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Most people like to drink sometimes. Having a drink or two on Saturday night may seem to be a good idea and some people drink more than that. Getting drunk on parties is a regular practice for some people. But what kind of impact will it have on your performance?

To be honest, I will say at once the drinking alcohol will not help you to increase your productivity. To some extent, drinking will help you to lower stress, but there are many better ways for relaxation. If we compare playing tennis, talking a walk in the nature or going fishing with boozing then drinking is the least beneficial option for resting. Damage from moderate consumption is not so big, but if you consume it in big amounts then the effects on your performance will be devastating.

While I would not say that you have to totally quit drinking I will still recommend that you do not have a drink during your work day. Having a beer during your lunch may sound good, but it will not help you to work faster. Have two and it will make you much slower and less productive for the second half of your work day. So if you want to drink then you should wait till the evening with it.

If you drink too much then it will affect your performance in the next morning. How much is too much? It is individual, but I would say that too much is when you feel in the morning that you have been drinking in the previous evening. If you get a hangover then you will not be able to be fast and creative in the beginning of your day. But the first hours in the morning are critical for getting a good start to your day and often they can be the most productive ones. You will just throw away your best time by heavy drinking in the previous night. Even if you do not have a bad headache, but if you feel only just a bit tired then you still will be 5 or 10% less productive than you would have been without drinking.

As getting drunk is an easy way of relaxing and having fun then it may demotivate you in the long run. It is very easy to have a drink and feel good. Why bother with hard work and pursuing with your goals? Even if you do not succeed in your life then you can always drink and forget your problem. Well, it is everyone’s choice what do you want to do with your life.

I have many friends who drink almost every weekend. Every week the wait for the Friday night to arrive. Some of them think more on partying than there career progress, and they are making no big progress with their careers. They are not earning promotions, there income has not increased much over the years, and their life standard has not improved. They drive old cars, cannot have overseas vacations and they even do not drink expensive drinks. But they really do not care about it.

In the long run heavy drinking will destroy your health. Alcohol damages all your organs. Excessive drinking will ruin our and it will also reduce our brain size, our reactions become much slower and our memory starts to go. Alcoholics cannot be productive workers.

I personally was relatively heavy drinker when I was younger. During my university days it was natural for me to get drunk on weekends and this habit continued when I started my academic career. I think that one reason for that was that I was bored in my life and I did not have clear goals. Then it was easy entertainment and an escape form the dull everyday life.

Thing started to change when I started dealing with speed reading. It did not mix well with alcohol. If you want to read fast then you have to keep your mind fresh. Getting drunk and having hangover will just hold you back. And if you want to make progress then you take it into account and do not drink so often.

Now I drink much less. Although I will allow myself to party from time to time and to get relatively drunk, there are many other activities for me now. I simply do not have so much time to drink. Furthermore, there is no need to drink for forgetting the everyday troubles. Now I like facing the challenges and not running away from them.

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Getting up early has many benefits. It allows you to start your day earlier than others, which results in more things done at the end of the day. There are many ways to use early morning hours productively such as

• You can start your work day before others. During the early morning hours no one will interrupt you by phone calling or visiting you. It is a good possibility for doing quality work. Starting your day before others means more working hours, which gives you an advantage over your colleagues.
• You will avoid rush hour. If you drive to your office early, then there will be no heavy traffic and you will save time on driving and traffic jams will not cause stress to you.
• You can exercise before starting your work day. Going jogging or to the gym before heading for your office can increase your productivity as your mind will feel relaxed after physical activities.
• You can meditate in the morning. It allows you to deal with your mind and prepare yourself for the day.

Although some people are so called “evening persons”, who tend to be more productive in the evenings most of people will benefit from starting your day early. For example, for me the early morning hours are the most productive ones and if I sleep too much then it often become as relatively unproductive day for me. Most of my articles, blog posts and course chapters are written in the morning hours.

