Brand Camp Blog » time management

CREATING THE FIVE-HOUR WORK WEEK

brandcampblog — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 12:38:22 +0000

So, I vowed to do a five-hours-per-day work week this week. First, I banked my allotted Monday and Tuesday to create a 10-hour work day on Monday. I’m working on a personal project that requires visiting where I grew up on Tuesday and Wednesday. That project probably won’t see the light of day, but push has come to shove for creating it. To me, personal projects don’t count as work. That leaves ten hours to work on Thursday and Friday, which is more than enough if I follow these guidelines, and the utter lack of work that happened on Wednesday rolls nicely into Saturday.

And so I present…

How to have a five-hour work day for a week.

Ignore Twitter. (Primo timesuck.)
Ignore Facebook. (Seconday timesuck.)
Check e-mail ONLY twice daily and respond to e-mails immediately. (I have a habit of reading e-mails on my iPhone, which means I have to re-read them later in order to respond without tiny keys and misspelled words courtesy of Apple spell-check.)
Create a task list and put the task list in order so that no thought is put into prioritization during the work day. (Takes five minutes, saves thirty.)
Pay attention to zero blogs, forums, online magazines, and other things that aren’t urgent.
Reward yourself for banking five hours or less in a work day. Maybe it’s a nice long bath, a visit to the dog park with your furbaby, or a big ol’ heaping ice cream cone. Setting a goal and meeting it is cause for celebration!

SETH GODIN HAS A POINT.

brandcampblog — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:20:01 +0000

I was reading Seth’s blog for the first time in many moons. And this? This must be done.

“What would happen if you were prohibited from working more than five hours a day. What would you do? How would you use those five hours to become indispensable in a different way?”

First, I had to come up with a way to ‘prohibit’ myself from working more than 5 hours a day. I imagine a scenario in which my cameras and lenses are dropped, one by one, from the top of a 100-story building as the minutes tick past. That’s prohibiting, alright.

My answer to Seth’s question, which is inevitably different from your answer, involves a lot more outsourcing. And more face-to-face marketing meetings with business owners. More event planning. More showing up.

Less graphic design. Less copy writing. (It’s good enough, already! Good Lord!) Less computer. Less worrying about where my ideas are going to come from and more just letting them happen. More film. More time in the yard. Less time driving. More cooking healthy meals. Less fast options.

That question can reframe your life, not just your work, if you let it. (I dare you to let it.) And next week?

Next week, I’m working for 5 hours per day. Care to join me?

INCREASE YOUR PRODUCTIVITY WITH ONE SIMPLE CHANGE

brandcampblog — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:00:01 +0000

I hate grocery shopping. I loooooove to eat, but grocery shopping? 14 choices of toaster pastries laden with calories, while I force myself to reach for something healthy? Ick. Sometimes I convince my husband to go by himself, then jump up and down at my ingenuity.

Yesterday’s grocery excursion wasn’t that bad, though, and here’s why: I rearranged my to-do list.

Generally, I just choose to do the tasks on my to-do list in any order, but yesterday I rearranged them from LEAST to MOST desirable. It’s not rocket science, but it made all the difference in my mood. Instead of having enjoyed an hour shoe shopping and then trolling for carrots and sale-priced spinach, I rolled my cart through the aisles at a record pace to get to trying on scores of lovely leather boots.

I challenge you to do the same!

Order your to-do list from icky to awesome, then start with icky. Your days will only get better, and those tasks you always put off doing will actually get done.

(The shoes in question…)