Transforming Time: My Journey from Wasting to Living Fully

[Anderson]

I often hear people questioning the need for time management and note-taking. They say, "I already know what I'm going to do tomorrow, so why bother?" But let’s be honest for a moment—how often do you forget to do something? How close have you come in the past year to realising your dreams? While you're thinking about that, let me share a few examples of people who achieved their goals through relentless hard work and precise time management.

Take Tim Cook and Elon Musk, for instance. Tim Cook’s father worked at a shipyard, and Elon Musk’s father was an engineer and construction worker. They both grew up in modest circumstances, yet their names are now regularly in the spotlight. Why is that? The answer is simple: Tim Cook follows a strict schedule and knows exactly what he will be doing in six months. Meanwhile, Elon Musk divides his day into short intervals and always allocates time for rest. 

If you also have ambitious goals and focus on task execution, which often requires more than one day, you need to stay focused. Otherwise, a busy work schedule, family, hobbies, unnecessary conversations, meetings, and a barrage of notifications will pull you in different directions. When I started to manage my time more carefully and rationally, I stopped feeling anxious and began making steady progress towards my goals. While my ambitions might not be as grand as Bill Gates’, I’ve seen significant growth—from earning $15,000 a month as a freelancer to $800,000. You can follow your own path and achieve your goals too. The key is to start and approach it thoughtfully.

Changing your habits isn't easy. It takes time to start thinking or acting differently. You’ll face resistance and hear people say, “Why bother?” But don't listen to them—keep moving forward. Choose a few tips from this guide and start applying them immediately.

1. Prioritise Time for Yourself
Remember, you are your most valuable resource. Notice how your productivity depends on your mood or physical state. After a grueling workday or with a high fever, you simply lack the energy to do anything; all you want is to lie in bed and not think about anything. So, don’t forget to schedule time for hobbies, walks, reading your favorite books, and spending time with loved ones—whatever brings you joy and recharges your energy. Add this to your calendar, or you’ll end up drowning in work, stuck in routine, and missing out on personal moments.

2. Set Boundaries Between Work and Personal Life
Define a clear schedule and stick to it. Manage your colleagues' expectations and avoid taking work home on weekends. Don’t undermine your personal time by answering work chats after 9:00 PM unless it's urgent. Switch notifications to silent mode if necessary. Ensure that work matters are handled during work hours. It’s challenging, but as experience shows, most worries are unfounded—no one will die, the company won’t go bankrupt, and everything will be fine without you. Prioritise what’s more important today: leaving work early to see a doctor or completing a task? What can wait?

3. Establish Priorities
Decide what's more crucial: playing another round of Fortnite or finally attending that singing class you’ve been postponing? Some decisions are easier, some are harder, but each one will impact your long-term goals. List all your tasks, highlight those you can start soon, and assign priorities. Choose three main tasks for the next six months, three for the month, week, and day. Start with these first. You might use the classic priority matrix, categorizing tasks into four groups: important and urgent (do these first), important but not urgent (schedule these), urgent but not important (delegate if possible), and neither urgent nor important (eliminate if possible).

4. Plan Your Tasks
You can use a paper list, a calendar, an Excel sheet, or one of the many planning apps. The method doesn’t matter as long as all your tasks are out of your head. Here are three rules most people overlook when diving into time management:

   - Reserve Time for Challenging Tasks: For personal tasks, you'll see how much time is left for sacred downtime. This reduces anxiety initially. For work tasks, it helps with concentration, as colleagues will know you’re busy during that time.
   - Take Breaks: No one can work 24/7. Find a comfortable pace—take breaks every hour or hour and a half. Make sure breaks are long enough to recharge but short enough to maintain focus.
   - Plan for Unforeseen Tasks: Add a bit of extra time to each task or leave a small slot in your calendar for emergencies. It's easier to plan using ready-made solutions and adjust as needed.

5. Avoid Procrastinating on Unpleasant Tasks
Dedicate at least 5-10 minutes a day to them. Promise yourself that you’ll spend exactly that time on these tasks. Often, the brain tricks itself into accepting 5 minutes of unpleasant work, leading to more productive sessions. Even if you don’t get fully into it, 5 minutes is better than nothing. This method helped me tackle a mountain of tedious documentation work. Yes, it was boring, but 5-10 minutes was enough to get started.

6. Learn to Say No
Master the art of saying “no” to unimportant tasks and external distractions. Here is a good practical advice. If you don’t manage your time, someone else will. Helping others is good, but not at the expense of your goals. If you're overwhelmed or find yourself repeatedly agreeing to things you don’t need or care about, just say no. The first time might be tough, and the second, too, but by the tenth time, you’ll find it easier. Embrace the freedom to focus on what truly matters.

7. Time Management as a Lifestyle
Time management isn’t about a one-time task list or organizing a single day. It’s about continuously respecting yourself, your dreams, and desires. It’s not about rigid structures but about flexibility and listening to yourself. The planner or system you choose is less important than whether it works for you. Experiment, adjust, and take action.

