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ADOPT THE WINNER MINDSET

MINDSET SHIFT 1

Firstly, time is the one resource that was given to us in equal amounts: we all have 24h. Just like Gandhi, Malala Yousafzai, Richard Branson, Elon Musk and any other great achievers you can think of. Our first mindset shift comes with the realization that, since we all have 24h, the term “time management” should actually be replaced by “self-management”.

In other words, time can’t be managed, it will slip through your fingers no matter what you do. What differentiates people who make the most of their time and those who don’t, is the ability to recognize that we are in control of our day and our choices.

Your life and achievements will depend on how well you “spend” your time. It will therefore depend on your choices and priorities. Notice how I highlight the word spend.

MINDSET SHIFT 2

This brings us to our second major mindset shift: we spend time just like we spend money.

People don’t realize the following: not only time is as valuable as money, it is arguably far more precious. Money can always come back. Time can’t.

During her time management presentation, Helene Segura (2016), an author and speaker on Time Management, asked everyone to stand up and grab their dollar bills in their hand. Then, she commanded to “throw those dollars in the air”. At that point, no one did follow the instruction, some even sat down in disdain.

Finally, she asked “how is it that you do not hesitate to defend your money, and yet you give your time away like it was meaningless?”.

The whole point of this experiment was to educate us in defending our time just as well as we defend our money. It helped the people understand a bit better how our mind isn’t use to visualize time as something valuable.

LET’S BE HONEST

How many times did you commit to something you didn’t want to do just as a favor to someone that maybe isn’t even your friend?

How many times did you allow someone to interrupt your study or ask you lengthy questions while you were occupied or how many times did you catch yourself spending hours browsing Facebook with absolutely no aim whatsoever?

We have been used to our 24h since we were born, making it hard for us to get this shift.

MINDSET SHIFT 3

The third major mindset shift consists of understanding that we mustn’t confuse being busy with being productive.

How many times did I hear a friend of mine boast about spending 13 hours in the library?

They confuse 13 hours of being in the library with 13 hours of actual work. In fact they spent most of their time going in and out of the library between meals, snacks and coffee breaks.

I firmly believe that a good 3 hours of intense work/study a day, consistently, is far more productive and helpful than a one-off 13 hours.

A FEW GOOD QUOTES

Bishop T. D. Jakes, pastor and author (www.tdjakes.org), states that “we are living in a generation of the dumbing down of ideas because we have traded effectiveness for busyness”. He explains that we are busier than any other generation of the past 300 to 400 years, and we think that because we are busy, we are effective.

Challenge your schedule for a minute: are you really being effective or is your life cluttered with all kinds of stuff that demands your attention, but which stops you from being your best self?

In Carlin Daharsh’s 2014 TEDxYouth we are taught how today our society is “so busy being busy, that we have pushed true productivity aside, and have thrown away the opportunity to realize our potential.”

Carlin is one of my favorites, I love the way she says that “we wear the I am so busy and overworked badge like it’s a gold medal“. She adds that, “we got confused and started thinking that busy is impressive” but busy “doesn’t mean that we are getting anything done or that we are making our lives better and happier.”

Daharsh reminds us that “not knowing when our next break is happening is not impressive, its sad; skipping meals because you ran out of time is not impressive, its unhealthy; and over-committing is not impressive, its stressful“.

Think about your role models – it’s safe to say that they are known for one, not a million, great achievement. Although you can’t be known for everything, you can be known for something.

TRACK YOUR TIME

Finally, just like money, it’s time to budget and track your time.

By tracking your time and becoming aware of your mind, you’ll realize how many unproductive thoughts, conversations and actions you tend to have. This will unlock the I do have time attitude and if it doesn’t, here are some powerful numbers to seal the deal.

WARNING once you know this truth you won’t be able to blame your lack of productivity on anyone else but yourself… it’s a hard burden to carry.

TIME TO PLAY

We all have 168h per week.

With that in mind, I will break those hours down thanks to a fictional situation:

let’s say that Alison, sleeps 8h a night,
attends lectures and studies for 9h on weekdays,
spends 2h a day in her morning and evening routine,
1h per day cooking
and has a part time job of 28h a week.

By adding up all those hours, Allison is left with 18h to spare.

What are you left with? Whatever your situation, I bet you are left with at least 2h spare.

I was left with 28h…!

28!!!!

How an Earth did I waste all that time?? Oooh yes… Facebook, Netflix, attending post parties after a night out, sleeping a lot… I’ll let you do your own breakdown.

Whatever the outcome: how about reading that book you longed for? Taking that dance class you never gave yourself the opportunity to start, or starting that blog you’ve been itching to write for years? Are you going to tell me you don’t have 2h to dedicate to what you love?

The options are endless! And it is all possible.

BONUS

HOW CAN WE CAN HELP EACH OTHER (ONLINE OPPORTUNITY)

If you are struggling to find experience and are interested in Copywriting, Marketing or Entrepreneurship then we are looking for people to become editors of this website. I will form you and teach you everything I know. If you want to get involved with this blog then please do not hesitate to contact me via this Contact Form or via my Instagram account. This is a unique opportunity. Again, you can contact me for more details on how this may help you!

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR YOU

Over the years I have created many guides and checklist that aim to help you save time. Here are a list of them just in case you might miss out on a few:

My 1st E-Book: a resource that has help me become a boss at Time Management. Moreover, it has also helped me create more time for what I love and get to my goals faster. It is lengthy, however it is arguably the best Time Management piece of research out there.
The Time Management Actionable Sheets: a summary of my E-Book. These sheets have conserved the absolute essential actions you need to take to make the most out of your time. Do not skip any steps!
My Before & After CV Transformation: a resource that has collected my CVs for the past 7 years to help you not only craft a great CV, but to also show you that everyone can start mediocre and grow exponentially.
How To Land a Job Faster Guide: a resource that aims to give you all of the tips and recommendations I have used during my career. This will help you avoid some common mistakes students do when starting off with their job applications.

MY OBJECTIVE IS AND WILL FOREVER BE TO HELP YOU

To conclude, the aim of this website is to help you have the best fresh start at University and with your career. There is nothing that gives me more happiness and joy but to hear your positive feedback on how helpful my content has been. Contact me if you have any feedback for me!

BEST OF LUCK WITH IT ALL!!!!

Much affection,

Francesca Michaud

YOUR GOAL

A goal is the object of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result. It should take a few weeks, or months (in my case, years) to achieve it. Daily tasks such as “cooking” are not considered goals in this guide.

It should be seen as a big ambition, something that seems slightly out of reach. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Africa’s first elected female president, sees a goal as something that scares you.

I believe that goals are dreams with a deadline.

WHERE IS YOUR HEAD AT?

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When it comes to setting goals, you have:

those who don’t believe in the concept,
those who can’t find one,
and those who have too many.

To those people who still don’t believe in the concept of setting goals: it’s better to determine what you want your outcome to be and lay out a series of steps to get there, rather than try to come up with your endgames midway through a project.

