If you follow blogger Dave Navarro (@rockyourday) on twitter, you’ll realize he starts off most days by tweeting:
“What would you work on if you only had 2 hours available today? Ok, go do that first.”It might sound simple, and while I usually receive his tweet at the end of the day due to different time zones, his message is profound.
Namely, there’s a strange law in the universe that makes everything take up as much time as it can get.
For example, if you have an 8 hour workday to write one blog post, how long will it take you to write it? You guessed it, it will take 8 hours.
You’ll know that there’s plenty of time available. Thus you’ll take it slow. You’ll check e-mail every now and then, chat with friends, write, have lunch, write a bit more, look for pictures for the post and just generally waste the time away.
You’ll get your job done, but will you feel good at the end of the day? Can you go home knowing you had a productive workday? Probably not.
If, on the other hand, you give yourself a deadline of only two hours to finish this task, it is more than likely that you will succeed. Your brain will be running on high energy, you will shut off all distractions and give two undivided and highly focused hours to the task. It will get done.
How do you imagine feeling after that? What would being this efficient allow you to do? What would you do with the extra 6 hours you just magically won?
The choice is rather limitless. You can work on other things that really matter to you. You can work on the next important thing and also kick its ass. If you feel like it, you can even take a longer lunch break or go to the beach. It’s up to you and the possibilities available for you.
The concept of setting a deadline can even be taken further. Suppose you have many different things you need to do in one day. Combined you can’t possibly finish all of them in time. What to do?
No worries, just write all of them down and set a deadline in minutes for each one of them. Be sure to schedule a few 5 minute breaks here and there. Grab an egg timer or an online stopwatch and get cracking!
Chances are, by the end of the day, you will have gotten more stuff done than you could have ever imagined.
What do you think? Have you ever tried this approach? Has it worked for you? Could it work? Post your comments below!
