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Most time management stuff sucks because it's made for two types of people.
1) People who only have like 4 things MAX to do in a day (if that).
2) Hypothetical people that never get disturbed and never deal with emergencies.
If you've ever worked at a big company you will quickly notice that the average worker does exactly no work.
80% of work is done by 20% of people.
Most people are genuinely not contributing AT ALL.
That's why Elon fired 80% of people at Twitter and it worked better afterwards.
Not worse, Better.
Because not only do some people not contribute.
That's rather harmless.
A lot of people actively make it harder to get stuff done.
And a lot of time management is made with these people in mind.
So, let's talk about real world stuff.
In the real world:
You will be interrupted, constantly and incessantly, for stupid stuff.
You will delegate stuff to people and it'll get botched up.
Let's start with the first one.
If you want to get work done you need to start getting ruthless about telling the world that you're working.
If you make it clear, visually, that you're working, people will mostly leave you alone.
And if you actively ignore them they will understand.
And when someone distracts you anyway and says:
"Can I talk to you for a minute", you say: "I'm super busy right now, I'm only handling 9s and 10s on the priority scale right now, let's get together maybe at the end of the day? Or text me? Sorry, really need to get this done."
People are used to asking: 'do you have a minute' and you saying: 'sure'.
Because it's polite.
You can't really say FUCK NO.
Because it's impolite.
But if you politely tell them that you really really really can't do it right now... they go away.
The people that have nothing to do are magically and magnetically attracted to bothering the people that are hard at work.
And when people insist you need to insist as well.
Don't let people guilt trip you into being constantly available.
Same goes for electronics and everything that dings and beeps and makes other annoying sounds.
Your phone, your computer, all of those.
Turn it off.
Don't let it ding or beep or boop at you.
You're a hairless ape.
You can't help yourself if something boops.
Have to look at it.
And now your concentration is fucked.
You being careless with distractions is the number one reason why you're not getting enough done.
Let's talk about delegation.
Because this is a tough subject as well.
When you start delegating or, put differently, when you start asking people to do stuff for you, you find out how hard it actually is to get work done by other people.
Delegating has two issues.
Main issue is...
YOU.
You're probably not that good at giving instructions.
You have to be detailed and clear and concise and you have demonstrate it and you have to show what it looks like and what you're looking for.
When things go wrong (and they always do in some way, shape or form eventually) you need to address the...
BREAKDOWN.
You address the breakdown and you ask your team (and the team could be 1 person or a 100 or a 1000 people, doesn't matter in this context): "how do we make sure that this doesn't go wrong again?"
And then you do something else that's crucial.
You SHUT UP.
Clench your jaw.
Do not make sound.
Do not pass go.
And then you listen to THE STORY and you wait until they finish THE STORY.
And then you say: "I understand. So... how do we make sure that this doesn't go wrong again?"
Here is when you'll find out if someone is just being obtuse, or someone is genuinely too stupid to do it, or... you find out that the person you work with is actually quite clever.
You can usually coach someone towards finding a solution.
Even if they're not the sharpest crayon in the box, even if not all of their bingoballs dropped, they can still kinda sorta somewhat figure out a solution.
IF THEY ARE WILLING.
So if someone says: 'there is no solution' and you try and coach them and they still say NO IT CANNOT BE DONE.
Well.
BYEEEE.
7 billion people in the world, in 1969 we (allegedly) put someone on the Moon, there's probably a solution somewhere.
It's not with this person, so let's separate now.
And when you coach them and they find a solution, they own the solution.
So if there's ANOTHER breakdown, you circle back and you ask: "This is the second time this failed.
We came up with a solution before.
That didn't work out.
Why is that?"
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