Be Fruitful and Multiply – Time That is…

This post can fulfill a dream – it will help you multiply your time.  Rory Vaden’s fantastic TED presentation  on “How to Multiply Your Time”  will help you get important things done. It will also help you say no to things you don’t need to be doing. I encourage you to watch, learn and put into practice these ideas.  Enjoy.

I liked this presentation because it suggested a better way to use our executive function. Executive function is our amazing ability to consciously control our thoughts, emotions and actions in order to achieve goals  For more information about executive function see Sabine Doebel’s good TED Presentation, “How Your Brain’s Executive Function Works – How to Improve it”. From my perspective, Rory Vaden explained how to improve our executive function by using the “Focus Funnel“.

Rory’s presentation teaches us how to multiply time by investing time today to give us more time tomorrow. This of course is how we can be a “Time Multiplier”.  These techniques give us permission to focus on the future, rather than the present, because it gives us ROTI (Return On Time Invested). ROTI is what multiplies our time.

For example, he explains that we have many automation tools to help us multiply our time. He explains how time invested in automatic bill pay gives us more time and is a time multiplier. I realized I use an automation time multiplier.  My wife and I used to use paper lists or try to remember what we needed at the grocer but inevitably would still forget things and or the list.  Now, so we don’t have to rely on our memory or a list for the store, we use the Notes function that is on all our apple devices.  We usually have a device with us so if we invest a few seconds to record the item on the list, we multiply our time.

We use the Notes function by putting items on the list when we notice we are running low or want an item.  Then when we shop we can open our grocery list on Notes at the grocery store and get what is needed.  We also are using the Notes function to list things to bring on our upcoming trip, movies we want to rent or see, and many more things that we want to remember.  Doing it on the Notes app now has helped us and created ROTI.

    Notes Shared on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac

Another great insight from his presentation was how his “Focus Funnel” helps people clarify what they should be doing based on what can be eliminated, automated or delgated.  More can be learned about the “Focus Funnel” in his presentation and here.

Throw it in the Focus Funnel

I also found it interesting and valuable to hear how he saw Time management techniques evolve. He explained the First era focused on efficiency and it came about with Fredrick Taylor who was the industrial efficiency engineer during  the industrial revolution. That time management philosophy evolved because it was believed if we did things more efficiently it could be done faster and this meant we would have more time.

The second era was in the 1980s. The second era was brought into existence by Stephen Covey. This era allowed us to focus on what was most important by prioritizing our list of things we had to do based on urgency and importance (see Matrix). While valuable, this approach helped but didn’t give us more time or create time, it only gave us an effective way to re-organize our to do list.

From his perspective, now we need a way to multiply time. This third era of time management, where we are now, needs to help us multiply time. To multiply time he suggests we need to add a third dimension, significance, to urgency and importance. Significance requires us to think about how long what we are planning to do will matter. In other words, what is its significance.  In this third era of time management, the time multiplier teaches us to do today things that will make tomorrow better.

Using this focus funnel should help us improve our executive function as described by Sabine Doebel.

If you didn’t watch Rory’s presentation, I encourage you to watch it now or watch it again – I have.  Watching it has a high ROTI (Return On Time Invested)

Implementing these ideas has helped me invest my time on generating comprehensive improvements through the creation of pervasive, reciprocal, selfish, selfless, synergistic interactions so everyone and everything benefits, or by practicing paneugenesis.  In other words using this idea has helped me take action today to make tomorrow better. I look forward to hearing about the how you invest your time today to make tomorrow better for everyone and everything.

Please share how you multiply your time so we all can benefit! Thank you.