If you knew me during my middle or high school years, you will agree with me on I was a terrible student. I frequently failed to complete assignments on time and my performance in exams was highly unstable – sometimes almost perfect, other times barely passing. However, after a gap year post-high school, I became a 4.0 student consistently with 18 credit if not more class load, participating in student organizations, working on fun projects outside school, while holding a job. I didn’t suddenly become a better person, but rather learned and developed few key ideas and practices that fundamentally changed my approach on things. I’d like to share what I learned, hoping it might be valuable .
Organization Are More Important Than Just Working Hard
Unfortunately, tasks never end in the workplace, they just keep coming. We spend our days racing against time, completing several or even dozens of to-do items daily. Although most of the time I’m able to get the thing done, there is often no sense of accomplishment after sorting out the cycle. Questioning on how much of real value the trivial things we do actually have.
When facing a flood of complex tasks and information, learning to establish priority management and effectively categorize them is crucial. This allows you to organize your work time according to these priorities, thereby increasing efficiency. Time is scarce for everyone. Spend 80% of your time on the most important 20% of tasks, rather than getting bogged down in urgent but unimportant chores.
Here’s a process I use:
- Identify the objectives
- Determine what you ultimately want to achieve at the end of your work or study period, what is the desired outcome, often there might are multiple goal.
- Prioritize
- Rank your goal by priority. Which ones must be accomplished? Which are just nice-to-haves that can be dropped based on circumstances?
- List Action Items
- Translate conceptual goals into actionable tasks. Identify which tasks can be done together, which can be processed in batch, and which can be outsourced to more specialized individuals. what we called “work capability” is the ability to break down large goals into smaller, actionable tasks.
For example, during college, I used this method for studying. Before an exam, I’d set a goal of what grade I wanted, say an A. Then, I’d go through textbooks and class notes to assess which topics were most likely to appear on the exam, which had a moderate chance, and which were unlikely or difficult to be tested. By prioritizing these points, rather than following the book’s order, I could focus on the most important topics, especially when time was limited.
Give your time a price tag
Sometimes we can be busy for long hours but feel that what we’ve achieved isn’t worth much. This happens because we often waste time on activities that don’t provide much real benefits, whether monetary, knowledge-based, or even pure relaxation.
A good time management method is to assign a value to your time. A simple approach is to use your latest job’s hourly wage as a reference (even-though companies tend to undervalue your worth). Before doing any task, ask yourself two questions: How much are you willing to pay for the time spent on this activity? Given the same cost, would you rather do something else? Considering the time cost and opportunity cost before engaging in any activity is a great way to avoid wasting time.
For instance, before staying up late, you can ask yourself if you’d rather play games, read a book, or get extra sleep, and how much you are willing to pay for feel better the next day morning. There’s no right or wrong choice here; it’s about weighing your options, and assigning a value to your time can simplify this decision-making process.
Created a habit of doing Small Activities that provided Long-Term Benefit
Do valuable tasks consistently and wait for the cumulative rewards. Many resources require accumulation, like opening a savings account with an interest rate higher than the inflation rate, but a data base of market survey, or reading one page of textbook a day.
A 1% improvement may seem insignificant, but hundreds of such 1% improvements add up to something substantial. Improving by 1% every day over 10 years leads to a significant transformation.
For example, I take detailed class notes, writing down what the professor says during the class (usually key exam points). I then use software to convert these handwritten notes into documents and build a database from them. During revision, I use the computer to generate study notes automatically. Spending an extra minute in class and five minutes at home to convert files in database saves me a lot of time during finals.
Act Immediately
I considered myself a “long-term” thinker. However, many people misunderstand long-term thinking as focusing solely on the distant future. True long-term thinking is about identifying and doing the tasks you can do now, that will benefit you the most in the long run. It’s not about doing that one big thing in the future right, but about consistently improving small tasks.
As human, We all have inherent laziness in our genes, we have to learn to fight this nature, If you think an action is valuable, act on it immediately.
This doesn’t mean we should act impulsively without considering the consequences. It’s about reacting quickly based on experience and accumulated knowledge. In this context, the benefits of small activities that provide long-term benefits mentioned in the previous paragraph become apparent, as they build up the experience you need for fast decision-making.
If you believe doing something is better than not doing it, or in case of failure it won’t have significant repercussions, act on it immediately.
Let Go of Perfectionism
I must admit, I often fall into the trap of perfectionism, setting overly high goals for myself and delaying action. This sometimes results in outcomes worse than those of peers who didn’t put in as much effort.
Many human flaws, such as procrastination, indecisiveness, social anxiety, OCD, fear of challenges, and depression, are rooted in perfectionism.
Accepting imperfection, acknowledging the value of failure, and avoiding procrastination due to fear of messing up are crucial.
Often, doing something poorly is better than doing nothing at all. If you’re worried about messing up a important task, break it down into smaller, manageable tasks and tackle them one by one. Whether it’s creating a comprehensive report or studying for a midterm, doing more is always better than doing less. And if things go wrong, many time it is really not as bad as you might think.