Are you a success seeker or a failure avoid-er? – Scott Geller, 2013, Behavioral Psychologist, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Virginia Tech.

To those who can’t seem to find a goal: I was one of you. Eventually I realised that, with a lot of patience and hard work, most of what I day-dreamed about was possible. Once you allow yourself to dream big, you will want everything. Once you’ll believe in your ability to conquer, then you’ll see that ideas of goals will come flooding in your life like there’s no tomorrow.

QUOTES

In his book, E-myth (1986), Michael Gerber asks us in one of this chapters, Primary Aims. He asks you “what would I want to be remembered as?”. He encourages you to imagine yourself at your own funeral: what would people say? This is your imagination, allow it to run wild.

Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality. – Earl Nightingale

To those who have too many ideas, it is time to pick and focus.

FOCUS OR DROWN

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I have realized that students, most of the time, try to achieve too many goals at once. Although I am sure it’s not impossible to have the highest marks in your promotion whilst qualifying for the Olympics, being a good girlfriend, being a good daughter and raising money for charity… it takes a level of discipline, determination and will-power that very few of us have unlocked.

I praise these people, but most of us can’t (or should I say won’t) pull that off.

The problem with signing up to too many activities is that we spread ourselves too thin. Indeed, we end up quitting half of their engagements by the end of the first term. Moreover, we end up doing the bare minimum, burnout, and feel like a failure.

This is THE mistake you want to avoid: pick one (max two) goal(s) and focus on excelling at them!

TRUST ME…

I get those reading this and thinking, “I cant give up on the others, I will stick to 5 instead of 10”. I remember thinking that when I first came across this notion of focus.

If you are anything like me, here’s my ultimate adice: pick 1 (MAX 2) goal(s) to focus on. If you don’t, you will lose 3 precious years of your life. You will try doing everything you thought you could do. You will do it badly, you will fail on some… Eventually, after a few disasters, you will acknowledge this lesson of focus.

Unless you are one of these super-genius-high-achiever-incredibly-disciplined humans, you will want to follow this advice. Now it’s up to you.

It’s time to learn how you set good goals.

HOW TO SET GOALS

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Break the unreasonable down into little reasonable chunks.

A big goal is only achieved when every little thing that you do every day, gets you closer to that goal. – Maren Kate, Escaping 9 to 5.

Carrie Green (2014), Founder of The Female Entrepreneur Association, explains in her TED talk that, whilst writing down her goals, she repeats these questions to herself:

What do I want to achieve?
Why do I want to achieve it
What kind of person so I need to become in order to achieve it?

And then proceeds in programming her mind to make it happen.

According to David Allen, a productivity consultant, in his 2014 Ted Talk, our brain is a “master planner”, a brilliant and sophisticated problem solving machine. You are a natural planner.

By practicing and researching, we will come up with a good strategy to live our desired vision.

REVERSE ENGINEER

Brendon Burchard, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author, states that you need to start by working backwards. Secondly, Gary Vaynerchuk, entrepreneur and angel investor, talks about “reverse engineering”. You start from the end goal and then think “what is needed to get there?” at each step of the way.

Once a vague path is constructed, drill down the action/step to the very next physical thing. Estimate the resources you need, so you know what to expect. Stephen Duneier, an investor manager, in his 2017 TED talk, explains to us what stands between us and achieving our most ambitious dreams. It has far less to do with possessing some magical skill or talent, and far more to do with how you approach problems and make decisions to solve them. Duneier reveals to us his one secret to achieve any challenge he desired here (one of the most empowering presentations I listened to).

You take these big concepts, these complex ideas, these big assignments, and you break them down to much more manageable tasks, and then along the way you make marginal improvement to the process.

HIERARCHY OF GOAL

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Finally, it is time to create your first hierarchy of goals. You start off by giving a very specific goal at the top. Things like “travel more” or “youtube famous” is not good enough. You need to give the exact number of countries you want to travel to, the exact number of views or subs you want to attract.

You will have to do a bit of research but this will hopefully make you realize how possible your goal is.

To find the steps to get to a goal, life coach Mel Robbins (2011) asks us to Google it. Cyber stalk those who are in the position you dream to be in. Find people who achieved exactly that goal. Find if they’ve been interviewed by anyone about the process or if they own a blog or anything else.

Set yourself sub goals and progress checkpoints to chart your progress in an affirmative manner. – Jim Rohn, 2001

VISION BOARDS

Once you’ve determined your specific hierarchy of goals, I would highly recommend taking half a day to create your vision board! This is suppose to be a fun and creative part of the process. Take a board and stick images, cut outs from magazines and key words to it. It needs to make you think and dream about your goals and outcomes. Look at it daily and it should help you stay on track and help manifest what you aim for.

REAL WORLD

I am not that naïve: all of us have “daily chores” to do, some important, some urgent, some useless. All of these chores gives us the impression that we have so much on our plate when actually, for a large majority of us, that is just not the case. But it’s impossible to start debating if we don’t have a clarifying list in front of us, which will be the subject of our next section.

BONUS

HOW CAN WE CAN HELP EACH OTHER (ONLINE OPPORTUNITY)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR YOU

Over the years I have created many guides and checklist that aim to help you save time. Here are a list of them just in case you might miss out on a few:

My 1st E-Book: a resource that has help me become a boss at Time Management. Moreover, it has also helped me create more time for what I love and get to my goals faster. It is lengthy, however it is arguably the best Time Management piece of research out there.
The Time Management Actionable Sheets: a summary of my E-Book. These sheets have conserved the absolute essential actions you need to take to make the most out of your time. Do not skip any steps!
My Before & After CV Transformation: a resource that has collected my CVs for the past 7 years to help you not only craft a great CV, but to also show you that everyone can start mediocre and grow exponentially.
How To Land a Job Faster Guide: a resource that aims to give you all of the tips and recommendations I have used during my career. This will help you avoid some common mistakes students do when starting off with their job applications.

MY OBJECTIVE IS AND WILL FOREVER BE TO HELP YOU

BEST OF LUCK WITH IT ALL!!!!

Much affection,

Francesca Michaud

THE MONSTER TO-DO-LIST

According to Executive Coach David Allen (2012), your brain is made to solve problems. Stop stocking unnecessary information in it that you can put on paper. Clear your mind by clarifying and writing down what’s bothering you.

EMPTY YOUR BRAIN

Firstly, Allen pointed out that, if you keep all of your worries, fears and to do lists in your head you will feel overwhelmed, which will just lead to you complaining about how busy you are, whilst not achieving much. For this reason, he encourages us to clarify exactly what it is that is distracting us from our current task. What is roaming around our mind. Write everything down on paper, or digitally, to get better perspective and control on what you are doing.

According to Brian Tracy, a self-development author, making a list improves your productivity by 25%.

