6 ways to be more efficient with your time

6 ways to be more efficient with your time 6 ways to be more efficient with your time It’s hard to be efficient.Sometimes it feels like the world doesn’t make any sense. Sometimes  you  don’t make any sense. And sometimes it feels like it’s all a conspiracy.As we’ll see shortly, these are all, in a way, true.Dan  Ariely  is the king of irrational behavior. Not that he’s more irrational than you or I, but he’s studied an impressive amount of it. Dan  is a behavioral economist at Duke University and the New York Times bestselling author of three wonderful books: Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone- Especially Ourselves Most recently he’s turned his attention to the irrationality of how we use our time and has helped create a new smart-calendar  app,  Timeful. What’s great is the data from  Timeful  is helping us learn things  about what works and what doesn’t as it relates to productivity.I gave Dan a call to hear what he had to say about how we can improve time management, how to be efficient and how to get more done.1. The world  is  working against youThis isn’t a conspiracy theory and a  tinfoil hat isn’t required, but we are spending more of our time in environments that  have their own agendas.Billboards and TV ads want you to buy. The links on the internet encourage you to click. Notifications on your smartphone beckon you.Our  default is  now a constant, aggressive chain of siren songs from our environment.Here’s Dan:The world is not acting in our long-term benefit. Imagine you walk down the street and every store is trying to get your money right now; in your pocket you have a phone and every app wants to control your attention right now. Most of the entities in our lives really want us to make mistakes in their favor. So the world is making things very, very difficult.If you followed every directive from your surroundings  these days you’d quickly be broke, obese, and constantly distracted.It’s like we’re surrounded by scheming thieves: thieves of our time, thieves of our attention, thieves of our productivity.And how do pickpockets steal your stuff?  Distraction.Here’s Dan:I have a friend who’s a magician and he pickpockets people in his show.  He said when he started he used to tap people to distract them. He’d  tap them, they would lose their  concentration  and he could take their watch.  He said now he realizes that  merely  asking people questions is enough to make them lose the ability to focus.Not having a plan, goals or a system in today’s world is dangerous because the default isn’t neutral.(For more on what the most productive people do to reduce distractions, click  here.)So what does this mean is the first big step to productivity?2. Control your environment or it will control youWe can’t control our environment everywhere we go, of course, but we have more control than we usually choose to exercise.If you  banish  distractions and control your calendar you  can make sure your environment is ripe for productivity.Here’s Dan:One of the big lessons from social science in the last 40 years is that environment matters. If you go to a buffet and the buffet is organized in one way, you will eat one thing. If it’s organized in a different way, you’ll eat different things. We think that we make decisions on our own but the environment influences us  to a great degree. Because of that we need to think about how to  change our  environment.What does research show the most productive computer programmers have in common?It’s not experience,  salary, or hours spent on a project.They had employers who  crea ted an environment free from distraction.Via  Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking:…top performers overwhelmingly worked for companies that gave their workers the most privacy, personal space, control over their physical environments, and freedom from interruption.Research shows  distractions make us stupid.Your surroundings should  make the things you need to do easy and the things you shouldn’t do hard.What happened when Google put MM’s in containers instead of out in the open? People ate 3 million less of them in one month.Here’s Dan:Here’s an experiment that Google did recently. The MMs in their New York office used to be in baskets. So instead  they put  them in bowls with lids. The lid doesn’t  require a lot of effort to lift but it  reduced the number of MMs consumed in their New York office by 3 million a  month.(For more on how the most organized people stay on track, click  here.)Okay, so you need to manage your environment. How d o you manage your calendar?3. Write everything downWe all know how fallible our brains can be yet we routinely trust ourselves to remember and follow through on things. Bad.What did research from the  Timeful app  tell Dan? Most people don’t write down the things they need to do. When you do write things down, you’re more likely to  follow through on them. If it’s important, write it down.  Reminders,  post-its, and  calendars  are all good tools.Stanford professor Jennifer Aaker  points to research showing that  your calendar can make you happier:Take the things that make you happy and energized and schedule them more often.Sound stupidly simple? Research says we don’t do it enough. Here’s  Jennifer:…there is often a gap between where people say they  want  to spend their time and how they  actually  spend their time…  once you identify the activities and people with whom you want to spend more time, calendaring your time thoughtfully becomes critical.   When you put something on a calendar, you’re more likely to actually do that activity â€" partly because you’re less likely to have to make an active decision whether you should do it â€" because it’s already on your calendar.