A few days ago, Sui linked me an inspiring lecture by Randy Pausch on Time Management, and I think it’s worth a watch. A little background: Randy is a professor in Computer Science (automatic + points for me) at Carnegie Mellon with only months left to live after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, and became famous after contributing to CMU’s figurative “last lecture” series with his own literal last lecture. (1)
While that speech is famous for its own right, I found his subsequent talk on time management interesting and resonant with my own experiences:
I’ve always admired how some really great professors are able to articulate their thoughts in a funny and insightful manner; the feat is doubly impressive for students of the computing sciences given our collective lack of social expertise. There are a ridiculous number of smart people in my discipline, but few who are able to truly communicate to an indiscriminate audience, of one or a thousand.
As for the actual topic of managing time, I was surprised that I came to a set of conclusions similar to what Randy suggests in his talk. Some of it probably comes from collective wisdom; ageless tomes like Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and even sites like Lifehacker propose a lot of good solutions to save time and become more efficient. I credit the rest to my obsessive nature, dumb luck, and perhaps a sprinkling of common sense.
So, a list of my geeky habits, coinciding with some of Randy’s points:
- Keeping this blog and saving my e-mail. Old e-mail makes for great self-reflection material and takes minimal effort. Writing is my creative outlet, and invaluable in a time (and personally, in my age and job) of increasing stress. I also reap an unexpected benefit in honing my web development skills which I’m applying well to my current work.
- Setting up an online to-do list. Jeff converted me to Remember the Milk, which has the right set of controls in due dates, priorities, and lists. It makes for a gentle implementation of the quadrant to-do list Randy mentions, and it’s immensely satisfying to whittle down a list of tasks.
- Letting the machine do its job. I’m a bit obsessive about getting things exactly right, and something about software and machinery not quite doing what I want leads to a lot of manual labor. (e.g., retagging my MP3 library by hand, I still have some 500 songs to go) I’m starting to relent in some areas and let other people do the work, though: smart RSS readers like Netvibes free me from checking sites manually, auto-backups relieve me of copying files myself, Yodlee MoneyCenter lets me throw away most of my receipts, and I of course no longer write my own blog software. I realize this sounds incredibly obvious to most, but it took me a long time to get over the hump.
- Psuedo-multitasking. I’m not convinced that humans can truly multitask (we get too confused doing too much at the same time, and there’s a concentration cost in refocusing attention from one task to another), but I find that I can pay attention to one thing while performing another, more trivial task. It’s really just a fancy way of describing activities we normally do: chat while driving (preferably, with other occupants in the car), or enjoying music while working or studying. With my iPhone, I’ve been picking informational podcasts to listen to during my commute or picking up my morning coffee, and of course I can hold my own end of the conversation during a match of Team Fortress.
- Keeping things neat and organized, but I recognize it’s more a personal quirk than an absolute standard of efficiency. I categorize my snail mail bills folders, filter my e-mail and keep the unread count at zero, and in general just keep things tucked away, preserving that “clean slate” feel. I do feel a tinge of jealousy for those able to make sense of more…organized chaos. (2)
There are, of course, a lot more suggestions Randy brought up in his talk, and I’m constantly experimenting with different techniques, whether it’s refining the ones which work for me or trying out new ways to improve my efficiency. I think the next thing for me to try is tracking the usage of my time, identifying the “unimportant but due soon” tasks, and actively eliminating them to make way for the important stuff in life.
You’ll see success when I update this blog more often with the added time. Or when I stop updating because I moved it into the “unimportant fluff” category.
- on a more touching note, he mentions in a video promoting his just-released book that his talks and writing are really for his children, but the rest of us are welcome to hang around (↩)
- Ironically, Sui says I do a pretty terrible job at keeping things clean and dirt-free, and more than compensates for how things look on a macro level (↩)