MAKE IT MONSTROUS

Secondly, it’s time to make the list monstrous. I want you to break down the tasks you wrote down into smaller tasks. The smaller the better. As explained in the goal setting section, having a vague or “big” task on your to do list doesn’t help you much. Indeed, it just makes you feel more powerless and incapable of actually doing the task.

For instance, if you wrote “give a present to grandma”, I want you to break it down like this:

Browse ideas for grandma’s present
Decide what to buy grandma
Find where to buy the present
Go out and buy the present in xyz shop
Wrap up the present
Go to the post office
And if you don’t have any stamps, add the fact that you have to buy the required elements.

Break down your tasks into the smallest baby tasks ever, and arrange them as sub tasks if your list gets too confusing.

How many tasks do you have on your list?

SAYING NO

Finally, the more things you add to your to-do-list, the more you’ll understand that it goes hands in hand with saying no. For instance, most of us have trouble saying no when others ask for a favor or barge into our timetable without any notice. It is a normal struggle and you are not alone. There are many ways you can say no to someone whilst sounding reasonable, polite and friendly. I personally use the sentence “I don’t think so but if that changes, I’ll call you.” And, “let me think about it” and then 24h later, say no.

Now that you have your monster to-do-list, it is time to magically make it disappear. Found out how in this post, my personal favorite.

BONUS

HOW CAN WE CAN HELP EACH OTHER (ONLINE OPPORTUNITY)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR YOU

Over the years I have created many guides and checklist that aim to help you save time. Here are a list of them just in case you might miss out on a few:

My 1st E-Book: a resource that has help me become a boss at Time Management. Moreover, it has also helped me create more time for what I love and get to my goals faster. It is lengthy, however it is arguably the best Time Management piece of research out there.
The Time Management Actionable Sheets: a summary of my E-Book. These sheets have conserved the absolute essential actions you need to take to make the most out of your time. Do not skip any steps!
My Before & After CV Transformation: a resource that has collected my CVs for the past 7 years to help you not only craft a great CV, but to also show you that everyone can start mediocre and grow exponentially.
How To Land a Job Faster Guide: a resource that aims to give you all of the tips and recommendations I have used during my career. This will help you avoid some common mistakes students do when starting off with their job applications.

MY OBJECTIVE IS AND WILL FOREVER BE TO HELP YOU

BEST OF LUCK WITH IT ALL!!!!

Much affection,

Francesca Michaud

THE REAL GOLD IS IN THE PRIORITIZING

In the previous post, you’ve just written down your huge list of specific baby tasks. Feel free to go back to it again, and write down absolutely any other specific action that comes into mind.

Remember what we said in the last section: no vague big tasks. It all needs to be broken down into action units. Your list should be quite long. At this point you look at your list and you start having a panic attack. You are feeling stressed and overwhelmed and start hating me for putting you in such a state.

Bare with me.

Am I going to tell you to tackle them one at a time? Of course not.

This is where you learn about priorities.

If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

HACK AWAY THE UNESSENTIAL

From now on, it’s not the hours you put in its what you put in the hours, reasonable time is enough time. – Jim Rohn, 2001.

I think that one of my biggest lessons while researching was the following: life is about doing less.

Until a few months ago, I was one of those “juggling hamsters sprinting towards an inevitable crash landing” (Rory Vaden, 2015). I would just push myself in doing everything, instead of just press pause, think and believe that there must be another way than the method I was using.

And there is. You will realize below what part of your list must be tackled by you, by someone else, or just be deleted.

EISENHOWER’S MATRIX

It all starts with Eisenhower’s Matrix, also referred as the Urgent-Important Matrix, mentioned in Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1988).

It basically helps you prioritize tasks by urgency and importance.

We live in a time pressured world where it is common to have multiple overlapping commitments. Moreover, they all require immediate attention now. “Urgency is no longer reserved for special occasions, they are an everyday occurrence“.

So how can one manage the flood of responsibilities, do excellent work and maintain a positive frame of mind?

THE QUADRANTS

I use the Matrix in order to classify my monster to do list, like so:

In Quadrant 1 (Q1) I list all the important and urgent tasks
Quadrant 2 (Q2) is for all the important and non-urgent tasks
In Quadrant 3 (Q3) I list all the non-important and urgent tasks
In Quadrant 4 (Q4) I list all the non-important and non-urgent tasks

It is very important to be as objective as possible whilst doing this exercise.

Covey spends a lot of time working with this model and emphasizing that we should aim to spend our time in Quadrant 2. This is where you focus on activities that are important to your values and long term goals.

The urgent things are often those things that keep us away from focusing on what is important. These are where the monstrosity of your to do list comes from.

You run around all day convincing yourself that you’ve been productive when in fact all you’ve done is chase short term, unimportant urgencies that will keep coming back, and from which you’ll get no peace *insert poignant sound for more dramatic effect*.

SLAYING THE MONSTER LIST

We can multiply our time by giving ourselves the emotional permission to spend time on things today that will give you more time tomorrow.

Quadrant 4

We are finally ready: we have all the tools to cut this monster list in half (at least). I want you to take a look at your Q4… for the last time.

Make sure that the tasks on there have been well placed by going through it and ask yourself “can I eliminate it?” and “Is it even worth doing?”.

“Next generation time management has much more to do with what you don’t do, that what you do. They realized that perfection is achieved not only when nothing more can be added but when nothing more can be taken away. It is the permission to ignore. Because anything that we say no to today, creates more time for us tomorrow. The challenge is to challenge our guilt, and saying no more often as we usually go through life trying to never say no.“

This for me was gold, which is why I quoted the whole text… Can you guess what I am going to tell you to do? Delete Q4.

All of it.

Why?

There is absolutely no point in putting yourself through unnecessary tasks that don’t get you one step closer to your goals. So just say bye, once and for all.

If these tasks involve other people, or letting others down, pick up the phone and explain that something has come up for that particular date and that you won’t be able to attend, that you’re sorry and that you hope it doesn’t cause too much inconvenience. Some of you hate confrontation. Well it’s time to get right into it as it’s an essential part of life, dealing with other people. The earlier you start, the closer you’ll be to being the boss you truly are.

No excuses, this is where the notion of responsibility kicks in: you have the responsibility of defending your time from these unimportant tasks to develop yourself and create the life you want to see yourself living in.

The reason why people don’t want to take responsibility for their time is because after doing so, they are not allowed to complain about their schedule and time allocation.

Commit to never complain and take control: it is quite empowering. Next time say no so that you don’t have to experience the awkwardness of what you are about to do.

Still hesitating?

I recently learned about the opportunity cost of saying yes: by saying yes, you are saying no to hundreds of other options. You are spending an hour that will never be spent again.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not suggesting we shouldn’t help other people. I am just highlighting that some people often put others needs before their own, and in doing so, they’re maybe losing the opportunity to experiment in what they love and losing the opportunity to reach their dream life.

Not only that, but you are adding stress to your life and losing time when thinking of an excuse to wiggle out of the commitment you made. By saying no from the beginning, you avoid all the awkwardness and also save the time of the person you are helping as they’ll probably will have more time to find someone who is better placed than you to help them out.