In order to do these things you have to be able to awake and get out of the bed early. It can be pretty tough if you are not used to it. Fortunately, it is possible to change your habits if you follow these tips:

• Go to bed early. This is the number one rule here. Everyone of us needs to sleep certain number of hours. If you sleep too few hours then it is difficult to get up in the morning and you will feel tired, which does not allow you to be efficient. Normally people have to sleep 7 to 8 hours, but there may be some individual differences. If you have difficulties falling to sleep early then you should try to avoid eating at late hours, increase your physical activities and take a walk before going to bed.
• Improve your sleep quality. If you sleep better then you will rest better and it is easier for you to get up. In addition, you will be more refreshed and ready to start your day. Have fresh air in your bedroom. It is a good idea to sleep with open window as it guarantees fresh air and it will lower the temperature in your bed room. The temperature in bed room should be a couple of degrees lower then in the living room. Have comfortable bed and pillow.
• Reward yourself for getting out of bed. Getting out of bed immediately after the alarm rings can be difficult. But if you do not do it then you can fall to sleep again. To make it more pleasant for you then reward yourself. Make it a ritual that you will have your favorite food or candy right after you get out of bed, but only if you manage to get out of bed at once.
• Schedule your time in the morning. If you have certain activities planned on the morning hours then it will generate pressure to get up. Otherwise you will not able to deal with them. On the contrary, if you cannot think out what do to with these early hours then there will not be much motivation to get up.
• Do not put your alarm clock near your bed. The point is that you should not be able to snooze off the clock without getting out of the bed. So the alarm will not stop till you are lying in the bed.
• Limit your alcohol consumption. Getting drunk in previous evening will result in hangover in the following morning, which makes it difficult for you to get up and start your day.
• Get yourself a dog. If you do not like dogs then do not follow this tip. If you have a dog inside your house, then he will probably want to go out early in the morning and so he has to wake you up and he will not let you go until you are out of the bed.

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Have you ever been in a situation where you have a plenty of time to do something, but you feel too tired or bored to do it. Like you have a couple of hours time in the evening and you planned spending it on reading a book, but you have had a long day in the office and just could not put your nose in the book. Or you have to make a number of sales calls in the afternoon, but you just finished a three hour meeting and you do not have energy to start doing it. In that kind of situations you are not short of time but you are lacking energy. You may have two hours time for an activity, which may take half an hours (when done efficiently), but if you have not enough energy then you will start wasting time and procrastinating or you even give up doing this task.

Everything we do requires energy. We have to be fresh for being productive and successful. This means that we do not only have to manage our time but also our energy. In many cases the time spent on an activity is not the most critical determinant of the result. For example, when students have to write an essay, not necessarily the one who spends the most time on doing it will write the best one. The meeting that gives you the best deal is usually not the longest.

This principle applies also to our non-work related activities. People often say that it is good for their children if they spend a lot of time together with them. It is an argument for many women to stay at home. But does this guarantee good result in child development? Actually the time spent with children itself is not so important. Think about unemployed people, who sit at home together with their kids. Are they better parents than those who go to work every day? Obviously not. Those unemployed are together with their children for long time periods, but as these people are depressed then they do not put much energy in their activities with their children.

Now let’s think about having a party together with your friends. What determines the enjoyably of a party? It could be good friends, interesting conversation, delicious food and tasty drinks or funny activities. But is the duration of the party so important? Think about the best party you have had during the last 12 month. Was it the longest?

All these examples indicate that we first have to have energy for doing something. If we have energy then we can work efficiently. Enough energy is a needed for using time optimally. Of course if we have energy and no time then we cannot complete the task either. So we should have both energy and time for being successful.

kristjan time management efficiency, energy, procrastinating, productivity, wasting time

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An average person, who has not learned speed reading techniques, is able to read at 200-250 words per minute. You can test yourself here  in order to find out your own reading speed. By learning to speed read most people are able to at least double their reading speed if they practice regularly. Regular practice means that they perform speed reading exercises every day for at least one month. There is no need to spend several hours on it each day. 45 minutes per day will do, but it has to be regular.

