Time vs energy

A small flash game got me thinking, time vs energy, only it might not be that simple relationship as exchange.

If you are lucky enough, you would have probably realised already, in essence, time is all you have, and all that you have to lose, if any.

Typically, when you start to engage any activities (just by the way, in my world, it will be defined as in projects), it's likely that you would be thinking about how much time and resource you're going to put into this gig, and whether or not you can afford it. Simple inference tells us, all that resources usually you obtained by exchanging time that was running on your watch, be it hourly or contractual repayment. In professional world, we have one fancy thing normally named as project plan, which usually consists of a bunch of milestones and period of congregated effort estimates. Alright, there we also have people's name beside the coloured bars/items, depends on which religion of project management school you're from. My point is, it doesn't matter as long as we view it as we have been doing for God knows how long. Timing is just about everything we care about, everything we check against, everything we breathe with, everything we rely on our lives to tick with, to certain extent. I feel psychologically, it came from the needs for us to be in control our daily shit, a false sense of knowing where we are and where we heading. It's funny how time and space is really no difference, Kudos to Einstein.

Now, what I really want to talk about, is energy.

Only a handful smart ones know that time is irrelevant if you want to live your life in a non-mediocre way (accidentally, while I was pondering the content of this blog, friend recommend 4-hour week). Let's get this straight first - I do not believe you'll be able to be the geek you want to be when you are clueless at timing. On the contrary, I think we should be master of it. The difference is, where the real focus lies. For me, being able to manage energy and understand how it develops and evolves at different stage of your life is critical. With that, have a easy grip on the timeline is going to be natural. Working by hours will always be limited by Laws of physics, in terms of how much you are likely to gain. Your income will depend on your continuous efforts in time, instead of quality of decision or unique skills required.

So if time is an easy reference we can always look up to, energy is not. The best reference we have is probably those society elites. Nonetheless, a certain period of full concentrated energy can deliver results which would be difficult, sometimes impossible to achieve in a usual time-is-the-God manner. Why? Simple. When you have a target, and you are fully charged for it, it's much more likely you'll get it; otherwise, your ambition, passion or whatever you like to call it, will more likely to be worn out in the mist of motionlessness, with nothing come out the other end, sometime, even if there is something out, it won't be meaningful anymore.

Now, most people could not keep a constant charged state to be ready to engage whatever is coming their ways, some could but very few. Thus we have to be humble enough to learn how to tune our energy state and know when we should be ready to strike. Fluctuation is in the nature of energy. The other one is defined by law of conservation of energy - energy can neither be created nor destroyed: it can only be transformed from one state to another. It really doesn't matter how many days you spent on your couch reading books or playing games, skiing or diving in the middle of nowhere, do what you like. Just make sure when the mission is called, you know you'll be ready to go for it, like you never had before. That energy, is what I call something of note and can make delivery happen.

Look around you, if you think most people around you are busy in serving the system, you might be in the wrong crowd.

Manage time or manage achievement

Most people are driven by calendar; some manage it; a handful of people keep an eye on time, but focus on deliverable.

I have always felt sorry for those staring at their calendar on a Monday morning, trying to figure out what is happening next. In the same time, jamming calendar with pre-booked hours is nothing more than a desperate driving instructor who could not help worrying about how to fill his hours.

You might have heard of GTD practice (get things done). You might be also a fan of prioritised to-do list. The pitfall is, organising resource could easily slip into you focus area, as you spend more than enough efforts in feeding the time machine, rather than actually get things done!

I keep a very reasonable calendar, too much available slot that my boss would not normally be impressed from the first look of it. It almost too simple and easy to say, what matters is what has happened, what has been transformed, what has been produced from nothing to something, what has been delivered. To keep boss happy is very important because only that way you can have the support you need to carry out your mission. However, to those who believe that's the core of their jobs, you probably want to click away from this blog. It's also important to manage expectation and show due diligence, especially for management or leadership role. Unfortunately, many bosses have failed to recognise that at the end of day, one thing matters the most, more than any fluffy gestures, is deliverable. No matter what roles you are playing, you are supposed to deliver something. Time you have, time you have been paid for, is the ultimate resource you have, absolutely the same to everyone else in quantity.

I guess there is little to argue that people who can manage their time tend to be more organised and efficient. However, being organised is completely different concept to being in control of what's happening; being efficient is also not equivalent to being effective. Interestingly, being able to deliver, are largely depended on the amount of control you have over the matters which you are responsible for, and how effective you are in processing what is required to actually produce desirable results, being a receptionist or a chief architect.

How to maximise the output given limited resource (time)?

• Hit those big ones.
• Hit those will cost a lot if not happening on time. (penalty)

I have had this illusion long time ago that once I resolve all known problems, done all planned tasks, it is the end. We all have to live to realise that you can not possibly finish all the work at any possible points. The truth is, you will have no need to exist if that happens :-). So pick those which have higher return of (time) investment or those with higher penalty. To manage around this point of view, you will not be swerving about and lose clue of what you were trying to achieve, by putting too much love in your calendar.

Magic calendar

Rands has laid out his system of keeping things organised, a nice synergy with David's GTD. I do not have a fantastic or well organised and maintained system to do list as such to keep me going. What I have been using is Calendar, one of the best and cruelest interpretation of time.

So, what is the matter? Everyone uses calendar, what is the fuss?

We all know concentration helps. If you believe otherwise, try to get some eggs from your fridge and see how many you can handle at the same time. (Btw, here is a great tutorial if you are really interested.) A self contained efficient entity knows to perform its tasks to fulfil its destiny, in the same time allowing asynchronous event driven mechanism to respond to coninuous incoming changes from interactions with outside world. I dump everything onto my calendar so I can spare an empty while highly efficient mind when it comes down to event handling. This mind dumping is really a prioritise and planning process. However, it is only a prediciton, a guess or best intention of what the future would and should be like.

To dump eveything is probably a good start to relieve yourself from remembering the context and remind you for possible on time switching when the timer is triggerred. I bet you feel certain level of satisfaction by crossing some items on whatever list you hold and proudly mark, done. The trap is you need the spirit and habit to actually get those things done, other than comfortably move on by thinking that you have a box of stuff which 'have been dealt with'. Not long enough, you would realise many items start to pile up against the due dates. It is only a matter of time for you to bin the whole item list. What I have learnt is do not put anything can not be done in that time frame on to your calendar and if you can not get that item done at the time it is supposed to completed, you have probably missed the only opportunity to get that done. So, it is a serious business when you are making committment with your time. You will always have more than what you could do, hopefully. So it is ok to let things go. Sometimes this kind of choice makes sure you are spending your resource (time) in things that matters, rather than those just to fill the 8 hours of day time.

One thing I also do is to update the item with necessary information after it is done. I found it particularly useful when I have the luxury and bored enough to try to dig out what the heck I have spent last two months of my life on.

I have seen some of the scary ones - calendars full of stuff, I mean, they are not items as such, they are stuffed! Many overlapping tasks with fancy big names such as meditating to seek the purpose of life or restructure engineering process. I mean, come on. Who are you kidding with? I could not believe that would make anyone feel better by knowing that I am gonna have to delete this without any updates when time comes. Plus, there are better platform for this type of gestures - twitter.