How to "Make Time" for your dream project ?

We carry a dream in our hearts.

We cuddle that dream occasionally in the hustle-bustle of life. 

This dream may be an item on the bucket list, a trip to take, an article to publish, a book to write, or a venture to launch. 

But we don't find time for it. It gets lost on the back burner. 

And it never reaches the front seat. 

How do we "Make Time" for our pet projects, bucket-list, articles, books, or ventures? 

Often answer boils down to better "productivity" or "time management." 

Long back, I attended a myriad of time management sessions. 

And now, as a teacher and trainer, I teach/talk about time management right from MBA students to professionals and executives. 

"Productivity" and "Time management" are the sine qua non of every development workshop and intervention. And as a book-lover, I have read sizeable literature on it.

 

At one end, some experts may tell you to split the day into 15 min or 30 min intervals- a perfect epitome of micro or nano management. At another end of the spectrum, experts claims, time is unmanageable. Time is uncontrollable - instead, manage your energy. And in between two extreme ends, there are a lot of self-help books like 

• First things first by Stephen Covey.
• Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy
• 18 minutes: Find your focus, master your distraction, and get the right things done. by Peter Bregman
• The Power of full engagement

But most of these books are written in the non-internet/non-mobile era. This era has made us "always connected" and hence "always distracted." The issues are well discussed in few books like

• Focus - Daniel Goleman
• Indistractable - Nir Eyal
• Digital Minimalism - Cal Newport (Detail Summary available on this blog itself). 

Either you read all of these books and make sense of your problem in their prescription. 

Or Easiest is read "Make Time"- by Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky. 

(Image: Amazon)

"Make Time" - has a straightforward argument. However, it has not cited all these books (Few are). It certainly is mindful of ideas and tips from all of them. 

Book is perfect blend of ideas from various sources, served in perfect homogenous mix - undetectable and perfectly digestible. 

It boils down to them in a simple system that can easily apply to whatever your project is. The system has just four steps. 

1. Decide dream project. Split it into steps, make a step for each day's highlight. 
2. Block time for day's highlight. And ensure Laser-like focus during it. 
3. Ensure your energy is high and maintained during that blocked time. 
4. Reflect each day on what worked and what didn't. 

That's it. The book is full of tips and techniques (actually a total of 87 tips). 

That covers interesting tips like. 

• Only two cup coffee is required in a day, with no coffee after 01:30 to 02:00 pm. 
• Lunch plate - shall be half-filled with salads.
• Walking is the best exercise, and anytime doable! 
• And the myriad of tips for managing net distractions, smartphone addiction, and email disturbance. 

This system roughly looks like the one in below one-page summarized sketch. [One more such one page summary is here] 

I have started including the content in my sessions and workshops. Being repeatedly useful, I gave it Five Start (5 * ) on Goodreads.  

Book is easy to read, accessible, and worth your desk/library/collection.  

Paperback or hard-cover copy is highly suggested - it has an excellent design with simple sketches to explain the points. 

So go and grab a copy before you embark on your dream. 

(Schematic - One Page Summary of "Make Time")

Karma Yoga: Book of the month (Oct 2021).

 

Here is a quick background of how this title became a top contender for the October book-of-the-month. 

Two members bought this book and posted covers in the WhatsApp group. It prompted a third member to send a request for this book as "book-of-the-month." We circulated messages in the group. The announcement resulted in 26 members signing for this book. Twenty-six members are much more than our active members, almost one-fourth of our total members. Hence we confirmed this to be Book-of-the-month. 

As we have an overwhelming response for this book, some of the things that we have planned for October are: 

1. GRP: Guided reading program. [Thanks to Aniket for this]. We will post daily portions as well as a prompt. Would you please post your responses to the prompt? You may follow this pace or have more bandwidth, or love to read books in one sitting; You can move at a faster pace. Even if you are moving quicker, we request you to respond to prompts to add to fun and learning. 
2. We haven't yet finalized, but there will be daily quotes related to Karma Yoga and that day's portion. [Thanks to Vikraman Panicker for this]. 
3. We will take the break on the weekend to take notes/summary or some side activity. 
4. We are getting in touch with experts who studied this topic in depth. An attempt is to call them to speak with us in a monthly meeting. So do watch out for the space! 

Sounds exciting, isn't it! Get ready for the learning journey. 

For those who wish to dive deep into this topic. Few more resources. 

1. Swami Vivekananda has given six speeches on Karma Yoga, now published as a booklet. Now available online too. It's a small booklet in size. The English version is available here. 
2. An erudite scholar Swami Pitambarananda gave a series of lectures based on this book. You may access youtube here. 
3. Swami Tyagananda (Hindu Chaplain at Harvard & MIT) penned a beautiful, accessible commentary on Vivekananda's Karma Yoga. It is titled Walking The Walk. It is available here. It's a highly recommended book. I will post the summary of this soon. 
4. Swami Tyagananda runs a course on "Walking the Walk." It is available here.  
5. For more enthusiastic readers, Tilak's commentary on Bhagavad-Gita - Gita Rahasya or Karm Yoga Shastra is one of the pioneering works in this domain.  

Feel free to comment or give feedback. Do add your resources or pointers.