My favourite scientific personal development blog Barking Up The Wrong Tree has published a new article about time management, which I think is quite seriously useful.
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2015/11/how-to-manage-your-time
It’s mainly based on the yet to be released book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport (hmm, where have I heard that name again? Ah, yes, he’s author of the Study Hacks blog). So, there’s this distinction between deep work and shallow work. Shallow work is routine stuff like meetings, email communication, phone calls, and other maintenance stuff. Deep work is the high quality work you put into actually creating something valuable.
The post basically argues that we are scheduling our time wrong. We are scheduling shallow work, when we should be scheduling deep work. That seems to be uncomfortably true. Avoiding shallow work can cause unpleasant surprises, but avoiding deep work is much worse: It creates a lack of substantial success.
On the other hand, it’s my personal experience that scheduling fun activities, in addition, or instead of scheduling “work” can be quite beneficial, too.
What do you think? How do you manage your time?