Philosophy is Phun Blog # 53 – Productivity

I recently went to a workshop on how to become the most efficient person that you could be. It was a great experience because it taught me some very important things about how to manage your time productively. Time is the most value currency in our lifetimes. You have heard the expression time is money and I just want to restate how much of an understatement that really is. Benjamin Franklin was even quoted as saying “Time is the stuff life is made of.” The man who gave this workshop on efficiency, named Joel Oppenheimer, really opened my eyes on just how valuable time really is. He talked to us about how time is such a unique resource in the fact that it can’t be accumulated, stored, or replaced. It is always being spent at a constant rate of 60 seconds per minute and everything that you do or could hope to achieve has a certain cost of time.
It is common knowledge that life isn’t fair and every human isn’t born on an equal playing field. For a financial standpoint, some people are born with a silver spoon while others are born with just the clothes on their backs (i.e. nothing). Similarly, not everyone is given the same amount of time here on earth. That’s the problem with time; we never know when it is going to end. That’s why it is so important to make sure that you get everything that you want to get done within the unpredictable amount of time allotted to you. In order to do this you need to know exactly what you want to achieve. This leads me to my next point about goal setting. One of the greatest tips Joel told me was to write my goals down. He presented us some statistics from a study that discovered everyday people like you and I would only follow through with their New Year’s resolution at a rate of 4% while those who recorded their resolutions into a journal would have a completion rate of 49%.
It isn’t just good enough to have a goal though, as you must also develop S.M.A.R.T. goals. S.M.A.R.T. stands for Specific, Measurable, Action-Oriented, Realistic, and Timing. Specific is pretty self-explanatory. Your goals need to be explicitly clear so that you obviously know what you are aiming for. Measurable factors into your goals by making sure that you can clearly see the progress you’ve made so far and can see at the end of the goal how you have improved or reached that goal in a particular way. Action-Oriented refers to including verbs into the wording of your goals to make sure that you actually complete tasks to accomplish your goals. Talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words. You also need to be realistic when constructing your goals to make sure that your goals are attainable within a reasonable amount of time and effort. Finally and most importantly is timing. You need to make sure that your goals have deadlines in order to push you towards completing them. Goals without deadlines are essentially just dreams with no hope of actually making them a reality.
Now that you’ve made your S.M.A.R.T. goals it is important to prioritize the goals you’ve made. After going to this talk I have started constructing lists of goals that I would like to achieve every week starting Monday morning. Some of my goals have continued to appear over multiple weeks because they are important to me and I really hope I achieve them someday. For instance, my ultimate goal in life is to make my own design consulting firm and innovation incubator. I may not have the resources or connections to do such a thing yet but it remains one of my ultimate goals and that doesn’t mean that I can’t do things every week to make my goal more achievable. For instance, I have started to create business plans and will soon try to find funding for my company. Of course goals will vary from person to person but this is where you must decide for yourself what you consider important and what you want to achieve in your own life. Some goals, like my company, are long term but others can be accomplished in one day. Priorities are very important because they allow you to make sure you are spending your limited resources like time and money on things that will help you reach your goals based on order of importance. The ultimate reason why we have goals is to make ourselves happy because it feels good when we get something that matters to us done. Using the 24 hours we have each day, you need to make sure you budget your time and money effective in order to be more productive. The more productive you are the more you can get done thus the happier you will be.

-Allan Nicholas

Philosophy is Phun Blog # 52 – Values

Hey guys! Now that the podcast has been up and running for the second week in a row and we are getting back into the swing of things I decided to bring back the blog too. The schedule for this new philosophy content will be on a weekly basis. Tommy and I will be recording a new episode of the podcast every Friday which will be uploaded during the weekend. During each weekend as well I will be typing up a blog post just like this one. I will also be actively trying to aggregate content on my Human Powered Podcasts site and build it into a media network. My next step is to culminate all the great philosophical content on the web from other bloggers and podcasters and showcase it on my site. I’ll keep you guys posted on how that effort is going.

What I wanted to talk about this week were the inherent values that we all have. This will relate pretty closely with the most recent podcast I did with Tommy but more in depth with my personal values and what I’ve taken from them. I went to a meeting for the Terrapin Leadership Institute and it was very informative and helped me realize a couple things. They made us do an exercise where they gave us a list of words for values and we had to pick our top ten and then gradually reduce the list until we got one final value. In retrospect the list was restricting because there are essentially countless values that one could have and there are more values than words used to describe them. There were a few that did resonate with me though when I was looking at list and these words included Achievement, Challenge, Creativity, Optimism, Innovation, Leadership, Personal Growth, Pioneer Spirit, Recognition, and Success.

Something that I noticed about these words is that they are completely open for interpretation. As with many things in our world, everything is relative to a degree and so is the way that we interpret words. We each have a different perspective on what counts for success or what is considered a challenge so even if two people were to have the same values they would no doubt have different ideas or views on what they mean exactly. These values also don’t have a permanent definition. For me the word successful has a different meaning depending on the situation it is applied to. If I’m in class, being successful means doing well on the exam or getting my homework done. If I’m playing in a soccer game being successful could mean making a good pass, scoring a goal, or ultimately winning the game.

I think it is very important to try and assess what your own personal values are as well. If you have an idea of what you cherish in the world it will definitely help you know what you need to do in order to reach happiness. You’re probably thinking “Oh I know what my values are. It’s easy!” Well I said the exact same thing when we were being briefed on the activity at the Leadership meeting and then I drew a blank. If I didn’t have the list to look at I definitely wouldn’t be able to come up with a comprehensive list of my own. I definitely recommend you do some introspection and try to find out what really makes you tick and what you are really passionate about. If you can do that, you are more likely able to reach your values and by doing so you can find ways to make your life happier. Because pioneer spirit was one of my important values, I know that if I act as a trailblazer and take the initiative in the events of my life I will more likely be happier than if I just sit back and watch life pass me by. Plain and simple, if you know your values, you have the ability to make your life better.

-Allan Nicholas