Chapter 12 3.e Audit time overhead

Now you've been logging your time spending for days in a row.You have two habits: make a time budget every morning, and record time expenses every night.Then, another habit is very natural: find one day every week to spend an hour auditing your budget and actual expenses for the week.In fact, when you record your time expenses every night, you can't help but audit your budget and actual expenses for the day. When you browse your time expenditure records for the last week, you will find that some items are fixed expenses, such as your sleep time, eating time, washing time, exercise time and so on.And other times are sudden expenses, such as attending a friend’s birthday party, being stuck in traffic for an hour while going somewhere, suddenly having a problem with the computer and having to stop work, etc.

After a week or so of recording, observing, reviewing, and thinking, you will understand that some things do not need to be recorded anymore-such as most of those fixed expenses.And at the same time, when you're making your time budget each morning, you'll stop filling every minute so naively -- because you're now more aware and calm about the fact that there will always be surprises. Although time is always insufficient, in fact, you don't have to cut time costs from every place.Some people will only use the most simple and crude methods to cut time costs - for example, staying up late, or simply forgetting to eat; even, if there are a lot of things to do in the hands and do not need to go out today, then simply do not wash your face Don't brush your teeth -- of course, what's more, even if you go out, you don't wash your face or brush your teeth at all!

The most direct way to improve your time usage is to do two things at the same time. Ha, "do one thing at a time" is the iron law that all the so-called experts have told you thousands of times.However, their statement is obviously oversimplified.In fact, for about as long as you've been able to remember things, your brain has been a perfect multitasking operating system -- and I bet it's far better than that hapless windows operating system on your computer!You have always been able to eat while watching TV; you can and often read a book while listening to music; for another example, you can observe that two other people can talk to each other and think about each other at the same time...

The trick to doing two things at the same time is that 1) one of the things is best to be mechanical and less technical; 2) the other thing does not particularly require a lot of mental support; 3) two things Both should be really useful and worth the investment of time.For example, when I go to the gym for a run, I can often listen to a Lecture in the series of teaching company courses with my MP3.At this time, I am doing two things at the same time: running and exercising, and absorbing new knowledge. At this time, all three conditions are met. 1) Running and exercising (in fact, almost all activities in the gym are like this) is a relatively mechanical activity, which requires almost no brain power at all; 2) Listening to audio books, although it requires brain power, does not actually require 100% concentration; 3) Exercising is of great significance to me, and listening to audio books is more useful to me than listening to popular songs-of course, another reason is that classical music is too elegant for me, and I have never heard of it. I have experienced its legendary beauty.

Sometimes, it is difficult to do two things at the same time. For example, when memorizing words, it is difficult to listen to a singer with clear words singing a very catchy tune; when writing an article, watching a plot at the same time Complex thrillers are even more difficult.Please see for yourself which of the above three conditions are not met in these two situations?Just imagine why the so-called multitasking operating system windows crashes, and you will know. Please do a little exercise.Look at your time bill, what things can be done at the same time when the above three conditions are met?Make a list of them, and pick a set that you yourself feel is most likely to be achievable, as your starting practice.In less than a week, you will find that this is actually an easy skill to learn.And, because it's so easy to learn and gives you results so quickly, it's hard not to become obsessed with the skill -- and then it's easier to discover things you can do at the same time.

Here is a small explanation, the better the memory, the more likely it is to be able to handle two tasks at the same time.If you compare yourself to a computer, then your thinking ability is the CPU; you have two memories, the short-term memory is in the internal memory, and the long-term memory is in the hard disk.From this point of view, you have to find a way to improve your memory and memory capacity, because you also know that if the memory is too small, the machine will slow down, or blue screen, or even crash.And your CPU frequency is not static. With the increase of your memory capacity and the continuous extension of running time, your thinking ability will be continuously strengthened, so your multitasking ability will be further improved.

In fact, spending time on mental activities is most worthwhile.The so-called mental activities can often be roughly divided into several parts: input information (reading, observation), processing information (thinking), output information (recording, writing, creation, sharing, teaching).In most cases, thinking tends to be a passive process (although it is usually considered to be an active process)-thinking needs stimulation, and the best stimulation is to keep inputting information.So, when doing a mechanical thing - there are many mechanical things in life that must be done - try to do some input behavior.

When you go out in the car, don't forget to prepare a book in advance that you haven't finished reading in time; if you accidentally finish reading it on the way (so you should probably prepare two books), try to observe the world around you; nothing When you can watch it, it is best not to forget to bring paper and pen, so you can also record the thoughts that just flashed by.While not all of the time you can do both, there are always times when you can do both meaningfully.