10 brain friendly time management tips
Derek Robertson , CEO
(Chartered FCIPD, MCMI, MInstLM, NLP Practitioner and Coach)
Author of The Great Cape Escapade (A Fable about effective meetings)
6 min read
Introduction
Achieving work life balance includes your squeezing the most out of the work time you have available. Your brain, the most complex thing in existence, can help or hinder you making the most of your work day. This blog helps you get the most from your little grey cells.
Brain friendly time management
A recent People Management article cited research from Aviva that increasing numbers of workers value work life balance more than salary. It’s great that you can help yourself achieve greater balance with what I call brain friendly time management. Because it makes sense to use your brain to get stuff done in ways that it responds well to.
Here are ten things you can apply instantly to help you get more done in less time while feeling better in yourself.
Brain friendly ten
#1 Energy flow
Schedule complex tasks when you’re at your best.
| Why: | So that you can match your tough stuff to when your brain’s tip top. For me it’s between 10 and midday. For you it might be 3am. |
#2 Prioritise
Prioritise tasks.
| Why: | By prioritising you give your brain a map of your agenda and so increase the likelihood of achieving it. It’s like planning a road trip with google maps to get a sense of the journey, potential bottlenecks, where to stop and so on. |
#3 Estimate
Your brain works better when you give it a timescale.
| Why: |
If you don’t, you risk falling into Parkinson’s law: “Work expands to fill the time available”. Instead, give your brain an objective and it will help you achieve it. For example, “This email will take me 15-minutes to draft.” And after a while, you become an estimating God – saving you lots of time and trouble in the future. |
#4 Warm-up
Get your brain into full flow by ticking off some ‘quick n dirty’ tasks on your list
| Why: |
Just like elite athletes don’t just turn up and run a world record, your brain works best when you warm it up. And ticking off a completed task motivates you by your brain releasing some serotonin. |
#5 Progress a key task
Break it down into chunks.
| Why: | It’s the old story Q/ How do you eat an elephant? A/ in small bites. Your brain looks at a big objective and gets put off. Breaking it down into small chunks mobilises all your inner resources to achieve each one. |
#6 Take breaks
Small, regular breaks between tasks to hydrate and move.
| Why: | Notice the illustration has small gaps between progressing Key Tasks (KT). Small breaks reset your brain, getting it ready to give more to your next task. These days we know that it needn’t be a long break. And it’s best to include movement and stretching as well as water. As Dave Meier put it, “If the body don’t move the brain don’t groove.” |
#7 Reward tasks
Plan these in as a ‘carrot’ for yourself.
| Why: | Your brain will work better 'in the now' when it has something to look forward to. Your reward tasks will be different from mine. For example, I like ordering stuff. Make sure you set yourself reward tasks. |
#8 Lunch
Take a definite break to stop, move away from your desk and eat.
| Why: | Very similar to the small breaks’ logic. It’s not for me to say how long lunch is but stop, eat, move and get some fresh air. It’s all common-sense stuff. And there’s plenty research proving that having breaks is more productive than chaining yourself to your desk for nine hours. |
#9 Repeat
Apply the ‘brain friendly time management’ approach to the second half of your day.
| Why: | Because it works |
#10 Write tomorrow’s ‘to do’
Before you stop for the day.
| Why: | Because it tells your brain to draw a line under the day and so not to give tomorrow any energy, worry or thought. It doesn’t even matter that your to do list might need redone 5-minutes after you start tomorrow. |
Too many tasks?
What about when tasks pile up, the competing priorities start jostling in your head, your tummy’s butterflies turn into a cement mixer and your ability to think goes into slo-mo?
For as long as the situation continues to build in your mind and body it’s tough to stop it. Instead, take 90-seconds to do the following:
- STOP. Don’t do another thing until you reprioritise.
- Write down everything you have to do.
- Give each a rough estimate of how long each will take.
- Prioritise each 1 (most important) to 3 with its deadline date/time.
- Check your inner feelings. Have they subsided?
- If yes start addressing your list.
- If not, look at what you can reprioritise, delegate to others or speak with people about.
- Check the status of your inner feelings. Have they subsided.
- If yes start addressing your list.
- If not, talk your list through with a decision maker to see what else you can do.
These could be the most valuable 90-seconds you invest in yourself to regain your sanity.
Your takeaways
- Your brain can help or hinder your effectiveness
- Straightforward brain friendly actions work straight away
- The prize of getting more done quicker is there for you
Final thought
If you do just one thing, it’s estimate for every task so that very quickly you get great at it.
Your next action
Check out the following resources and downloads to help you:
- Check out our programme How to do a great job and finish on time
- Check out our free TNA App
- And the free demo of the digital resilience game