Weekend wisdom 9

I went through my email inbox this morning and I didn’t get a lot this week that I really want to remember so it’s a short post this week.

One thing I’ve been loving lately is James Clear’s new weekly 3-2-1 email, which offers three ideas, two quotes and one question. Two of the ideas he presented this week especially resonated with me for different reasons.

• Idea 2: When making plans, think big. When making progress, think small.
• Idea 3:  A simple strategy that will save you so many headaches: don’t care about winning trivial arguments. Did someone say something you don’t agree with? Smile, nod, and move on to more important things. Life is short. Learning to not care about having the last word will save you so much time.

Idea 3 reminds me of something I saw a few weeks back, I don’t remember where.

Before you argue with someone, ask yourself, is that person even mentally mature enough to grasp the concept of different perspectives? Because if not, there’s absolutely no point. (Amber Veal)

I listened to Asian Efficiency’s podcast with Mridu Parikh, which I found full of useful tips, some of which I knew about and others that were new to me.

Here are my takeaways from the podcast:

1. Use the pomodoro timer not just for things you want to get done but also to set limits around distracting activities. If you’re going to do something distracting, set yourself a time limit and then stop and get back to work when the time’s up.
2. To make your top three (or five or one) tasks stand out from everything else, put them on a sticky note somewhere that you’ll see it all day. These are your “gotta do’s” not your “wanna do’s”.
3. If you struggle with making yourself do your work when you’ve blocked out time to do it (hello!), break it down into more manageable chunks. Don’t block out two hours to work on a report. Block out 30 minutes to do a specific task for the report: look up statistics, write the introduction, then another 30 minutes (or an hour or however long you need) to do another discrete task. That way you know exactly what you’re going to be working on and you’ll be able to sit down and focus on that task (once you’ve got rid of the distractions that Mridu also discusses in the podcast).

I’ll be trying to put these tips into practise this week as we roll into another busy time at work.