A typical office worker will spend about 25% of his/her working time on reading. In case of a standard 8 hour work day it is 2 hours. If you double your reading speed then it allows you to save one hour each day. If you triple your reading speed then you will save one hour and twenty minutes. So if you are reading initially at 250 words per minute, then increasing your reading speed to 500 words per minute gives you a huge gain, but taking your speed up to 750 words per minute does not help you that much.

The best speed readers can read at speeds above 1000 words per minute. Reaching so fast speeds takes a great deal of practice, but the practical value of reading so fast is not so striking.

Doubling your initial reading speed will give you the biggest efficiency gains and it can be achieved by sensible amount of practice. Being a super-fast reader may be effective and you can impress your friends with it but if you have to work very hard for it then there is actually no necessity for that. So getting the basics of speed reading and putting it into practice will be enough for us.

Speed reading it self is not a goal, it is only a means to being more productive in mental work. To be a productive worker, being able to read fast is not enough. If your time management skills are poor, if you are procrastinating and wasting your working time then it will not help you much if can read very fast. Although rushing through your papers at 1000 words per minute, can save you valuable minutes, but if your coffee brakes are half an hour long or you waste your working time surfing internet then at the end of the day will not end up with that much work being done

So, I would recommend you to be sensible with speed reading. What you need to do is to learn speed reading techniques, practice them and apply to your job-related reading. Do not go crazy about speed reading, but practice it regularly. If you do so you will get the most from it with sensible effort.

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Traditionally people have worked 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week. Although this is still agreed as nominal working hours, it is not necessarily the amount of hours people actually spend on working. A significant part of this time is spending on brakes and other work stoppages. The actual working hours measured by time-use studies tend to be on the average between 30 and 35 hours a week, but there can be a lot of individual variation in it.

Many people work actually 50 or 60 hours a week also if asked they would still report working for standard 40 hours. But does it really pay off working so much? The answer to that question depends on what are these workers aiming at.

Hard work and effort are definitely rewarded on many jobs. For making progress and winning promotion you have to beat the others and working more can be one option to beat the opposition. The employee who starts early and finishes late can be noticed by his boss and it gives him an opportunity to impress the boss. On some jobs there are possibilities for earning good extra pay for working additional hours. But in case of more and more jobs nowadays employees are evaluated for accomplishing their tasks and not just for working harder and longer. If you work long hours but if it does not help you to get good results, then why should the company pay you more.

Do working long hours allow you to achieve greater results? The answer to that question can be yes and no. On one hand, if you work longer then you have more time to achieve your results. For example, if you have to compile a market report, then you have more time for searching information or making corrections to the final version of it. On the other hand, if you work longer you will become more tired. So your productivity is going to drop. The longer your working hours are, the smaller the share of time you actually spend of working will be. In case of long hours it will be difficult to concentrate on work and employees tend waste more working time.

Working smarter and not longer can produce better results. While you may work 25 or 50% more hours, it is difficult to achieve equal productivity gains by working so long due to the diminishing productivity. For example, a report by Circadian Technologies in the US showed that white collar job performance can decrease by as much as 25% when workers put in 60 or more hours a week for prolonged periods. It means that by working for 60 hours you can do only the job equivalent to 45 hours work on normal productivity.

At the same time working smarter can increase your productivity by 100% or 200%. If you plan your day and avoid time wasting then it is possible that you can achieve your days work in only a couple of hours.

Working smarter means that you will have to manage your time. First, you have to set clear goals. You have to know what you are aiming at. Many of us waste a great deal of our working time because we do not know what the right things to do are. Equally important you should work out detailed action plans who to achieve these goals. And finally, you have to work efficiently in order to save your working time. For working efficiently you need many different skills. Besides being good at your profession, you have to be able to communicate efficiently, use computers in a rational way, be able to read and write documents fast and to motivate yourself for beating procrastination.