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[Olga]

The Technology of a Clear Mind

The technology of a clear mind is all about understanding what’s stored up in our mental attic—what’s gathering dust, what’s tangled up, and what’s spinning inside our heads. You know how our thoughts start to drift when we enter that state of mental wandering? It’s because our default mode network kicks in, stirring up a mix of ideas, conversations, and unresolved issues. They float around, sometimes interacting, sometimes arguing, sometimes hiding. And when we try to catch hold of these thoughts, they slip away.

Yesterday, we began working on this by pulling everything out of our mental closet—all the old toys, noise-makers, and mess—and writing it all down on paper. Of course, each of us is unique, with our own distinctive lives, but the types of thoughts we wrote down tend to be universal. They’re the things we can’t forget: commitments, conflicts, resentments, fears about the future, and unfinished business with others. These thoughts revolve around our subconscious, driving us to revisit past arguments, old obligations, or anxieties that keep us stuck in a loop.

Psychologically speaking, it’s like our default system keeps running on unfinished “gestalts”—those unresolved bits that spin around in our minds. They keep our mental wheels turning in an endless state of wandering, constantly nudging us to call someone, fix something, or deal with unresolved issues. And instead of moving forward, we get caught up in this internal chatter, making it hard to focus or find peace.

Practical Steps Towards Mental Clarity

So, as we’ve started this detailed work with our various thought types, let’s focus on the ones related to tasks, plans, and responsibilities. This category is usually filled with to-dos, obligations, and unfinished tasks that you’ve been dragging along. Writing these down can feel liberating; it’s as if you’ve let go of a weight that’s been buzzing around in your mind. But, at the same time, looking at that long list of tasks can be overwhelming. You might find yourself thinking, “How on earth am I going to get all this done?” The sheer volume can feel catastrophic, draining your mental energy.

This is why it's crucial to not only write your tasks down but also to manage them effectively. The goal isn’t just to empty your head but to prevent those tasks from turning into mental traps. You don’t want your responsibilities to become a source of dread every time you glance at your phone or calendar. The key lies in time management—allocating time to your tasks so they don’t pile up and force you into avoidance.

Time management often gets a bad rap as a boring concept, but it’s not about controlling time—it’s about planning your tasks. It’s about fitting what needs to be done into your schedule, prioritizing what’s urgent, and breaking down bigger tasks into smaller, manageable parts. I always encourage people to schedule everything—even the stuff that makes you groan. It’s common for our schedules to be filled with things we don’t look forward to, like work meetings or unpleasant tasks. But remember, your schedule is also a blank canvas. Use it to plan enjoyable activities, too, to avoid a work-work-work-death pattern. 

Crafting a Balanced Schedule

Your brain feels a lot more at ease when it sees that everything has its time and place. When you schedule things properly, there’s a time to do everything, and you can relax knowing you won’t forget anything. This lets you experience a sense of freedom; your mind is no longer overwhelmed by everything it’s holding onto. You’ve put some order in that mental attic, and although it’s still full of stuff, it’s no longer chaotic. 

When you compartmentalize your tasks into specific time slots, your brain stops feeling the pressure of “everything, everywhere, all at once.” Instead, it trusts the system you’ve created. And when you decide to rest, you can actually rest, knowing that you’ve set aside time for every commitment and worry. As Scarlett O’Hara famously said, “I’ll think about that tomorrow.” With proper scheduling, you can let go of your mental clutter today, knowing you’ll handle it when the time comes.

Practical Exercise and Participant Feedback

After identifying and sorting our thoughts, the next step involves categorizing them: which are unfinished tasks, which are ongoing commitments, and which are things you’ve been procrastinating on. Many of you have found that once you assign these to specific calendar slots, there’s a noticeable sense of control. For some, it’s about putting tasks into a digital calendar, creating a habit of regularly checking it, and relying on reminders instead of constantly keeping things in your head. 

Participants have shared that this method instantly freed up mental space. One person noted that after jotting everything down in Google Calendar, there was an immediate feeling of lightness. Tasks that used to feel like endless, vague obligations now had a defined time and place. This strategy is especially valuable for those non-routine tasks—the ones you can’t easily fit into your daily grind. 

Even if some tasks were assigned a date far in the future, it helped to know that there was a plan. The psychological benefit of this method is not just about planning but about feeling in control of your time. Your mind isn’t endlessly holding onto all your obligations; instead, it’s freed up to focus on what’s currently important.

Thoughts

This approach to mental clarity and organization is powerful because it addresses the root of much of our stress and anxiety: the endless spinning of unresolved thoughts and uncompleted tasks. By externalizing these mental burdens—writing them down and scheduling them—we take control and reduce mental clutter. It’s not just about being organized; it’s about reclaiming your cognitive space and peace of mind. This technique helps you shift from feeling overwhelmed to feeling empowered, turning a chaotic to-do list into a manageable plan.

There’s a profound mental relief that comes with knowing that you don’t have to remember everything—your systems and schedules will do that for you. And in a world that constantly pulls us in multiple directions, having this sense of control can be game-changing. My advice? Keep refining your scheduling habits, balance your obligations with enjoyable activities, and remember that not every task needs to be dealt with right now. With time, this practice will become second nature, allowing you to think clearer, focus better, and live more fully.