- 18. The rule of expectation Suggestion: ● Whenever we feel bad, pause and think: “What expectation has been violated? Did I set the wrong expectation.” ● Don’t label something as good or bad. Remember the story of “Tái ông mất ngựa – 塞翁失马” “There's just news. There's no good or bad” - Master Oogway ● Think about the worst that can happen, but know that it’s not real. “I consider failure on a regular basis.” - Bill Gates ● Practice fear setting
- 19. Agenda ● Why time management? ● Time management is not about time ● Feeling overwhelmed - 3 rules of mental management ● Feeling demotivated - 3 rules of motivation ● Putting it all together - planning hierarchy ● Putting it all together - flow state ● Conclusions
- 20. Feeling demotivated - Causes of this feelings: ● When we do something we think is meaningless ● When we don’t have clarity about what we are doing ● When we believe the work can’t be done ● When we think the work takes a long time to complete
- 21. The 3 rules of motivation ● Rule of meaning: We are only motivated to do something when we can derive meaning from it. ● Rule of achievability: We can only be motivated to do something if we believe the goal is achievable. ● Rule of feedback/reward: The shorter the feedback loop, the more motivated we are to do the task.
- 22. Rule of meaning He Who Has A Why Can Bear Any How -- Carl Jung We are only motivated to do something when we can derive meaning from it. ● Asking what is the purpose of this task ● Meaning creates rewards when the task is done - see rule of reward
- 23. Rule of meaning
- 24. Rule of achievability We can only be motivated to do something if we believe the goal is achievable. In other words, if we believe everything is achievable, we can be motivated to do anything. Better to underestimate a task than to overestimate it. Better to be overconfident than to be underconfident. Bias for action.
- 25. Rule of feedback/reward ● Why are we motivated to do something? ○ Because we are expecting a reward from it ● Basic/essential rewards serve 2 purposes: survival and reproduction ○ food/water/sex/safety/respect/belonging etc. ● Other rewards are created by association ○ Money: Associate with basic rewards such as safety, respect, etc. ○ Title/social status: Associate with respect and safety
- 26. Rule of feedback/reward The shorter the feedback loop, the more motivated we are to do the task. (This is related to Pavlov conditioning and association of reward). We feel good when we finish some work, doesn’t matter how big it is. ● Make unit test runs faster to speed up the feedback loop ● Break task down to smaller, more manageable tasks (quick feedback of reward) ● Structure the work so that we keep progressing, achieving something, although small. Example: Apply TDD while coding. ● Careful as this can turn us into workaholics.
- 27. Agenda ● Why time management? ● Time management is not about time ● Feeling overwhelmed - rules of mental management ● Feeling demotivated - rules of motivation ● Putting it all together - planning hierarchy ● Putting it all together - flow state ● Conclusions
- 28. Putting it all together: Planning hierarchy Plans Are Worthless, But Planning Is Everything -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- 29. Putting it all together: Planning hierarchy
- 30. Putting it all together: Planning hierarchy ● Specifying a mission (a problem to solve) that has personal meaning to us (rule of meaning) ● Derive a vision (idealized solution) that is clear and achievable (rule of clarity and achievable)
- 31. Putting it all together: Planning hierarchy (cont.) ● Create a strategy (set of guiding principles) to achieve that vision, using the rules of mental management above ○ Prioritization: example: focusing on serving this niche set of customers ● Write a roadmap: convert strategy to concrete steps ● Execute: Day to day activities Notes: ● Write everything down to improve effectiveness
- 32. Problems with planning hierarchy ● Observation and monitoring is not included ● Constant experimentation and learning is not included ● Modified hierarchy: Turn it into a loop.
- 33. Tesla’s planning hierarchy Mission: “Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transport.” (This was recently updated when Tesla merged with SolarCity.) Vision: To summarize, Tesla’s vision is to reduce vehicle carbon emissions through the advent of electric vehicles. Strategy: This is the famous “Master Plan:” 1) build sports car, 2) use that money to build an affordable car, 3) use that money to build an even more affordable car, 4) while doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options, and then finally 5) don’t tell anyone.
- 34. Holistics’ planning hierarchy ● Mission: Make it possible for all companies to get insights from data ● Vision: An end-to-end data platform that bring the whole data team together ● Strategy (product) ○ Applying principles of software engineering and DevOps to data analytics ○ Focusing on features that remove the bottleneck between data analysts and business users ● Roadmap: Ask Thong ● Execution: Ask everyone
- 35. Day to day planning hierarchy ● Mission: Finish multi-model dataset feature ● Vision: Both the UI and the backend is done with proper testing ● Strategy ○ Design the proper API between front-end and back-end, then go from there ● Roadmap: ○ Finish backend first, then frontend ● Execution: ○ Work on backend ○ Work on frontend
- 36. Agenda ● Why time management? ● Time management is not about time ● Feeling overwhelmed - rules of mental management ● Feeling demotivated - rules of motivation ● Putting it all together - planning hierarchy ● Putting it all together - flow state ● Conclusions
- 37. Putting it all together: Execution - Flow state Flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.
- 38. Flow state
- 39. Flow state - from game design principles To achieve flow state: 1. Concrete and meaningful goals (Rule of meaning, rule of limitation and rule of achievability) 2. Goals should have right amount pressure: deadline, external demand, etc. (Rule of stress) 3. Goals should fit players' capabilities (Rule of stress and rule of achievability) 4. Clear and timely feedback (Rule of feedback/reward) 5. No extraneous information that inhibits concentration (Rule of limitation)
- 40. Lesson learned: plan our work like a game designer ● Find meanings in our work ○ This can bring values to a lot of people ○ I'm going to learn a lot of things from my work ● Plan beforehand so we trust that this work is the best work to do right now ● Set up right amount of pressure ● Break task down to smaller, more manageable tasks ● Clear out all distractions, only keep relevant sources of information nearby ● Set right expectation: Don’t feel bad when a task is interrupted and we need to switch to more important task.
- 41. Bonus: Getting things done framework
- 42. Missing contents ● Health and energy ○ Exercise ○ Nutrition ○ Sleep ● Habits ● Meditation
- 43. Conclusions It is possible to be both productive while having fun doing it. The secret lies on: ● Understand the rules of mental management and motivation ● Separating planning and execution. ● Planning: having clear mission, vision and strategy ● Execution: Structure the work like a game designer to induce flow state
- 44. Homework ● Read through the rules and see how to apply them to improve both productivity and happiness ● Adopt a note taking software or buy a notebook and start to dump info in there ● Start to create personal plan using planning hierarchy ● Start to plan day to day work to achieve flow state