#4 On time allocation

The original title of this newsletter was going to be “On time management”, but that felt wrong. Time management is most commonly known as a series of optimizations that happen on every activity you make. For example, typing faster, having your emails sorted by priority, etc. Don’t get me wrong, that is great, but it wasn’t the topic I was gonna dive into. If you want to learn more about that, I highly recommend .

What I want to discuss today is time allocation: every single human in this world has 24 hours in a day, so the question then becomes how do you distribute your day so you can reclaim some time and allocate it to work on your new project. Here’s what I have done and do to create time:

1. Cut back a little sleep

Alright let’s start with the most controversial of all, the one who mustn’t be spoken, the sleep. While it’s unhealthy to sleep for only 3 hours a day for the average person, I bet that you’re probably fine if you cut 30 minutes to 1 hour of sleep. The trick is to do something relevant in that time so that you’re motivated and don’t feel the urge to sleep more.

2. Work late at night

Fine, maybe you are not the type of person who can awke up earlier and do something productive, so maybe you can stay up 30 minutes to 1 hour later to work on your own stuff. I find this easier when I’m in a flow state and I’m already working super productively and getting a lot of things done, pushing that extra time feels like nothing.

I much rather be working extra for something that is mine, than working late for someone else, and god forbid, being “on-call”. (If you never been on-call, lucky you).

3. Keep a notepad with you

Fine, a smartphone also works… but the idea is that whenever you have a thought, something you remember to do, or something you need to check out, you write it down somewhere so that you can do it when you have time. For me, it is very common to find myself thinking about my software in a place where I can’t do anything, so writing it down has helped me remember to go back to ideas I had.

Ah, was forgetting: can’t write but can speak? use voice memos, they are great, fast, and you can achieve (well, almost) the same result.

4. Use lunch to flesh out ideas

Use your lunch time to think about the things you need to do and how you’re gonna do them. As I stated before, planning is the biggest productivity impacting activity you can do, so squeeze it in whenever you can, it will pay off later.

5. Use breaks for marketing

Use small breaks to create social content, write comments and interact with your network. As long as you know and have planned what you’ll be posting and doing, this will bring lots of small winners in your week. Do it consistently and results will come in.

That’s it for today. Go get shit done.