To conclude: stop over-committing and “Don’t let your mouth overload your back” (Jim Rohn, 2001).

Quadrant 3

Q3 also represents tasks that are unimportant. However, they are urgent.

In these types of situations, I try my best to delegate or automate.

Automate

By automate I mean to find a piece of software that can do the hard work for you. For instance, if you are the Marketing Secretary for a society at university, and you need to take care of social media, instead of wasting time posting every day, you schedule all of your posts at once in an online service such as Buffer or Hootsuite. These services will post them at the scheduled time and you will not have to go on social media again.

Delegate

By delegate I mean to find someone who can do the unimportant (but urgent) chores for you.

For instance, I realized that I had to edit 80 pictures for a photography gig I stupidly accepted to do for only 30 dollars. It is an unimportant job as it won’t get me anywhere and doesn’t challenge my creativity. However it is quite urgent that I edit the pictures as I made a commitment which I can’t wiggle out of. Since I want it off my list, I reach out to a fellow photographer and propose to him to take 15 dollars out of my pay so that he can edit the pictures. If he’s inexperienced, he can have my authorization of using the pictures in his empty portfolio, as this would help him with his freelance activity.

Every time I am confronted with Q3 tasks, I ask myself “can I delegate it?”, “can I automate it” and “can I teach someone else to do it?”.

You should be answering yes more often than not.

Remember this: any item that answers “no” to these two questions:

“is it important” and
“can this only be done by me”,

is not meant to be in Quadrant 1 or 2.

Quadrant 2

As explained by Covey, this is where we focus on activities that are important to your values and long term goals. Our aim is to spend most of our time in this quadrant.

These are important task but not urgent, therefore the more time we spend in this quadrant, the less likely the important tasks become urgent (Quadrant 1) and that means that we have less stress on our shoulders.

Quadrant 1

Q1 is the quadrant we want to attack first thing when we get up so that it’s out of the way.

Since they are both important and urgent, we can’t tackle them last. It requires discipline and I will explain exactly to get some in the Doing section.

TAKE AWAY

In conclusion, the actions to undertake are the following:

put all of Q4 in the bin: make the necessary calls to deal with the side effects of that decision and make a mental note to never put yourself in that position again.
get rid of as much as Q3 through delegating and automating,
attack Q1 first thing in the morning
aim to spend most of your time on Q2

You should already feel lighter.

When I did this for the first time, I felt better, yes… but the list was still long. I knew that I could take away more, I just didn’t know how.

The next principle we are going to cover will help you understand further this manifestation of more time by following third dimension: significance.

PARETO’S PRINCIPAL

Its not the daily increase but the daily decrease.

Pareto’s Principle is also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity, and is by far my favorite principle. It will clarify how you should cut down your to-do-list even more.

It basically states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Moreover, you can transform this the way you want:

80% of the output from a given situation or system is determined by 20% of the input;
20% of your research creates 80% of your essay;
80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts;
80% of sales come from 20% of customers.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR YOU

In our case: 80% of our productivity will come from 20% of our achieved tasks.

Can you see where I’m getting at? It is so much more effective to work on the vital few that on the trivial many, fun, easy and irrelevant tasks.

If you struggled to scrap items out of your to do list in Q4, try and ask yourself now: “which 20% of my tasks are more likely to help me achieve the 80% of my results and fulfillment in my life?” and “what is this task really adding to my life?”.

Something that Professor Randy Pausch (2008) added was that this rule takes courage as you need to have good judgement of what’s that 20% is. That will come with experience and experience sometimes comes with bad judgement.

No two tasks ever hold the same importance.

WHAT TO DO

Therefore encourage you all to:

find that 20%
circle the 20%
focus on that 20%

Put aside the rest or eliminate the tasks you haven’t circled.

It is normal to not be able to delete the remaining 80%. We are wired to want 100% of our list to be achieved. It is very much against our nature to let go of the 80%, especially if we find those tasks easier.

What I ended up doing to help me get through this task was just creating a new list and named it “the 80% of my to-do-list” and I would tell myself that “I would do it after doing that 20%”.

The more you get used to eliminating, the faster you will achieve your goals and the more goals you will be able to pursue.

Most people do not even get to achieve one of their big ambitions precisely because they don’t follow this painful (or, for some, delightful) task of eliminating the fluff, off their to do list.

Only ever work on the thing that will have the biggest impact. – Jason Cohen, @asmartbear

By now, you should be standing with a considerably reduced list of tasks to perform. These are the absolute essentials and vital few to perform and do asap. Now all you need to do is jump into the next section where you will learn about the different methods I use to get things done.

BONUS

HOW CAN WE CAN HELP EACH OTHER (ONLINE OPPORTUNITY)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR YOU

Over the years I have created many guides and checklist that aim to help you save time. Here are a list of them just in case you might miss out on a few:

My 1st E-Book: a resource that has help me become a boss at Time Management. Moreover, it has also helped me create more time for what I love and get to my goals faster. It is lengthy, however it is arguably the best Time Management piece of research out there.
The Time Management Actionable Sheets: a summary of my E-Book. These sheets have conserved the absolute essential actions you need to take to make the most out of your time. Do not skip any steps!
My Before & After CV Transformation: a resource that has collected my CVs for the past 7 years to help you not only craft a great CV, but to also show you that everyone can start mediocre and grow exponentially.
How To Land a Job Faster Guide: a resource that aims to give you all of the tips and recommendations I have used during my career. This will help you avoid some common mistakes students do when starting off with their job applications.

MY OBJECTIVE IS AND WILL FOREVER BE TO HELP YOU

BEST OF LUCK WITH IT ALL!!!!

Much affection,

Francesca Michaud

THE SECRET ART OF SCHEDULING

In this section, we are going to give ourselves deadlines for our tasks. A study published in the British Journal of Health Psychology claims that when you repeat to yourself “I will partake in X habit at Y place at Z time”, you will exponentially increase the likelihood of doing it. This is why scheduling your task very precisely can help you get through your to-do-list.

WHY SCHEDULE

I remember thinking that scheduling and planning was pointless. I thought to myself that “I wouldn’t follow through anyway”, making the whole process useless. Until, one day, Randy Pausch replied to that with “You can’t change the plan if you don’t have one to start with”.

Failing to plan is planning to fail. – Randy Pausch 2008

Plan each day, each week, each semester. Set deadlines for everything. Schedule when they should begin and end. Don’t let tasks go on indefinitely, especially for intense of stressful activities.

If you can, trick yourself into earlier deadlines or set a personal consequence for being late. It is important to take 30min to schedule time. Pinpoint what your desired result is for each task and to then take another 5min to see if you managed.

As Helena Segura (2016) clearly stated, we cannot have “so much structured that one little change will throw us out of hand”. On the other hand “we cannot be like my surfer friends in LA who have no ambition or drive”. We need to have that balance in the middle, that flow.

