TJ Walker explains why you can't manage time, only how you spend it. He recommends blocking uninterrupted deep work sessions on your calendar, even 10 minutes at a time, and turning off notifications to focus on creative work that actually moves your career forward.
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How can you improve your own personal productivity? We all have computers. They're supposed to make our life more productive. Cell phones more productive. Tablets, iPads. But does it? Do you ever feel like your day is just one long whack a mole game? Oh, this email. Respond to that text. Oh, this message, this notification, this alert, what this client said on Facebook, someone else criticized your product on Twitter. And your boss is emailing saying, where are you? You spin around and around and around. The end of the day, you're exhausted. You look down and ask yourself, what have I really accompl today? Chances are not much. That's your reality. It's time to change something. Something is not working for you. Let's get rid of some of these notions. There's such a thing as time management. You cannot manage time. I cannot manage time. The only thing you can do is manage how you spend your time throughout the day. Biggest decision you've got to make is, are you going to initiate? Are you going to be active, are you going to be passive and just react? The biggest way to have no time is just to spend all your time reacting. And this little thing right here is a stern taskmaster. If you let them, won't just consume 16 hours of your day, they will consume 24 hours of your day. Bring this cell phone into your bedroom. It can beep and tweet and demand your attention all night long. We live in an era of overabundance. We have an overabundance of stimulation. Movies to watch, news, Facebook posts, entertainment information. There's food everywhere. You go to a gas station today and it's a grocery store. Overabundance of food. And then from our cell phones, from our computers, we can completely overwhelm our house with junk, our apartments with junk, our cars with junk, because everything is available cheaply with one click through Amazon and other online providers. So we live in a world where, oh, I got to watch this, I got to eat this, I got to buy this, I got to assemble this, I got to take this out of the package. There's no time left for what's really important. One key concept by the productivity expert Cal Newport, big fan of his, is this concept of deep work. You want to be productive in any industry. Doesn't matter if it's science, creative arts, dive in every day in deep work. What that means is the cell phones are turned off. You pull the plug from the Internet, you turn the phone off, and you give one 100% concentration to what's most important to you in your career. If you are a novelist or an aspiring novelist, you got to write now. You can't do this for eight or 12 hours a day. You may start out doing it just for 10 minutes a day. Ideally, you can get to the point where two, three, even four hours a day you are immersed in deep work. Everyone has to answer phone calls, return emails from time to time. But if you truly, truly carve out, put on your calendar what is most important, the thing that is going to drive your career the further make it a priority. It can happen for you in your current job. It may be that if you dig ditches all day long, and that can be honorable, your deep work time has to be 5am to 8am and you go to bed really, really early the night before. Because you're an aspiring screenwriter, you've got to carve out that time from 5am to 8am or it could be 6pm to 9pm Rather than look for more apps and gizmos and read more books on productivity, I want you to focus on this one thing. Decide what is most important to you and your career and what do you enjoy doing that you have a passion for, that you can create. Start putting that literally on your calendar. I use a Google Calendar. You can use paper if you want. Pull the plug, turn the cell phone off, turn your computer off, turn vibrating watches off and just turn. Focused. You will be amazed how your productivity will soar. But whether it's a novel, a screenplay, a new app, new software program you do even two hours a day for a month. You'll be amazed at how productive you'll be. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for spending a few productive minutes with me. That's about all for now. But if you got some value out of this, please like it, follow it and get ready. Very soon. I'll be coming to you live every single day, 1:00pm Eastern Time to talk about personal development and personal growth together. I'm TJ Walker. Hope to see you soon.
