Task throttling
Some people, like me, take a preposterous amount of time to get some things done. For example, I take about 20-30 minutes to have a bath. Now 1/2 hr a day for a bath is crazy. So, one day I was late for school. What did I do? I task-throttled.
Now task-throttling is a technique to speed up work. It can't speed up all jobs. Only things that require us to do a lot of different seeming things, like getting ready or cleaning up. I don't know if it works for everyone, but it worked for me.
Here's the idea: You mentally set a mini-task to do within every 10 seconds. Say, you are cleaning up your room. You think to yourselves, "Gather all dirty clothes from the wardrobe". And you try to do that under 10 seconds.Now 10 seconds meaning not 10 seconds in actual life, but 10 seconds in your mind. Say you can't get all the dirty clothes for whatever reason. You are counting down 10 seconds in your mind. You just slow down when you realize you can't do it. You protest: "Ah crap! then I can take all the time I want". Well, you try to push down the time to absolute minimum and keep counting, even if you are saying 1/2,1/4,1/8...
Why slow down and not restart the 10 secs? By restarting the 10 secs you feel you weren't able to complete the task. That kills motivation. You want to feel like you CAN do it.
How does this speed things up? By allowing you tofocus on a single task for a limited amount of time. I was able to cut down my bath time to 10-15 mins.
Obviously this technique can't be used for intellectual work. Can only be used to fuzzy-type physical work. You should give it a shot and see if it works. Or you might be naturally effiicient.
Technorati Tags: lifehack, gtd
Now task-throttling is a technique to speed up work. It can't speed up all jobs. Only things that require us to do a lot of different seeming things, like getting ready or cleaning up. I don't know if it works for everyone, but it worked for me.
Here's the idea: You mentally set a mini-task to do within every 10 seconds. Say, you are cleaning up your room. You think to yourselves, "Gather all dirty clothes from the wardrobe". And you try to do that under 10 seconds.Now 10 seconds meaning not 10 seconds in actual life, but 10 seconds in your mind. Say you can't get all the dirty clothes for whatever reason. You are counting down 10 seconds in your mind. You just slow down when you realize you can't do it. You protest: "Ah crap! then I can take all the time I want". Well, you try to push down the time to absolute minimum and keep counting, even if you are saying 1/2,1/4,1/8...
Why slow down and not restart the 10 secs? By restarting the 10 secs you feel you weren't able to complete the task. That kills motivation. You want to feel like you CAN do it.
How does this speed things up? By allowing you tofocus on a single task for a limited amount of time. I was able to cut down my bath time to 10-15 mins.
Obviously this technique can't be used for intellectual work. Can only be used to fuzzy-type physical work. You should give it a shot and see if it works. Or you might be naturally effiicient.
Technorati Tags: lifehack, gtd
1 drops:
I do it everyday. I've started saving between 15-30 mins everyday.
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