HOW TO SCHEDULE

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You are basically preparing your battle field for when it comes to the Doing section. To plan the ideal day/ideal week, you need to pinpoint your “non negotiables”. These are basically no distractions blocks of time in your schedule that you will not sacrifice for last minute unplanned events.

They will be filled with the important tasks that will help you reach the top of your pyramid. You can also use them to finish other important tasks you made out of your to-do-list.

Each block of time is designated to one task alone. It is crucial that you do not attempt multitasking, and instead focus on one task at a time.

If you do not pay attention to what has your attention you will give it more attention than it deserves. – David Allen

LEARN ABOUT YOURSELF

The “when” depends on your peak creative time. Your creative time is the time in the day where you feel the most inspired and productive. It is quite important to find your creative time… and defend it as much as possible. Once you’ve figured out what time of the day your creative juices are the most present within you, pinpoint what time of the day you feel less productive.

From there you can schedule the very important tasks during your creative time. Similarly, you can schedule your fun activities / breaks during the less productive time of the day. Separate brainless and strategic tasks to become more productive.

To sum up, pinpoint the times of the day where you feel the most proactive and creative. Secondly, define the times of the day where you are barely functioning right. Then allocate your important tasks to your “productive time” and your social breaks during the times of the day in which you feel less productive.

WARNING

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Days always fill up: only plan for 4-5 hours of real work per day. – David Heinemeier Hansson

The important part of planning is that you don’t pack your time table super tight. You need to schedule time for social events, self-care and space in between tasks in case anything happens or if you need to commute.

Meticulously planning every hour of the day doesn’t allow for the unexpected to happen. This can throw a wrench into the entire day. Instead, plan for 5h of real work daily and remember to schedule time for interruption.

EXTRA TIPS

group both meetings and communication (email or phone) together to create blocks of uninterrupted work. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon.
leave time for fun to cut off when you need to.
don’t work all day every day: according to the New York Times, for every 10h of break, performance improves by 8%.
don’t bring it home: when you are home, you relax. When you come back to your work, your mind will be refreshed.
you should schedule are check-ins with yourself throughout the day to go back to your early priorities, ambitions and goals. Ask yourself if they’re lining up with that reduced to-do-list and if you need to adjust.

NET (NO EXTRA TIME)

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Tony Robbins, America author and life coach, made a big difference in my life when he suggested making the most out of my NET (no extra time), also known as transition time/time pockets. By that he meant optimizing those moments when you can’t physically do your important tasks: when you shower, travel, commute to work… We already mentioned that focus is key and we should not multitask, ever, during our blocks of time, as its destructive. Tony Robbins gave an exception to the rule: use your NET as an opportunity to listen to audio books or podcasts while you are doing mindless activities.

MY SOLUTION TO READING

I am sure I am not the first person who has said that reading books is extremely important. If you are like me, you don’t really prioritize reading time in your daily routine, and that’s sad because I know I am missing out on a whole world of practical solutions and/or fantastic stories.

But then, I walked in to the beautiful world of audio books and I soon realized that I ended up “reading” one book a week!! How?! Think of all the dead time in your timetable, i.e. mindless activities that you have to do such as driving to uni or going on public transport. If you are in London, for instance, you’ll probably commute minimum 30 minutes there and back.

You can find some recommended great audio-books that are 5 or 6 hour long. And just like that, you make the most of your wasted time. If you don’t want to spend money on audio books, there are plenty of podcasts out there that are pure gold such as Pat Flynn’s podcast. And podcasts are free.

In conclusion, take the time to calculate how much NET exactly you have. Determine how many hours a week that adds up to and chose an audio book you’d like to listen to during that time. Pro-tip: pick an audio book that is directly in line with your pyramid.

BONUS

HOW CAN WE CAN HELP EACH OTHER (ONLINE OPPORTUNITY)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR YOU

Over the years I have created many guides and checklist that aim to help you save time. Here are a list of them just in case you might miss out on a few:

My 1st E-Book: a resource that has help me become a boss at Time Management. Moreover, it has also helped me create more time for what I love and get to my goals faster. It is lengthy, however it is arguably the best Time Management piece of research out there.
The Time Management Actionable Sheets: a summary of my E-Book. These sheets have conserved the absolute essential actions you need to take to make the most out of your time. Do not skip any steps!
My Before & After CV Transformation: a resource that has collected my CVs for the past 7 years to help you not only craft a great CV, but to also show you that everyone can start mediocre and grow exponentially.
How To Land a Job Faster Guide: a resource that aims to give you all of the tips and recommendations I have used during my career. This will help you avoid some common mistakes students do when starting off with their job applications.

MY OBJECTIVE IS AND WILL FOREVER BE TO HELP YOU

BEST OF LUCK WITH IT ALL!!!!

Much affection,

Francesca Michaud

HOW TO ACTUALLY START DOING

Unfortunately, there is a horrible disconnect between what we say we do and what we actually do. Hopefully this section will help you a lot in eradicating this problem.

Done is better than perfect. – Facebook Motto.

IMPORTANT ACHTUNG ATTENZIONE

If you fail in constructing a good list and following the steps outlined previously, the next session might fail. So please take the right amount of time in all the steps seen in the previous blog posts!

PREVIOUSLY

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This is it. You did so well so far! This is where you seal the deal. There is no way around it, no magic formula. It has to be done. Obviously, I will give you techniques to make it less of a chore.

Until now you:

have a clear, cherry picked goal;
compiled a smaller to-do-list. You are therefore less stressed and more clairvoyant about what needs to be done;
created a clear, step-by-step approach to success because you’ve done your research in understanding how the successful people made it happen;
have the right attitude and the right mindset;
prepared a well planned schedule.

Dr Sarah Genner, a Senior Researcher at Zurich University for Applied Sciences in Switzerland and a Visiting Researcher at Harvard University, reminds us one more time about a few things before carrying on:

your tasks must be small and specific in order to make them manageable and less daunting
you must aim to focus on one thing at a time,
eliminate/minimize distractions,
solicit help if needed

don’t try to be the most efficient: thrive to be the most effective. This is achieved by first doing the very important and crucial 20% of tasks. You can only move onto the other tasks once you completed the high priority items first

give up perfection: you have to be comfortable with achieving 80% of the results, as if you wait until you get something perfect, you will never actually accomplish much.

don’t mistake movement for achievement. It’s easy to be faked out of being busy. The big question is: doing what?

Are you ready?

THE START

The hard part of “doing” is actually getting started. We all know that once we’ve started for a few minutes it’s all good. Therefore our battle is focused with our inner resistance.

Mel Robbins on TEDx says that our motivation dies within 5 seconds. Putting things off creates additional stress and chaos you really don’t need and kills your motivation, leaving you overwhelmed and stuck.

Work is the best way to get working. Start with short tasks to get the ball rolling.

POMODORO TECHNIQUE

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Take breaks. Sometimes.

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks.

