how to avoid wasting time, how to deal with a boss

- originally this talk was about how to deal with your advisor

but I've tried to broaden it so it's not quite so academically focused,

and how to delegate to people, some specific skills and tools

that I might recommend to help you get more out of the day.

And to deal with the real problems in our life, which are stress and procrastination,

I mean, and if you can lick the last one, you are probably in good shape.

So the first thing I want to say is that Americans are very, very bad

at dealing with time as a commodity. We're really good at dealing

with money as a commodity. I mean, we're as a culture very interested

in money - in how much somebody earns, as a status thing and so on and so forth.

But we don't really have time elevated to that. People waste their time

and it just always fascinates me. And one of the things I noticed

is that very few people equate time and money and they are very, very equatable.

So let's talk first about goals, priorities and planning.

Any time anything crosses your life, you've got to ask,

"This thing I'm thinking about doing, why am I doing it?"

Almost no one that I know starts with the core principle

of "There is this thing on my "to do" list, why is it there?"

Because if we start asking "Why"... I mean, again my kids are great at this,

'cause all I ever hear at home is, "Why?, Why? Why?"

And sooner or later they're going to stop saying "Why",

they're just going to say, "Ok, I'll do it."

So ask - why am I doing this? What is the goal?

Why will I succeed at doing it? And here is my favorite,

what will happen if I don't do it? The best thing in the world

is when I have something on my "to do" list, and I just go, "Hmm, no".

No one has ever come and taken me to jail. The other thing to keep in mind

when you are doing goal setting is, a lot of people focus on doing things right.

I think it's very dangerous to focus on doing things right. I think it's much more important

to do the right things. If you do the right things adequately,

that's much more important than doing the wrong things beautifully.

Alright? Doesn't matter how well you polish the underside of the banister.

Ok? And keep that in mind. The other thing I can remember

is that experience comes with time, and it's really, really valuable,

and there are no shortcuts to getting it. So, good judgment comes from experience,

and experience comes from bad judgment. So if things aren't going well,

that probably means you're learning a lot and will go better, later.

This is, by the way, why we pay so much in American society for people

who are typically older but have done lots of things in their past

because we're paying for their experience because we know that experience

is one of the things you can't fake.

Planning is very important. One of the time management clichés

is "failing to plan is planning to fail".

And planning has to be done at multiple levels.

I have a plan every morning when I wake up and I say,

what do I need to get done today? what do I need to get done this week?

what do I need to get done each semester? That's sort of time quanta

because I'm an academic. And that doesn't mean you're locked into it.

People say, "Yeah, but things are so fluid". I'm going to have to change the plan

and I am like "Yes, you are going to have to change the plan.

But you can't change it unless you have it. And the excuse about not going to make

a plan because things might change, is just this paralysis

of "I don't have any marching orders". So, have a plan,

acknowledge that you are going to change it, but have it so you have the basis to start with.

"To do lists", how many people here, right now if I said, "Can you produce it?",

could show me their "To do" list? Ok, not bad, not bad.

The key thing with "to do" lists is you have to break things down

into smell steps. The last thing about "to do" lists

for getting yourself going is if you've got a bunch of things to do,

do the ugliest thing first. There's an old saying,

"If you have to eat a frog, don't spend a lot of time looking at it first,

and if you have to eat three of them, don't start with the small one".