Go into the Silence

To manage time well, you have to move to quality, instead of a myopic focus on efficiency.   If you're efficient at doing the wrong things at least two problems can crop up: first, you can create more work for yourself (ie you did it wrong the first time), and secondly, if you work within an organization, you can typecast yourself as a workhorse or "savior", and then get more work assigned to you.  Thus, in a dynamic sense, it is very inefficient to be efficient.  Efficiency alone is static thinking that tries to make human beings fit a system.  It's not good for the human being. (It's actually not good for the system either, but systems are too driven by static calculations to see that).

The only ways I know of to get out of this trap are 1) frugality and 2) high-quality work.  First, frugality gives you the leverage to carve out freedom, and especially time wealth.  And the other great path is to do quality work.  Cal Newport has a book entitled So Good They Can't Ignore You, which is a title based on Steve Martin's advice to young comedians -- be so good they can't ignore you.

How do you become so good that they can't ignore you?  It's not really through hard work alone, as I have shown that efficiency alone is a trap.  To have the greatest breakthroughs in you life, whether in career, creative pursuit, or relationship, you need to go into the silence.

I first saw the phrase expressed this way in the book Energizing the 12 Powers of Your Mind by Howard E. Hill.  I mention this to give credit where it is due, rather than make a recommendation of the book.  It gets a little too new-agey, rah-rah, and self confident for my tastes.  But hey, if you ever find a copy, it make be worth a read for you.  It actually was for me.  I'm just also a skeptical jerk and an intellectual snob.

You can look through the biography of almost any great innovator, or even great leader (ie positively transformative -- not necessarily "popular") and there is almost always a strong streak of finding quiet time away from others, and this time is often consciously protected and seen as a key to creativity. Heck, even I had that with my "Walden Years."

Susan Cain in her powerful TED talk states, ". . . no wilderness, no revelations."  Herman Melville is even more direct, saying "God's one and only voice is silence."  Cal Newport, the author of the aforementioned book, has a blog that has shifted away from efficiency to a focus on deep thinking and deep work habits. Here is a representative post along that theme.

To think deeply, you have to remove distractions.  You have to cut yourself off, at least temporarily, from the day-to-day.  This is not an optional feature, based on preference.  This is a best practice, and probably the only way to get to quality work.

Another way to look at it: your subconscious is demonstrably better at epiphanies than your weak, headache prone, hold 7 items -- plus or minus 2-- consciousness.  When you go into the silence, your mind works things over at its true rhythm, and not doused in stress hormones.  The breakthroughs just bubble up to the surface when they are ready.  Trying to get the same result by consciously straining is the using the wrong tool for the job.

So I here is my updated plan for improving someone's time management:

1. Use efficiency tricks to get more done in the same time, so you can have time to invest.  Once you have finished your normal amount of work, stop, and DO NOT use that time to do more of the same crap (how will you even know if the additional work is crap? Well, go to step #2)
2. Go into the silence.  Only then can you reorient your thinking enough to know what the next, best moves are.  Even more importantly, you can stop being reactive and instead start figuring out what the next worst moves are, and avoiding those. Then . . .
3. Invest in other types of personal development, such as  exercise, reading, journaling, work skills, etc.