(For more on how to schedule to-do’s like a pro, click  here.)So you’ve written down everything that needs to get done. Should you just run d own the list in order? Absolutely not.4. When you do what you do is keyAll hours are not created equal. What did Dan’s  Timeful  research show about our most productive hours?You have a window of 2-2.5 hours of peak productivity per day, starting a couple hours  after waking.Here’s Dan:…it turns out that most people are productive in the first two hours of the morning. Not immediately after waking,  but if you get up  at 7 you’ll be most productive from around from 8-10:30.Those are the hours when you should be working on your most cognitively demanding tasks. The big projects. The stuff that really moves the needle.But what did Dan find that most people did with those hours?Email and Facebook.You need to guard those hours for important tasks. Designate that part of your day  as “protected time.”I’ve posted before that  2.5 to 4 hours after waking is when your brain is sharpest:Studies show that alertness and memory, the ability to think clearly and to learn, can vary by between 15 and 30 percent over the course of a day. Most of us are sharpest some two and a half to four hours after waking.When I  interviewed  willpower expert  Roy Baumeister  he said that  early morning  is also when you’re most disciplined:The longer people have been awake, the more self-control problems happen.  Most things go bad in the evening. Diets are broken at the evening snack, not at breakfast or in the middle of the morning. Impulsive crimes are mostly committed after midnight.In  studies of geniuses, most  did their best work early in the day.(For more on the schedule very successful people follow, click  here.)So you need to shape your environment and protect your peak hours. What should you  avoid  doing?5. The four horsemen of the productivity apocalypseDan’s research found  4 things that were the biggest time wasters:1. MeetingsWe all know how meetings waste time and multiply like rabbits. The solution?Schedule your work time on your calendar. Have a presen tation to work on? Block out hours for it.If people try to put a meeting there, you can say you have a conflict. You do. Your work matters.A calendar should be a record of anything  that  needs to get done - not merely of interruptions like meetings and calls.2. EmailMost people simply spend too much time in their inboxes to accomplish anything of substance.Here’s how to  stop email from taking over your life.3. MultitaskingPut aside the distractions and do one thing at a time.   Across the board,  multitasking  lowers productivity.4. “Structured Procrastination”What’s structured procrastination? It’s doing little things that give us the  feeling  of progress instead of  deep work  that  really  makes progress.Here’s Dan:So making to-do lists and crossing them off is an example of this. Because those things are easily measurable, they make us  feel  as if we’re achieving things. But real achievements take time. Progress is not always linear. Big projects  aren’t alw ays immediately rewarding.  Things that are really complex don’t give us the same sense of momentary enjoyment but those are the things that give us the real sense of achievement and progress once we get to them. But I don’t think we get to them enough.Avoid these four and you’ll see an  80/20 style  jump in your productivity.(For more on work-life balance, click  here.)So you are making progress. You’re more productive during the day. But we all get tired or bored. What’s the best thing to do then?6. No, you don’t need an email breakYou tell yourself you  need an email break, and that you’ll be rejuvenated and work better afterward. Problem is, that’s just not true.Getting your head into and out of your work takes time. Switching tasks  has cognitive costs that reduce efficiency.Here’s Dan:People think that checking email refreshes them. It doesn’t.  If you want to get refreshed, close your eyes, meditate, breathe deeply, or think about some things that are impo rtant. The reality is the right way to do things is shut your email down and focus on what you’re doing.In fact, research shows that frequent email checks can temporarily lower your intelligence  more than being stoned.Constant emailing  reduces mental ability by an average of about 10 IQ points. For men, it’s about three times the effect of smoking marijuana.Via  Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long:A study done at the University of London found that constant emailing and text-messaging reduces mental capability by an average of ten points on an IQ test. It was five points for women, and fifteen points for men. This effect is similar to missing a night’s sleep. For men, it’s around three times more than the effect of smoking cannabis.Some of you are already saying: “But I have to check email!” Yes, you do. But probably not that often.As  Cal Newport  says, “Shallow work is what stops you from gett ing fired. Deep work is what gets you promoted.”And email is shallowest of work. We got men on the moon  without email.  And email can wait while you get the important things done.(For more on how the most successful people manage their time, click  here.)So Dan has a lot of tips for us. How do we pull all of this together and be more efficient?Sum upHere are Dan’s tips: The world is not designed to help you achieve your long term goals. Passivity is not going to get you where you want to go. Control your environment or it will control you. Optimize your workspace  for what you need to achieve. Write  the things you need to do down on your calendar. You’re more likely to do what you write down. You have about 2 hours of peak productivity, usually early in the morning. Protect those hours and use them wisely. Meetings, email, multitasking and structured procrastination are the biggest time wasters. No, you don’t need an email break. Switching tasks  reduces effectiveness as your brain transitions. The more you do it, the less effective you are. You don’t need to account for every minute. You don’t need to agonize over wasted seconds. It’s just about improving.And none of us are infallible. When I asked Dan about work-life balance, what did he say?I struggle with it every day.  You and I are doing this interview and it’s  Saturday, Eric.So nobody’s perfect. But with Dan’s tips we can all get better at managing our time.Join over 127,000 readers.  Get a free weekly update via email  here.Related posts:How To Stop Being Lazy And Get More Done â€" 5 Expert Tips6 Things The Most Productive People Do Every DayNew Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More SuccessfulThis article originally appeared at Barking Up the Wrong Tree.