1DayLater - The Blog

Thinking about ‘Time’ rather than ‘Money’ influences your happiness!

Hello chaps, I came across a recent study carried out by ‘The Association for Psychological Science’ and wanted to share it with our lovely 1DayLater users.

Researchers at TAPS have discovered something interesting; if we actively think in terms of our time, rather than in terms of money - we are motivated to change our habits and spend more time socialising with friends and family - behaviours that are associated with greater happiness!

^ take this cup of coffee for example, he’s already doing it!

This idea might seem really simple, but I think it’s pretty profound. By shifting our perceptions from money-focus to time-focus we can actually make ourselves happier!

I know my friends at HappiestHQ will enjoy this notion. If you get the chance, sign up to their Beta list and keep an eye out for their happyness app this year - http://happie.st/

So yes; there’s never been a better reason to start tracking your time and improving that all-important work-life balance. And before you go, take one last look at the Happy Coffee Cup; you know you want to :)

Time Management Tips - no.2

Understanding Urgent Vs Important

By being pro-active rather than reactive, and ensuring you work on ‘the right’ things rather than on all things you will become far more effective in work and in life.

Maelstrom is a timeless classic and favourite game of mine, a lot like the popular asteroids. It provides a great visual aid to describe how your daily activities fit within Urgent & Important frameworks.

Here are a few screenshots from the game…

The Important Tasks

1) Not Urgent + Important - These are the fast little asteroids which aren’t on an immediate collision course. They won’t kill you straight away but these little guys will get you eventually. Best to pick them off now before they become a threat later on.

(business) think of preventative tasks, personal development, networking, planning, developing new product lines - all the things which will ensure growth & long term survival but are easy to put off. You need to spend more time on these tasks.

2) Urgent + Important - This is anything which is on a collision course to wipe you out. If you don’t deal with it right now there will be serious problems.

(business) This could be a crisis, a meeting with your bank manager / investor, the filing of an impending VAT return. Always deal with these things in a timely fashion.

The Unimportant Tasks

3) Not Urgent + Not Important - Slow asteroids which just ramble along, no threat at all. But by far the most fun to shoot gung-ho at! And once you do, there will be a whole barrage of smaller faster asteroids to deal with when you have to play catch-up

(business) Sneaky time spent on facebook, procrastinating, basically most things you know you shouldn’t be doing. Don’t waste time on these!

4) Urgent + Not Important - Shooting stars appear momentarily and give you points when shot. But they are never a threat and you often get hit by something else while you’re distracted by them.

(business) A ringing telephone, any staff interuptions which take you away from your train of thought and working. You need to exercise restraint in dealing with these things all the time. Learn to say no!

What a great analogy for your working day! By visualising activities like this it’s easy to see you should be spending more time in quadrant 1 (the non-urgent, important tasks) and less time in quadrants 3 and 4 (the unimportant quadrants)

Developing these habits will help you to massively increase your productivity. Why not use 1DayLater to track your time spent in each area as you try to improve your working focus day-by-day.

Props to Steven R. Covey & his great book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for teaching me about this awesome technique.