Come up for AIR!

Up to know, we've concentrated on getting stuff done. But if you cast your mind back to the very first things we did, I asked you to spend time looking at what you'd do with the new 'spare' time you'd get from the rest of the course. That's because there's more to life than just

get stuff done
get more stuff done
get even more stuff done.

And if you've already read the AIR book, you'll be familiar with what we're going to do next. We're going to explore time you spend getting mor productive by not working.

Big idea here! What that means, basically, is that in a typical eight hour shift, two of them are more-or-less wasted. So here's a radical idea! Instead of just frittering them away, why not do something worthwhile with them – such as Inform (get better at your job) or Restore (get recharged for your job). Looked at this way, taking a break for your lunch (for example) isn't skiving but a much-needed form of Restore. You actually get more done overall.

Might I be forgiven a personal brag? I know the approach I'm outlining here (spending time not working to be more productive) sounds radical but here's what happened when I used it (along with some of the tools you've already learned). In just a three month period I

increased the amount of time I spent with my wife
visited my children more than I had in the last year
spent more time seeing my friends
took a holiday
continued to run a successful small training company
spent as much time on m hobbies as I ever did
and wrote a book that became a top ten best seller.

Yup! Seriously. The book Presentation Genius got to number six in the best sellers list. Pretty cool, right? And mainly because I didn't work past the times when it made sense for me to do so!

Pretty much everything else in this course is about what we call the Inform framework. Some of it's traditional, and some of it's radical but it's all within the purview of what people think of when they talk about productivity and time management courses.

But it's less than half the story.

The big thing here, is that the Act framework doesn't work well on it's own.

The really big thin here are the other two frames, Inform and Restore.

Ways to Inform and Restore

Here's the bad news, in short, I don't know what's going to work for you – just what worked for me.

Now the good news – it's not hard to figure out. (If you want me to come to your organisation and run a workshop to help make the magic happen with and AIR workshop to see how to do this stuff let me know by clicking here.

The next sections looks at ways I do this personally, but it's something you need to figure out for yourself, ideally!