Posts Tagged ‘morning’

You have many other things that you would like to accomplish, but just can’t find any extra time in the day. How can you take on something else when you schedule is already packed. It may even be something fun, but you just can’t manage it. The good news is that you can learn to be more efficient and also learn where you are wasting time. Most people don’t even realize that they do.

One of the biggest problems is that people believe if they start earlier and work later that you are a good worker. Everyone trying to stay at the office just a little later than the next person to make it look like they are working just a little harder than everyone else. It is really bad here in Japan, where many people will stay at work long after hours even if they have nothing to do.

Below I have listed a few things you can do to cut down on the time it takes to complete jobs and how to find extra time in your schedule. For a great book on time management, I highly recommend “The Four Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferris. It is all about how to spend less time at work and more time doing the things you enjoy. And if work is what you enjoy, you will learn how to be even more successful.

1. Group tasks- Do all of one kind of task at a certain time. For instance, if you need to make phone calls, do them all in the morning or afternoon rather then here and there scattered through out the day. Not only will your technique get better by doing them this way, but you can do it faster because your mind is only doing one type of task

2. Do one task at a time- Multi-tasking is not efficient. People like to think that they are very talented because they can multi-task, but it is slower and you usually won’t do the job as good.

3. Learn the 80/20 rule and use it- It is likely that 80% of your results come from about 20% of your work. Or otherwise that 2 of the 10 things you do are responsible for most of your results. Find out what they are and do them better. Figure out they rest and see what you can eliminate. You must work effective and on the right things.

4. Learn to say no- People are constantly trying to get you to do things that aren’t important to your job or maybe don’t need to be done at all. Learn to tactfully say “no”.

5. Don’t let colleagues bother you at work. In order to work effectively, you must be able to concentrate. People constantly bothering you with questions, comments, or just wanting to talk distracts you and slows down your pace. When people come to you, tell them “hi “person’s name”, I am very busy right now, how can I help you”. If they start rambling on, repeat again that you are very busy and ask them to send you an e-mail. You can then deal with this e-mail when you deal with all your e-mails together. Another trick, and one recommended by Timothy Ferris in the 4 Hour Work Week, is to wear headphones like you are listening to music. People are much less likely to bother you. Especially when you look very busy.

6. Avoid meetings whenever possible. It’s true that there are times for meetings, but many times it is just people getting together because they want to talk or waste time. If someone wants to have a meeting, always find out why and what the point it is. Many times it is something that can be answered over the phone.

7. Work hard, but do take small breaks every once in a while to refresh. However, be sure not to take a bathroom or smoking break every 20 minutes.

8. Set up a schedule for your tasks. maybe a couple times a day, for checking and replying to e-mail, phones calls, and other things you might do. This would also include things like using the internet at home or the TV.

9. Limit your time on the internet or TV. We seem to have forgotten that there is more to life than TV and internet. When you cut back on things like movies you will be shocked how much free time you have. Try this as a test: On a day when you get home from work at a normal time, don’t do anything. Just sit and look out the window. No TV, no internet, no worrying about the kids, anything, just sit. You will realize there is a lot of time, but we just fill it with a lot of meaningless stuff.

10. Take some days to just relax. You can’t work efficient and effective if you are over working all the time. Take time to rest and relax without worrying about all the other stuff. You will be surprised how much you can accomplish when you are rested up.

Well it’s been a couple of weeks since Eri and I got back from our trip to Miyakojima. And some of the photos I took inspired me to add a photo gallery to the site. I installed Zenphoto today and am starting to put in photos slowly. You can find the full photo gallery here: simplistic thoughts photo gallery. Please leave some comments and let me know what you think. I have also made a few other changes to the site, including a new contact form in the side bar.

Miyakojima is a small island about an hour south of Okinawa. You can drive across the island in less than an hour. We flew out of Tokyo airport and arrived at Miyakojima at about 10:00am on Thursday morning. We had our rental car in about 30 minutes and were headed off towards our hotel.

We set the coordinates into the GPS and after practically driving in a circle, realized that it didn’t really work that well. We decided to use the map we had grabbed at the airport and use the GPS for a location reference. After a bunch of confusion we finally arrived at our hotel. Had lunch at the restaurant across the street, and enjoyed the warm clean air (don’t get too much of that in Tokyo).

We were able to check into the hotel a little earlier than we had thought and so put our stuff in our room and went for a swim in the ocean. The water was absolutely gorgeous and there was a lot of life. We even saw Nemo (an anemone containing one large clown fish and one very small one).

After coming back from our swim we decided to do some site seeing and drove a little ways down the coast.The weather was mostly cloudy as we were expecting thunderstorms, but still very beautiful. The entire island was a mixture of green and blue. Later in the evening we went for dinner, and then a massage. On the way back, the thunderstorm hit and the rain fell. There was so much rain that the rain pipe was literally shooting out pressurized water. We had some difficulty sleeping that night due to the thunder that lasted well into the early morning.

For the last night (or so we thought) we were comped a stay at a new hotel that had just opened. It was very nice, with a separate bedroom, private sauna, day beds, and dinning room. I found out later the normal cost is $350 per person per night. From there we continued our travels around the island and then received a phone call from the travel agency telling us we would need to leave earlier (after we had paid extra to leave later) due to a strike of the airline. They wanted us to catch an earlier flight to Okinawa and then hope on of the completely booked flights would open up to Tokyo. If not we would have to pay hotel.

I was having too much fun to be bothered by bad news and after a few phone calls. We had arranged to leave the day after on a guaranteed flight, had our additional night at the hotel paid for, and our seats from Okinawa to Tokyo upgraded to business class. Cost to us, 0$. Great job Eri!

We spent our last day walking around the beach and through the city enjoying the various shops. My personal favorite was the snow salt ice cream. I had already consumed 2 ice creams that day, but couldn’t pass it up, and I was glad that I didn’t. It was great.