I’ve always frowned upon the whole idea of tracking your time in detail. As useful as it might be to know you spend 40% of your time at work, 5% of your time commuting and 10% of your life on Facebook, if you do genuinely need to know that information there are deeper issues to resolve. Such data might reveal to you where time is being wasted, and that by taking a different route to work and paying less attention to Facebook, you may resolve that problem. But it doesn’t resolve why you’ve got that problem in the first place (anyone want to suggest what the root cause may be?).

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It’s several years old now but do you remember The Matrix? In it humans were used literally as batteries to feed their machine masters. The analogy of humans as batteries actually isn’t far wrong. If you’ve ever worked flat out at work for a week and then felt run down and exhausted several days afterwards, your battery levels are running low. A lot of people know this happens, can see the signs and typically take action (lying in on a Sunday, for example). However, what’s not so recognized is that when your body is running on low it also manifests itself mentally. Feel down, fed up, not motivated to do anything? You need to recharge those batteries.

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One of the truest facts of life is that trust needs to be earned. If you’re constantly lying to your friends… well, they won’t be your friends for very long. If nobody trusts the manager then he can’t create a stable team or get the most out of his people. Even telling a white lie can have subtle effects on your relationships and how you are perceived by others. But trust isn’t just about other people, it’s about yourself. Simply put, if you tell yourself you’re going to do something and then you don’t, what is your subconscious going to think?

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I’m a big fan of the 80/20 rule, but much like my other fave – Parkinson’s law - how to put it to use isn’t very obvious. 80% of output comes from 20% of input. 80% of my time goes into 20% of my work. Useful knowledge, but what next? Then I started viewing it in terms of value. 20% of the stuff in my life produces 80% of the value. The books I’m writing and this blog are worth my time and energy because I enjoy doing it and who knows where it might lead? The amount of time I spend keeping my home tidy, though, is a waste.

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On Monday I reviewed The Power Of Less and some of the insights in it inspired me to look at ways of dealing with my negative self-talk. Breaking your work down, focusing on one thing for a month… it  might seem commonsense in hindsight but I’ve never thought to apply it to habit building in such a systematic way. Go figure. Anyways, for the last month I’ve been putting these ideas to practise and today I want to cover how I’ve reined in my negative self-talk. At the bottom of this post I’ve also raised a question about positive self-talk. Interestingly, I stopped short of encouraging it. I’d been keen to hear your thoughts on that one.

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