We touched several topics in Part 1: How to Sustain (or Build) a Mediocre Career, but we didn’t had the chance to discuss them more thoroughly. So let’s expand on this with the Awareness topic.
Image Source – http://www.philosophypunk.com/uncategorized/awareness/
As all important decisions/changes in your life, it all starts with you! In my opinion, being observant of what’s happening around you is the main trigger on any potential changes in your life (professional or personal). So this is where you should start. Even though this is pretty straight-forward, many people expect all sorts of external triggers or signs for them to change, but all it takes is for you to pay attention.
But how do you become observant? Well, in order to observe things you need to first analyse things. To analyse things you first need some data. So what data should you look for? Yours, of course. But how do you do that? One option would be keeping an old school diary, but I assume you don’t want people finding your secrets if they find your diary :). Also, keeping a diary updated can take quite some time and may not really be worth it. Fortunately, there’s an easier way of documenting super important questions such as:
How long are you using Facebook every day?
How many times are you opening whatsapp daily?
How many news articles do you read daily?
How about 9gag, let’s not forget 9gag, how much, in minutes?
Feeling guilty yet? If not, you should, here are some of the top time wasters:
Watching TV* (video streaming services such as Netflix included)
Social media (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp etc)
News sites
Unnecessary meetings
Playing video games (especially online ones)
Note*: there’s an interesting (free) Yale course and study which finds the more TV you watch, the more likely you are to be unhappy and further more, you’ll spend more money on household items you don’t need in a desperate and unconscious effort to buy some happiness. Interesting and sad in the the same time. Check out the lecture at Yale, the part I’m talking about is discussed in Week 2 (Annoying Feature #2).
And it’s not me who says it. These were extracted from Soft Skills – The software developer’s life manual by John Sonmez, which I totally recommend. You can also see some of them referenced in https://blog.rescuetime.com/workplace-time-wasters or in any google search for top time wasters.
I would assume you won’t be able to tell me a fairly accurate number on your time spent with these distractions. You should try to track how much time you’re actually giving away to these apps. There are multiple applications designed to do just that.
I personally use RescueTime, the free version. It runs on my work laptop and on my home desktop computer and I’ve just discovered they released a smartphone app too, which I just installed. I use this tool to track time spent in various applications and websites. Based on the reports provided by RescueTime I can tell how much time I worked on what and how much time I wasted on Facebook for example. Being able to have reports from all sources (work laptop, home desktop and soon smartphone) in a single app without having to aggregate results myself is a HUGE advantage. I encourage you to test it out on the devices you are using and which take most of your time.
Another app I use is Life Cycle, available only for IOS at the moment, but I’m sure there are alternatives to Android. This app helps me track the time when I’m outside. How long I stayed in traffic, how long I stayed at lunch or at grocery shopping etc. Great app, nice reports, no effort at all.
In case you’re watching TV/netflix, I suggest you track the time yourself as I doubt you’ll find apps to do this even on a smart tv. Ensure you track this time as well as it’s a top time waster.
Ok, now wait for some data to be gathered, say at least a week?
After a week take a look at the reports and review your activities and the spent time.
Order them by time spent. Next step, prioritize them based on what (return) value they bring to you. Most important activities should be on top, least important ones (which bring little to no value to you) should be in the bottom part.
Analyse them thoroughly. Would you change anything about them? Maybe take some time from an activity from the bottom of the list and invest it in an activity in the top? Can any activities be marked as “wasted time”?
If not, congratulations, you had an amazing week! But give it time, wasted time activities will eventually creep into your reports.
Repeat this analysis periodically at an interval you find it works best for you (e.g. weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly). Make a list of your time wasters and acknowledge it.
By being aware if it, you can eventually take some action to transform it in something more beneficial to you. Let me know how your activity tracking is going.
As always, if you need help or have questions please don’t hesitate to contact me via Facebook or drop me a line. I will follow up on those, I promise.
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