Sean Banville's Blog

This is a follow-up post on how to squeeze out an extra few hours from your busy day and seemingly unsqueezable schedules.

The picture below is not part of this squeezing. Just something that tickled my fancy, though I must confess…

Time Management for webmasters, bloggers, tweeters, teachers (and Arsenal supporters) – Part 2

11. Hide

There is a secret, dark place in my college that is known to very few people. Even though it is secret and dark, it becomes bright when you turn the lights on. But, to get to it, you have to go through several dark corridors (I don’t turn the lights on but use my laptop screen to guide me though the darkness). There is no telephone in this place. It’s bliss. No one can find me. I used to go there a lot (before I was transferred to another campus). I got so much work done and saved so much time, hiding in this secret, dark room. We all need one. My time-saving room was the editing booth next to the sound-recording studio. But don’t tell anyone. Now need to find a new one.

12. A quick one before bed

I have got into the habit of doing one extra quick thing before I go to bed. If I do this every night, that’s 365 extra things a year. These pre-sleep quickies usually take ten minutes so I save around 3,650 minutes a year. If I didn’t do them then, I’d have to do them during the day.
For example – someone sends me a new blog to add to one of my sites. I make a note to make it my night-time quickie. It takes less than 10 mins to add and upload to my site. Done. Time for bed.

13. Have laptop will travel

Laptops are pretty portable these days. More so, net books. And if we move down in size to iPhones and the like, there’s no excuse for us to never be away from our favourite devices. I take mine shopping with me. You just never know when you’ll have five minutes, or 35 minutes, in a mall with nothing to do.
For example -  What do people do when their better half is in a store trying on 13 pairs of jeans? Answer – Stare at other people waiting for their better half to finish trying on 13 pairs of jeans. Stare no more. Find the nearest comfy hard bench and rattle off a few e-mails or a blog post.
NOTE: This has been proven to stop those “Well you said you wanted to come shopping” reprimands from those among us who like to try on a dozen pair of jeans.

14. It’s called a laptop for a reason

And that reason is… we all have laps. I discovered this a long time ago. It was when I was really caught between finishing another news lesson in my room and miss Arsenal playing Manchester United live on television, or… take the laptop, sit in front of the TV and watch the game with my laptop on my lap. Genius! I soon discovered laps are good for watching the news and working. I watch all my fave programmes and make new lessons at the same time.

15. Just pop out for a blog post

I don’t smoke. I came across this great timesaver just a few weeks ago at my children’s school song and dance extravaganza (of course, I took my laptop… just in case). There were 20-to-30-minute periods when said kiddies weren’t extravaganzaing. Parents who smoked popped out for a cigarette break. “Aha!” I thought – a perfect time to pop out for a write-a-blog-post break. I managed to draft a whole post in my two breaks and it’s so much healthier than smoking.

16. Stop drinking

I live and work in the Middle East. I don’t drink and don’t miss it. I could if I wanted to – I’d just need to get a liquor license. It’s easy to get, but I don’t want to. Not drinking saves me hours a week and increases my productivity. It also means I don’t send mails or tweet tweets I shouldn’t – which means I save even more time in not needing to apologize for the sent mails and tweeted tweets that shouldn’t have been sent and tweeted.

17. Lunch al desko

Not for everyone, but I can never seem to take a proper lunch break. I visit the school canteen perhaps twice a semester. I spend 99% of my lunchtimes at my desk eating my sandwiches or biriyani. I’ve read lots of reports that say eating at your desk is stressful. For me, it’s the opposite. It’s a quiet time for me to get lots done – usually lots of quickies and loose ends that need finishing.

18. Close your eyes and press play

I can spend a long, long time deciding what music to play when I sit down and work. This time has decreased somewhat now all of my music is on iTunes. But still… I could easily spend 10 minutes scrolling up and down my playlists. The handy close-your eyes-and-press-play techniques saves me quite a bit of time. It’s all my music so I’m going to like it wherever my cursor stops. Using the Shuffle setting also works wonders.

19. Do not communicate

A key to managing your time is Friend-Conversation-Management. The best way to ensure FCM is kept to a minimum while productivity is maximized is not to talk to your friends. By this, I mean turn off your phone, shut down the Skype and Twitter notification sounds, log yourself out of Gmail and MSN so no-one can invite you to chat online… etc. The plus side is that you’ll be so happy you got so much work done that your friends will want you around.

20. Design another Twitter Application

In my last post, I invited you to invent an app that only gave you access to Twitter for three minutes an hour… In this post, I set you the task of designing an app that keeps you to this three minutes and refuses to open Twitter… no matter what.

Stay tuned for a wee follow-up post… Time Management tips that could get you into really hot water.