MAKING EFFECTIVE USE OF YOUR TIME
Step 7. Automating/systemizing your task
C. Improving your skills
Time is limited, but we can all improve the amount of work we accomplish in the time we have. An effective way to “multiply” time is by improving our current skills or developing new ones. I truly believe that one of the most important skills we can develop is the ability to learn better and faster. This is especially true in our ever-changing world. And this rate of change is unlikely to slow any time soon. If anything, the speed of change will only keep increasing.
When it comes to improving your current set of skills, the first thing you should do is identify the skills you need to work on first. If you improved one of your existing skills, which one would boost your productivity the most?
After improving this particular skill, you should identify the new skills you could acquire to become even more productive at work.
For instance, many of us spend an incredible amount of time in front of the computer researching information, typing reports, replying to emails and so on.
If you’re using a spreadsheet at work, perhaps you could take a course to improve your skills.
If you’re a slow typist, you could work on increasing your typing speed.
If you’re spending too much time answering emails, you could set aside a specific (and limited) time to answer them.
If you waste a lot of time search for files on your computer, you could improve your organization skills.
The point is, to get more out of your time, you need to start improving your skills. The more skilled you become, the better you will perform. So, keep learning.
Action step
Using your action guide, write down the key skills you could learn or improve on in order to boost your productivity long term.
Practicing new skills the correct way
When you are trying to improve your skills, you must do so deliberately, using what is often referred to as “deliberate practice”. That is, you must practice with intense focus and with a specific intent in mind. You must know why you’re doing something and the outcome you hope to achieve from it.
People often say they have X years of experience in a certain field, but that’s misleading. What they’re really saying is that they’ve been working in a specific field for X years. However, the truth is probably this:
They improved their skills for two or three years and then kept doing the things they already knew, over and over again for years, and with only marginal improvements here and there.
In this regard, the following study is eye-opening:
According to researchers at Harvard Medical School, doctors with decades of experience don’t seem to provide better patient care than those with just a few years of experience.
You would expect a doctor with decades of experience to be significantly more skilled than a young one, right? However, according to the Harvard study, this doesn’t appear to be the case. The same applies to nurses, and I suspect, in many other professions.
My point is, to become great at anything, you must continuously improve your skills—and you must do so deliberately. But this is hard work, which is why most people choose not to do so.
Now, what exactly is “deliberate practice”?
In their book Peak, Secrets from The New Science of Expertise, Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool explain that deliberate practice:
1. Builds skills for which effective training techniques have already
been established,
2. Takes place outside of your comfort zone, requires significant effort and is generally not enjoyable,
3. Involves specific, well-defined goals,
4. Requires your full attention and conscious actions, 5. Entails regular feedback,
6. Both creates and relies on effective mental representation, and 7. Almost always involves working on existing skills or building new
ones by focusing specifically on some aspect of those skills that need to be improved.
Let’s give a concrete example. Benjamin Franklin wanted to improve his writing skills. He focused on improving three specific skills—his writing style, his vocabulary and his sense of organization.
In a nutshell, here is Benjamin Franklin’s schedule for deliberate practice:
Writing style: He made notes on articles from Spectator—a high- quality newspaper—which he would use to rewrite the articles a few days later. He would then compare his version with the original article and modify it accordingly.
Vocabulary: He rewrote Spectator essays in verse and then in prose, to compare his vocabulary with the original article.
Organization: He wrote summaries of every sentence in a particular article on separate sheets of paper. He would then wait a few weeks before challenging himself to write the article in the correct order and then he compared his work to the original.
He was very intentional in the way he learned, using “deliberate practice”, as we can confirm below.
Benjamin Franklin’s tedious studies required a great deal of effort and were probably not much fun (#2).
It involved defined goals such as rewriting specific articles until he could reproduce the original (#3).
It required both his full attention and conscious actions (#4).
He also received immediate feedback by looking at the original article
to determine how well he performed (#5).
Through consistent practice, he created a mental representation of patterns of information held in long-term memory. In short, we can say he transferred new skills to his subconscious so that he could use them automatically whenever sitting down to write (#6).
Finally, he was working on improving a specific skill (his writing ability) by focusing on specific aspects of it (improving his writing style, increasing the richness of his vocabulary and enhancing his organization skills) (#7).
Whether or not he actually used existing methods to improve his skills is hard to say. For the most part, we can assume he invented techniques to meet his specific needs. This shows how dedicated and determined he was to become a better writer.
When you adopt deliberate practice, you’ll increase the value of each unit of time you dedicate to that purpose. In short, you’ll make better use of your time and will progress more quickly. Such practice will inevitably boost your ability to focus.
Below are some of the things that can help you design a deliberate practice:
Identify a specific program, course or manual used by people who achieved the goal you’re after.
Hire a coach.
Find a mentor.
Ask a friend who has achieved similar results for advice.
Action step
How could you use deliberate practice to improve your current skills or acquire new ones? Answer this question using your action guide.
To conclude, you can increase the value of each unit of time by improving your thinking abilities. By looking at the bigger picture and being more
strategic, every action you take will become more impactful. Instead of being busy, you’ll become highly effective.
Now, let’s see what you can do to “store” your time.
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HOW TO STORE TIME
As we now know, time is one of our most precious assets. Every second that passes is gone forever. And, unfortunately, we cannot store our time for later use.
Or can we?
Although we cannot stop time, there is a specific way we can “buy back”
time to have more of it available in the future. The tool that enables us to do this is money.