The days are getting shorter.
“If I had six hours to cut down a tree, I’d spend the first four sharpening the axe.” AbrahamLincoln
Exactly, Sir.
You’d spend 67% of the allocated project time to Preparation.
And yet, that’s exactly what most people DON’T do- they DON’T dedicate nearly any time to Preparation, certainly not 2/3 of the time.
Joumor Principle: 5:1=> 5:3.
In Joumor, we begin by dedicating 83% of our time planning- for every five minutes of planning we do one minute of action. As we become more advanced- better at planning, thinking of things and following up- we can whittle our Preparation Proportion down to 62.5%- for every five minutes of planning we do three minutes of action.
But it’s never 1 minute of planning:1 minute of action!
We always need more prep time planning than action, or we will pay in the other direction….taking action on something with no planning will often cost us FIVE TIMES as much in energy, time, and money as we undo, redo, and literally pay…you know what I’m talking about.
The Most Dangerous Word in Productivity:
JUST.
Joumor Principle: There is no just do it.
I get the whole “get over your fears and stop procrastinating” thing, but let’s get real: When it comes to productivity, “just doing it” usually means not planning, leaping, and often paying the price. The worst part is, the memory of leaping and falling often turns us off from trying again.
Leap and the net will appear, YES! (Once we’ve prepared to have the net appear, that is).
There is no just.
“Let me just finish this email.”
“Let me just look this up.”
“Let me just…”
…make you late and frustrate us all. Just that!
The biggest hurdles to success are preparation and follow-up. There is no “just doing” in either of those. Preparation and follow-up require thoughtfulness and can be arduous, but they pay out tenfold- in your wallet and in your nervous system.
Joumor Experiment: Whatever your task is, give yourself an easy number of minutes to work on it: 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes…consider yourself a beginner. Allocate 80% of it to preparing.
Preparation is:
- Clearing the area where you are working
- Getting all the relevant information before beginning
- Eating
- Hydrating
- Using the restroom
- Being dressed comfortably
- Taking care of anything urgent bothering you (unrelated to this project) so that your brain is fully available for this task
- Making sure your computer/phone is charged
- Closing unrelated windows and programs on your computer
- Turning off sounds/notifications you don’t need while you focus
- Communicating with others that you’ll be unavailable for a period of time
Set the timer for 80% of the time you allocated and start Preparing.
How much time did you use?
I’d love to hear how this went for you. Hit reply to share your experience of this experiment and Time Planning in general!