Some people work 90min followed by 20min breaks, some work 25min with 5min breaks… I personally do the latter 3 cycles in a row and after the 4th cycle I take a 30min break.

Whatever you do, this technique allows us to be more focused and have more energy.

Make sure you use a timer, and you force yourself to work on that task until the timer is up.

However, do not stop the timer if you’ve reached your flow state! In positive psychology, flow, also known as the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, the flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting loss in one’s sense of space and time.

SINGLE HANDLING TECHNIQUE

See multitasking as your enemy: it stresses you out and delays you.

When you plan, schedule blocks for one task only and make a start and stop. Concentration is essential to success. It’s often impossible to succeed without concentration. Perform what most authors call single handling.

Single handling is when you start a task and don’t put it down until it’s completed. According to Brian Tracy, it will take more than 500% more if you put it off for later. By doing the task all in one go, it will give you energy and enthusiasm.

After a fruitful day, it is important to sit down and ask yourself “what must I do tomorrow?”. It is an essential step and you will benefit from this easy and small habit.

PARKINSON’S LAW

Parkinson’s law (Cyril Parkinson, 1957) is the adage that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. It almost sounds like water: the water will fill whatever container you put it in. Work seems to be just as fluid: will take the time it’s given to be achieve. Aka, we’re more focused and productive with limited time.

Successful people set tight deadlines. Sometimes I feel like a task will swell in importance the more you wait for it. Set tight deadlines for yourself and tasks.

I personally combine this law with Pareto’s principle, the 80/20 rule. You can test different techniques, mix and match them until you find your golden formula.

THE LEARNING CURVE THEORY

The learning curve theory is a relationship between unit production time and the cumulative number of units produced: as individuals or organizations collectively repeat a particular process, they gain skill or efficiency from their experience and production time improvements result.

In other words: batching. You can manifest more time by batching daily tasks and recurring decisions together. For instance:

instead of cooking every day, cook once a week for a couple of hours and put all the meals in the freezer;
instead of deciding what to wear every morning, decide twice a month what you will wear for the next two weeks;
chunk “housekeeping tasks” together;

answer emails/make phone calls all in one go

Brian Tracy states in an old presentation of his, that you can decrease the time that a task take up to 80% if you batch it!

No brainer.

SURROUND YOURSELF WELL

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To do so, join organizations where you can network and socialize with like minded individuals and you’ll wonder why you haven’t done it earlier. You can also call those people you enjoy being around and invite them out to coffee and even reconnect with people who already had that mentality when you were too immature to grasp it. Some old connections my surprise you!

A quote that changed my life was: you are the average of the 5 people you hang the most around with.

Some would even go as far as saying: if you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.

Gold. At least for me!

Ultimately, I decided to hang out with 3 kinds of people:

The people who push themselves, are proactive and achieve whatever they put their mind too
Those who believe in me, encourage me when I’m down and cheer every accomplishment I gain
Those who bring laughter and fun

Your aim is to build habits when you use these techniques: they are not just one-off magic formula that you use for that one essay, they should be integrated into your daily routine, and repeated consistently. It´s now time to dive into the next section.

BONUS

HOW CAN WE CAN HELP EACH OTHER (ONLINE OPPORTUNITY)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR YOU

Over the years I have created many guides and checklist that aim to help you save time. Here are a list of them just in case you might miss out on a few:

My 1st E-Book: a resource that has help me become a boss at Time Management. Moreover, it has also helped me create more time for what I love and get to my goals faster. It is lengthy, however it is arguably the best Time Management piece of research out there.
The Time Management Actionable Sheets: a summary of my E-Book. These sheets have conserved the absolute essential actions you need to take to make the most out of your time. Do not skip any steps!
My Before & After CV Transformation: a resource that has collected my CVs for the past 7 years to help you not only craft a great CV, but to also show you that everyone can start mediocre and grow exponentially.
How To Land a Job Faster Guide: a resource that aims to give you all of the tips and recommendations I have used during my career. This will help you avoid some common mistakes students do when starting off with their job applications.

MY OBJECTIVE IS AND WILL FOREVER BE TO HELP YOU

BEST OF LUCK WITH IT ALL!!!!

Much affection,

Francesca Michaud

REASSESSING FOR YOUR SUCCESS

Be more alert to the things that might be stealing your time. Designate your time. – Jim Rohn, 2001.

It is so important to keep track of what went right and wrong. Your aim is to have a monthly growth. Whatever your goal is, you need to do better than the month before. Take the time to rethink your process and ask yourself if you really should’ve done it that way.

TIME WATERS

Spot the past week’s biggest time wasters and review them. Then, avoid them for the upcoming week by making a stop doing list.

According to professor Randy Pausch (2008), we waste 2h a day because of a messy desk. Not finding things, missing appointments, being unprepared for meetings… Similarly, our mental state and being tired also affects your productivity. Helene Segura (2016) states that the average person loses up to 3h per day from procrastination, distractions and overwhelm.

The great thing about this is that it’s self-imposed, which means we can do something about it! Segura explains that psychologists define that procrastination is the act of wanting to feel better now, “the adult version of the child’s I don’t want to do that”.

How would you react to that child?

EXTREME OPPOSITE

The opposite problem would be for those who studied too much. Some people get so caught up in learning about the subject of their dissertation that they forget to actually move on and write what is needed to be written. In his book, the 4h Work Week, Tim Ferris talks about going on an information diet. By that he means stop consuming information and start doing.

There will come a time when you will know that you have enough information to get you going. You just need to get enough courage to take the leap of faith… in yourself.

SELF-BELIEF

Ultimately, I strongly believe that it all comes down to confidence and self-belief. Once you’ve identified the specific reasons why you didn’t do the things you told yourself you would do, it is time to acknowledge and forgive yourself.

A research in Carleton University concluded that it’s forgiveness, not guilt, that gets you back on track. Therefore, next time you don’t study and get an average mark, don’t bash yourself up and have negative inner conversations with yourself. Instead, take a deep breath and forgive yourself for not working hard enough, be kind and you may see your results inflate.

Often review what got you inspired and got you turned on. – Jim Rohn, 2001

Many people ignore reassessing as they think it isn’t worth it. It is, however, one of the most important steps when it comes to personal growth and increasing your achievements: taking the time to make a note of what you can do better the next time will put you on the road to continuous improvement and a higher probability to achieve your goals.

BONUS

HOW CAN WE CAN HELP EACH OTHER (ONLINE OPPORTUNITY)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR YOU

Over the years I have created many guides and checklist that aim to help you save time. Here are a list of them just in case you might miss out on a few:

My 1st E-Book: a resource that has help me become a boss at Time Management. Moreover, it has also helped me create more time for what I love and get to my goals faster. It is lengthy, however it is arguably the best Time Management piece of research out there.
The Time Management Actionable Sheets: a summary of my E-Book. These sheets have conserved the absolute essential actions you need to take to make the most out of your time. Do not skip any steps!
My Before & After CV Transformation: a resource that has collected my CVs for the past 7 years to help you not only craft a great CV, but to also show you that everyone can start mediocre and grow exponentially.
How To Land a Job Faster Guide: a resource that aims to give you all of the tips and recommendations I have used during my career. This will help you avoid some common mistakes students do when starting off with their job applications.

