Decide What Matters Before You Schedule Your Time

For most of us, there is no need to handle a thousand affairs a day or account for every minute. Over the long term, however, the most important part of self-management is being able to devote enough time to the things that matter most. Lei Jun believes the first priority in time management is to follow the 80/20 principle: set aside 80% of things and focus on doing the other 20% well. Either do not do something, or do it well enough to be number one. Allocate time deliberately and focus your attention on the most important 30% of things. This will help you make the best possible use of the resources represented by your own mental and physical state. ------ “Do not use tactical diligence to conceal strategic laziness.” If you spend too little time thinking about your goals and simply work with your head down, you may end up achieving the opposite of what you intended and making no progress at all. In a public interview, Lei Jun once explained how he completed his undergraduate studies in just two years. His goals were already very clear when he entered college. In particular, after reading Fire in the Valley at Wuhan University, he set out a very detailed timetable: what would he do in six months, in one year, and in three years? After completing his undergraduate coursework in two years, Lei was too young to stand for chairman of “Sanse” (三色). But he had larger goals and plans in mind. He chose to leave the business he had started at university and received a dividend of 4,000 yuan—a considerable sum in China at the time. It was Lei’s consistently thoughtful planning of his time that enabled him to become an early leading figure and industry heavyweight in China’s internet era. Rome was not built in a day. A clear sense of purpose helps you take ownership of your time and decide how to use it. As the book Procrastination puts it: “People may resist making plans because they fear being locked into some future activity and losing their freedom. But from another perspective, a plan can be a connection between you and the future. It is your best friend.” As time-management expert Alan Lakein said: “Planning brings the future into the present, so that you can take action to create the future.” Cheetah Mobile CEO Sheng Fu is someone Lei Jun holds in particularly high regard. Fu’s success is inseparable from the change he made in how he manages time. He emphasizes one point: before doing something, be clear about the goal. Once the goal is clear, focus on the path to achieving it and peel it back layer by layer, as if peeling a bamboo shoot. When the goal is clear enough and the path is broken down sufficiently, you can mobilize almost every available resource and go all out. Truly successful people can step outside their usual frame of reference and carefully unravel their path through life, thread by thread. People without a clear goal are bound to feel equally lost about managing their time. ------ In a philosophy class, a university professor abroad illustrated the point with a small experiment. He took out a very large empty mayonnaise jar and filled it with golf balls. He asked the students whether the jar was full. They said yes. The professor then took out a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook it gently, and the pebbles rolled into the spaces between the golf balls. He asked again whether the jar was full. The students again said yes. Next, he poured in a box of sand and asked once more whether the jar was full. They all nodded and confidently answered, “Of course.” Finally, the professor took out two bottles of beer and filled all the gaps between the grains of sand. Now the jar could not have been any fuller. It is an interesting little experiment. The full jar represents life. The golf balls represent the most important things: family, friends, health, and even passion. The pebbles are the next most important things, such as a car, a career, or a house. The sand represents the insignificant little things. The point is simple. If you pour the sand into the jar first, there will be no room for the golf balls or pebbles. Life works the same way. If you waste your time on trivial matters, you will overlook the people and things that truly matter. We often feel that we do not have enough time. Much of this comes from distractions we create ourselves. Managing time is, in a sense, managing discomfort. To escape that discomfort, we actively seek distractions—scrolling through Weibo or short videos, for example—to get away from the discomfort of the present moment. As the professor in the short video says: “You only get one life. Although we are merely tiny visitors in this vast universe, we have the ability to accomplish anything. Truly, anything—if we use our time well.” There is no doubt that successful people are good at managing time. Learn to distinguish the major matters in life from the trivial ones, and you can readily find pockets of time to accomplish what truly matters. ------ Self-management begins with managing your own time. Those who take time lightly will eventually be crushed by it. Finally, here are three time-management suggestions Lei Jun once offered that are worth considering: 1. Set aside a few hours each week for quiet reflection, and work out what matters most. 2. Every morning, rank everything you have to do that day, and do only the important few. 3. Deal with simple things immediately. Original article: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/FP4g2EvB23B-AtuUSexveQ