Performance hacks
In the world where knowledge is everything, we are limited by our ears and eyes to receive it.This is even more true when you are working from home or a freelancer
Through several recent years I tried to see how it is possible to increase efficiency, and in this post I bring some tools that helped me out through the years.
Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
More and more people complain they do not have the time to do the small things, learning a language, reading a book for fun or knowledge and much more. A hack that works really well for me is having an audiobook on my phone (at first it was a media player back in the day ) and an earphone, every time you have few minutes about “to get wasted”, like waiting for a bus or in a line at post office, you can turn it on and listen to it, whatever it is the excellent language learning series from Michel Thomas or some good audio book. What is important is that you make use of your time.Also I would definitely advise having a good player for the cause, first of all because it automatically rewinds few seconds back from last stop point ( you will thank me for that) and the other because you can variate the playing speed ( see below)
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Not everything is possible to comprehend by audio book and definitely not everything available in that format, get a book , whatever you prefer the old style heavy weight paper, or an ipad or an ebook, just get a damn book that you can carry with you. The last part is really important, when you are about to get “wasted” sitting time just pull that thing out and read it, I prefer an ebook , it takes time to get used to it but I can carry loads of technical literature with me and read it instantly.With variety comes responsibility, you can easily start jumping between books and chapters — put a goal, specially with technical books, mark the chapters that you aim to read and do not skip until you done.
small side note here, people would claim it is better to get some actual work done, with their laptop, after more than 10 years trying to do that on trains, busses and plains, with every technology aid possible — it is called an inefficient time, you most likely to make mistakes and about to actually add more work of finding errors than to actually achieve anything done
If you sum up the time you gain by using the two above you might find out that you gain up to two hours a day of study time, of course depending on your lifestyle.
When you start to consume info in the described manner, you are getting addicted to knowledge, and seek to improve that, something like
So here are two suggestions for that
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
― Ernest Hemingway
There are a lot of techniques for speedy reading, one that works for most of people is described well on Tim Ferriss Blog, I won’t duplicate all that is written there already but can say that from experience of several people I personally know — you get almost instant result, and after couple of months it will become your second nature.One of the side benefits of that, you learn to concentrate better, in the world where multi tasking is a disease we all have , it is an important skill, in this technique you practice to stop day dream but focus. There is also a video explanation here.
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Another hack is something that I was still doing at my university years, instead of going to lectures we were watching the recorded videos (yeah it was still with VHS tapes) and one of the coolest thing was putting the video at double of the normal speed, this way you could get a 3 hours lecture in less than 2 hours(yes you need to roll back sometime).now on the TED and Youtube talks people don’t even think it is possible to do that, so it is possible, again to avoid the copying here is a link that describe you exactly how.
To be able to follow those though you actually have to be in a good physical shape
Mens sana in corpore sano
The time that you saved , first of all will make you feel better , because you feel that you achieved something besides your actual work, and guess what — now you have time, make sports, I mean like really make sports, do some jogging
do gym , or some martial arts or ballroom dancing, just go out and do things.
With our daily life we have a lot of tension, I do not like to call it stress, because it is a normal way of life now, but we always concern ourselves with our work, money, things we do not have time to do or time for the really important things like time with kids.It seems at a glance that what I described above is something that adds even more tension in your life ( though even at that point I dispute — the feeling of actually achieving goals boosts you with fresh energies) but there should be a moment to just calm down and disconnect. I Have been trying for that cause to get out to quiet places, but I guess it gets harder and time consuming with the years, so yes every few months try and go to vacation,just a small road trip to the nearest forest, or change of environment, you don’t have to go to caribbean.
When you work work, when you rest rest
don’t try and mix those up, nor during the week nor during the day, so have a schedule and work by it ( I will write my planning in another blog post, it is affected by agile methodologies for groups) but don’t try to make both( remember multitasking is tiring and this is what makes you feel tired and not the act itself), but one thing that works recently more and more for me is those 5 minutes meditations, at first I started to try it just because of the side effect of getting asleep (as stated above — you can read from your ebook to get asleep), but now I realise that during the peak of the day when you start feeling that your mind is unrestful — just make this small 5 minute practice and it will help you come back to your balance.
In the end of course remember though
The most important time you spend is with your loved ones