MY OBJECTIVE IS AND WILL FOREVER BE TO HELP YOU

BEST OF LUCK WITH IT ALL!!!!

Much affection,

Francesca Michaud

IMPROVING AND CREATE MORE TIME

The Theory of Marginal Gains is the idea that by improving every aspect of your business by just 1%, you will get a tremendous amount of overall improvement. Similarly, in the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey talked about sharpening the saw.

It is all about looking after yourself.

You are the greatest asset you have, and, if you don’t already do, it is time to learn to look after ourselves. Stephen Covey suggests we pay attention to four areas in our lives:

Physical: Exercise, Nutrition, Stress Management
Spiritual: Value Clarification and Commitment, Study and Meditation
Mental: Reading, Visualizing, Planning, Writing
Social/Emotional: Service, Empathy, Synergy, Intrinsic Security.

People go to work (often working overtime) and go home simply to eat and sleep so they can go to work again! Is this you? The most important thing you can start doing now is looking after yourself.

SHARPEN YOUR SAW

Sharpening the saw came from Stephen Covey´s story. He met a person who has been sawing down a tree for more than 5 hours. When Covey suggests a break to sharpen his saw, so the job might go faster, the person replies no. Moreover, he says that ¨he doesn’t have time to sharpen the saw because they’re too busy cutting down the tree¨. Therefore, paradoxically, he was wasting more time.

Similarly, it’s so easy to get caught up in the demands of life, that we forget to look after ourselves. We are the instruments of our own performance. To be effective, we need to recognize the importance of taking time regularly to sharpen the saw. All four dimensions of renewal are thoroughly investigated. Stephen Covey ends this chapter with a discussion about the importance of renewal in our lives, and thinking of this as an upward spiral of growth, change, and continuous improvement.

BONUS

HOW CAN WE CAN HELP EACH OTHER (ONLINE OPPORTUNITY)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR YOU

Over the years I have created many guides and checklist that aim to help you save time. Here are a list of them just in case you might miss out on a few:

My 1st E-Book: a resource that has help me become a boss at Time Management. Moreover, it has also helped me create more time for what I love and get to my goals faster. It is lengthy, however it is arguably the best Time Management piece of research out there.
The Time Management Actionable Sheets: a summary of my E-Book. These sheets have conserved the absolute essential actions you need to take to make the most out of your time. Do not skip any steps!
My Before & After CV Transformation: a resource that has collected my CVs for the past 7 years to help you not only craft a great CV, but to also show you that everyone can start mediocre and grow exponentially.
How To Land a Job Faster Guide: a resource that aims to give you all of the tips and recommendations I have used during my career. This will help you avoid some common mistakes students do when starting off with their job applications.

MY OBJECTIVE IS AND WILL FOREVER BE TO HELP YOU

BEST OF LUCK WITH IT ALL!!!!

Much affection,

Francesca Michaud

HOW TO STAY MOTIVATED WHEN WORKING

According to Brian Tracy’s research, 85% of why we do anything is because of what we’ll get out of it. Sometimes having a visual board picturing our long term goal is just not enough. We tend to be impatient and in need of some kind of short term reward.

Defining and structuring rewards once a small milestone has been accomplished is very important in order for you to associate the accomplishment of your “baby step” with something pleasurable.

Plan these rewards at the beginning of each day so you have something to work towards. Whether it’s a social event, a piece of cake or an episode of your favorite series, make sure that you find something that works and helps you achieve. Don’t forget to reward yourself for your biggest accomplishment this month.

A CLEAN ENVIRONMENT

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I never use to believe in “order and organized room”. I found peace in the chaos and always told myself that “I know where stuff is, its okay if its chaotic”.

And I kept believing that until the video of Brian Tracy slayed that thought with the following statement: “you may know where every item is, but you are using your memory, energy and precious will power in order to recall where the specific item is. By having a specific place for everything, you increase your productivity by 20% to 40%, solely because you don’t lose time and effort remembering where XYZ is hiding.”

I am not saying that your workplace needs to be tidy all the time! Some people, my mother included, are extremely visual and need their papers spread everywhere to perform well. I am not saying that you shouldn’t be that kind of messy. Some people need to create a mess to do great things.

My point is: do not start creating a mess when your workplace is already a mess. Make sure that before any project or task, that your place is tidy and clear. Then mess it up if that’s how you work.

ALLOW YOURSELF TO BREATHE

Some people demand way too much from their body, draining it from energy by working too hard. A good lesson I learned was to work more when you’re in the zone, and relax when you’re not. So don’t force it: once you’ve tapped out, take a nap, a walk, ice cream, recharge.

It’s normal to have days where you just can’t work and days where you’ll work 12h straight. – Alain Paquin, Whatsnexx.

THE DISTRACTION PAD

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Write down anything that distracts you: google researches, random thoughts, new ideas, whatever. The point is, if you write them down, they’ll stop bubbling up when you’re in the zone.

I day dream, trail off and unfortunately lose a lot of time doing so. To all the day dreamers out there, I get you. Focusing and concentrating for more than 5 minutes on a task is quite hard for us. Our mind tends to drift and show us images and stories that appeal to us and that we’d love to watch instead of bossing out that boring essay.

But this guide is about disciplining ourselves, and as much as I get that day dreaming is good for the soul, we need to stay on track. The distraction notepad is what helped me: every time I started thinking about an emergency I needed to attend or an important phone call I needed to do, I would write it in my distraction pad.

BACKGROUND MUSIC

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Set the mood with background music. Some people love the “Piano in the background” or “Deep focus” playlist on Spotify. But I personally never liked to work to music. Silence is better as I find everything else a distraction.

Until I’ve found the Working in Hogwarts background sound. I like to pretend I am with Hermione and, since she’s portrayed as a good student, I automatically make myself her study buddy, increasing my value as a good student. This simple role play helped me believe that I am highly effective and in the long run, at achieve more.

NO INTERRUPTIONS

By picking a spot and recurrently going there to study, your brain will be more inclined to work when you arrive there. Work out your optimum study method by trying different things out and find a dedicated study space and time.

While looking for your study zone make sure it’s a place that minimizes interruptions: it helps you concentrate and get things done faster. Once you’ve figured that out, make sure that when you work, you work and that when you play, you play. Don’t mix the two.

Hope this helps! The one that worked the best for me was the system of rewards, not necessarily because I was getting something out of my work.. but because it would remind me to what frequency I was smashing goals. Most of us forget how far we have come and this reminder has helped me have more self-confidence over time.

