3464: Become a Time Realist by Julie Morgenstern on How to Improve Productivity and Focus

Optimal Living Daily - Personal Development and Self-Improvement

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Education, Mental Health, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness

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🗓️ 18 January 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

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Summary

Discover all of the podcasts in our network, search for specific episodes, get the Optimal Living Daily workbook, and learn more at: OLDPodcast.com. Episode 3464: Julie Morgenstern shares how embracing realistic time estimates transforms productivity and focus. By tracking how long tasks truly take, you can ditch wishful thinking, better prioritize, and achieve more while feeling less overwhelmed. Read along with the original article(s) here: https://www.juliemorgenstern.com/tips-tools-blog/2020/7/7/become-a-time-realist Quotes to ponder: "Things take as long as they take. If we ignore the truth, we may very well run out of time before we’ve even started on the most important work." "Once you know how long it takes you to do something, you can more easily find the room in your schedule to get it done." "You won’t have to be this detailed forever. After two weeks to a month of concerted effort, you’ll develop a keen sense of how much time tasks require." Episode references: Never Check E-mail in the Morning: https://www.amazon.com/Never-Check-E-Mail-Morning-Productivity/dp/0743250885 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Optimal Living Daily. Become a Time Realist by Julie Morganstern of Juliemorganstern.com
0:08.3	and I'm Justin Mollock, your very own personal narrator. And we keep on narrating as we optimize your life.
0:18.5	Become a Time Realist by Julie Morganstanstern of Julie Morganstern.com.
0:24.7	The number one time management question to ask yourself when approaching any task is how long
0:31.2	is this going to take? Yet we often resist asking ourselves this question for fear of discovering
0:37.1	that we actually don't have
0:38.7	enough time to do it all. Better close our eyes, jump in, and hope for the best. Other times,
0:45.7	we miscalculate based on wishful thinking. We believe if we are extra disciplined and diligent,
0:51.9	we can get things done more quickly than usual.
1:00.0	Unfortunately, denial doesn't change reality. Things take as long as they take. If we ignore the truth, we may very well run out of time before we've even started on the most important work.
1:06.3	That is why asking the question, how long will this take of every single task you do is the number one
1:13.1	gateway skill, not only to good time management, but to peak prioritization. Unfortunately, it's
1:20.5	easy to dramatically under or overestimate how long tasks take based on how we feel about them. More often than not, we feel that tasks that we
1:30.5	don't enjoy doing take far longer than they actually do, whereas tasks that we do enjoy doing
1:36.2	only seem to take a few seconds. In order to be effective at time estimating, you must take your
1:42.0	feelings out of the equation. To find out how long it really takes
1:46.3	you to do things, you must move away from wishful thinking and take a more quantitative approach.
1:53.5	Improving your own estimating skills. As best you can, try to be literal when you make a time
1:59.4	estimate. So many of us are in the habit of
2:01.6	saying that I'll take two seconds, whether we're talking about getting dressed, making a call,
2:07.1	or running to the store. As silly as it may seem, this affects the way we think about time.
2:12.8	If you break this habit and start paying attention to how long things really take,
	...

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