How to Squeeze 10 Hours Into an 8 Hour Day

It's not enough to have a to-do list. In fact, to-do lists are highly inefficient or next to useless if you do not assign times to the tasks that you have to perform. Scheduling to-do list items "forces you to confirm the reality of how much time you actually have and how long things will take. Now that you look at the whole picture, you're able to get something productive out of every free hour you have in your workday. You not only squeeze more work in, but you're able to put work into places where you can do it best," claims Georgetown University Professor Cal Newport. 

 

When you schedule work, you avoid the temptation to procrastinate. Newport not only believes in scheduling work to be more productive, but also in scheduling free time to enhance the quality of life. 

 

Plan to leave work every day at 5:30 p.m., and work backward. Telling yourself that you will leave work every day at 5:30 p.m. forces you to be more efficient and makes you prioritize your showroom time. When you have better control of your time, you have less stress.

 

Prepare weekly plans. Similar to scheduling your to-do lists, prepare a weekly plan of things that you want to accomplish. Newport also emails his weekly plan to himself to remind him of the priorities he has established for each week. 

 

Less is more. Almost everyone has too much to do. When you limit the amount of time you have to get through your scheduled to-do list, how can you get everything done? Newport advises focussing on what you do best. "You're always better off doing fewer things, but doing those things better. People say yes too much. I say no to most things. I'm ruthless about avoiding or purging tasks if I realize they're not just providing much value," he writes.

 

Newport notes that most Americans believe they are working harder than they ever have. That's not true. The amount of time people actually work in the U.S., as well as around the world, remains steady or is decreasing in the last 40 years, but people feel they are working harder because they are burdened with annoying tasks that sap their energy and enthusiasm.

 

Recognize the difference between deep and shallow work. People often have to put in extra hours and believe they are working harder simply because they spend too much time on shallow tasks such as responding to email, attending meetings, and paper and data shuffling. 

 

Avoid the temptations of shallow work. Discipline yourself to check your email at only certain times of the day. Set aside prescribed time for the deep work that you need to do - designs, proposals, marketing strategies, team member productivity, etc. Newport relates that "Knowledge work is really just craftsmanship. It's just that what you're crafting is information and not carved wood. You're crafting ideas. You're crafting knowledge out of raw material, and the more you think about it like a craftsman, the happier and more satisfied you'll be, not to mention more successful." Here! Here!