BONUS

HOW CAN WE CAN HELP EACH OTHER (ONLINE OPPORTUNITY)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR YOU

Over the years I have created many guides and checklist that aim to help you save time. Here are a list of them just in case you might miss out on a few:

My 1st E-Book: a resource that has help me become a boss at Time Management. Moreover, it has also helped me create more time for what I love and get to my goals faster. It is lengthy, however it is arguably the best Time Management piece of research out there.
The Time Management Actionable Sheets: a summary of my E-Book. These sheets have conserved the absolute essential actions you need to take to make the most out of your time. Do not skip any steps!
My Before & After CV Transformation: a resource that has collected my CVs for the past 7 years to help you not only craft a great CV, but to also show you that everyone can start mediocre and grow exponentially.
How To Land a Job Faster Guide: a resource that aims to give you all of the tips and recommendations I have used during my career. This will help you avoid some common mistakes students do when starting off with their job applications.

MY OBJECTIVE IS AND WILL FOREVER BE TO HELP YOU

BEST OF LUCK WITH IT ALL!!!!

Much affection,

Francesca Michaud

DELEGATING AND AUTOMATION

No one is an island. – Randy Pausch (2008)

Whether you like it or not, you can accomplish a lot more with help.

I also was not a fan of delegating. But by reading the biographies of successful people, I realized that they’d delegate anything they possibly could. I couldn’t stop reading “outsource, delegate, automate everything you can, even choosing what clothes to put on, and what meals you will eat through meal prep!”.

HOW TO DELEGATE

Ask yourself “which of these tasks can only be done by me?”. The answer I am afraid to hear you say is the following: “Everything!”. At least, that was my stubborn answer. The main reasons for this was:

I didn’t like to rely on people in doing the work as well as I did it
I didn’t feel confident enough to ask people for favors
AI (artificial intelligence) was an unknown world that was out there and I didn’t even know it. It could have made my life so much easier, and, more importantly, save me some time.
Even if I did find a software who would do things for me, I would find it “too expensive” putting money on a pedestal, at the cost of my time

I realized soon enough that I’ll never be successful if I don’t learn about delegation.

DELEGATION

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Let’s give some examples:

If on your to-do-list you have written “pay the rent”, then set up an automatic monthly payment. It will go out of your account to your landlord’s monthly. You set it up in max 20 minutes and you will save time. You can do that for any other bill. It’s a small change, but it all adds up!
You need to answer 20 emails. In this case, you can hire an assistant or VR (Virtual Assistant). At Upwork.com or Fiverr.com you hire VAs to deal with comments and emails. Eventually, you will be able to delegate this very time consuming activity to your VA. Yes you pay him/her, but you are also saving a lot of time. People outsource these types of tasks to good English speakers who live in Asia as their wages are cheaper. This will leave you more time to do the tasks that only you can do such as creating a live video for your personal brand, prepare for a job interview or even write a very personal blog post.

If something can be done 80% as well by someone else, delegate. – John C Maxwell

AS A STUDENT

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Now back to reality: you don’t have all the money to spend on VAs and other software (or do you?). Therefore delegating and automation is not for you, right?

Wrong.

If you are a Business student at University, don’t you get a ton of group work? Isn’t this a good opportunity to test your leadership skills by learning the vital skill of delegating? You can focus on the 20% most important tasks while you delegate all of the other minor tasks to the rest of the team.

Learning how to delegate, and dealing with people, is extremely tough. Delegating goes hand in hand with clarity: not only you need to pick the right person to do the task, you also need to make it crystal clear what you want done, and when. Moreover, since most people do not do all of the work we have done until now, they fail at it and end up getting frustrated, blaming it on other people rather than their lack of direction.

The bottom line is: don’t waste your time on tasks that anyone can do: you need to focus on tasks that require higher commitment and that are of higher value.

SMART REMINDER

The last arguments I’d like to cover are the Habits 4, 5, and 6 by Stephen Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and how they work together in discovering alternative and creative solutions.

Habit 5

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Habit 5 is the notion of Synergy. The word synergy comes from the Greek synergos meaning working together.

Stephen Covey says “Synergy is everywhere in nature. If you plant two plants close together, the roots commingle and improve the quality of the soil so that both plants will grow better than if they were separated. If you put two pieces of wood together, they will hold much more than the total weight held by each separately. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. One plus one equals three or more.”.

Thus, Covey directs our attention to the power of effective relationships: we can achieve so much more when we engage in effective relationships with others than if we acted alone. It´s the idea that 1+1=3. He notes that synergy is difficult for many of us as independence is promoted as a strong value in the Western world today. Achieving synergy requires high trust and high cooperation and can lead to better solutions than anyone thought of alone.

Habit 4

Once you’ve found someone who would complete or make your work better, we can tackle Habit 4 which explores the notion of “Win Win”.

More often than not, people act in their own best interest. The objective here is to get into the habit of looking for a solution that benefits everyone involved, not just ourselves: “It’s not your way or my way; it’s a better way”.

We are often told that there is only one winner, or if “You win, I lose”. I believe we can find solutions for mutual gain, which have positive outcomes for everyone. Not everyone finds this easy, as it requires trust: it is a habit which has to be learned and practiced.

Habit 6

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When thinking of a possible “Win/Win” situation, it is important to consider Habit 6: seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Stephen Covey believes this principle is the key to effective communication. This habit is about communicating with others. Effective communication starts with active listening.

How many times have we been so focused on what we want to say next, that we didn’t listen to what the other person was saying? If we start by understanding the other person’s point of view, we will be able to communicate our argument in a more relevant way to them, making more of an impact.

You can start practicing this right now: in your next conversation with someone put your natural and automatic responses aside and focus on genuinely understanding them. Ask questions such as:

how did you feel
what did you think?
what’s important for you ?
then what happened?

Some answers can surprise us, and can offer new insights which we hadn’t thought of. As a result, you start finding the creative solutions and third alternatives described in habit 4.

You don’t have to get it all right the first time. This is part of a life journey of learning and developing. You will get there if you’re willing to spend the time and effort developing new habits. Food for thought.

BONUS

HOW CAN WE CAN HELP EACH OTHER (ONLINE OPPORTUNITY)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR YOU

Over the years I have created many guides and checklist that aim to help you save time. Here are a list of them just in case you might miss out on a few:

My 1st E-Book: a resource that has help me become a boss at Time Management. Moreover, it has also helped me create more time for what I love and get to my goals faster. It is lengthy, however it is arguably the best Time Management piece of research out there.
The Time Management Actionable Sheets: a summary of my E-Book. These sheets have conserved the absolute essential actions you need to take to make the most out of your time. Do not skip any steps!
My Before & After CV Transformation: a resource that has collected my CVs for the past 7 years to help you not only craft a great CV, but to also show you that everyone can start mediocre and grow exponentially.
How To Land a Job Faster Guide: a resource that aims to give you all of the tips and recommendations I have used during my career. This will help you avoid some common mistakes students do when starting off with their job applications.

MY OBJECTIVE IS AND WILL FOREVER BE TO HELP YOU

BEST OF LUCK WITH IT ALL!!!!

Much affection,

Francesca Michaud