Long working hours can generate stress and have negative effects on your health. It is typically regarded that it is OK to work extensively for some periods, when you have greater work loads, but if long hours are a continuous practice then it may have sad long-term consequences.

Working for longer hours means also that you have less free time. You have less time to spend together with your friends and family and that is going to affect your quality of life. Although you can make more money (which might not be true always), then would you be really happy. Actually it may happen that if you work too much then you do not have time to spend your money. For example, you may have money to travel around the world to the most exotic places, play golf at the world’s best golf courses or enjoy meals at the finest restaurants, but what is the use of it when you cannot afford it to yourself because you have so much work to do.

So, how many hours is an optimal solution? There is no single solution to that question, but I am pretty sure that most people will benefit from cutting their working hours down a bit. It is often possible to achieve more by working 30 hours instead of 40 hours of weeks. Actually we are not working the 40 hours anyway in many cases but we cast procrastinate these 10 hours. If we could eliminate it, then we could finish hours working days earlier, have more rest, which will result in better health and happiness.

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For making a successful business call you have to make it on a right time. If you call your partner or client at the time he/she is busy then typically two cases can happen. In the first case the person you are calling cannot be reached, which means that you have to call him later. If that happens then you have to make a phone call during a time period, which you have not initially planned for doing it as you hoped to have made the call at once. In the second case the person you are calling will answer the phone, but his/he focus is on other urgent tasks, which affects the quality of your conversation.

The best time for making business phone calls is right after lunch. During the lunch people usually chat with other people, which helps them to relax and makes them open to new ideas. Communicating to other people during lunch makes the prepared to receive your phone call. Call them before they will dig in to their work again.

The second best time to make a phone call is during the middle-morning around 10 AM. By that time people have usually finished the most urgent work tasks. Still they have not become tired yet nor their are about to leave the office for lunch.

You should not make an outgoing call during the first working hour, which is normally before 9 AM. Think how you start your day in the office. What are the things that you do during the first hour? Probably you are reviewing you schedule, checking your email, preparing for the rest of the day. A phone call will interrupt you, which could give a negative effect on your whole day. Many people are very productive during the early morning hours like I am, therefore they work on the most demanding tasks during these hours. If they have good time management practices then they may not even answer the phone.

It is not a good idea to make a call right before lunch time of in the end of the work day. In the first case, the person you are calling may hurry with his work as he wants to keep up with his/her schedule by the lunchtime. Many people do not want to be late for lunch, they may have a habit of meeting colleagues at a certain time for going out to lunch together. If you call someone who is heading for lunch, then he/she may not be too much willing to talk to you. If you make a call at 4.45 PM then you are likely to disturb a person from completing the last tasks of the day and you will not let him to go home with your call.

If possible then make your phone calls in blocks. It means that you will do all your phone calls in a row. For example, if you have to call 10 clients then you will make these calls in a sequence. This will help you to get into a good rhythm and you will be more efficient. But if you scatter your calls at different times throughout your work day, then every time you will spend some time when preparing to make the call (thinking about what you will say, building confidence, procrastinating etc.)

As you can see there exist certain times during a day when you should make your outgoing phone calls. It just takes a little bit a planning, but I is worth doing it as making the calls at right time, will both help you to save time and get better results from your calls.

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Speed reading will allow you to start reading faster, which means that you will be able to complete your reading-related work tasks in shorter time period. It means that your productivity will increase. You can do more work in every hour and every work day. It can lead to a wage increase, promotion or more free time for you, but it might not the case if your boss will not approve it.

It you are working more productively then you should be paid more as you will create more value to your company, but your boss has to recognize it first. How can you show your boss that you have become more productive? You may make try presenting your speed reading skills do your boss but it may not work as bosses are typically interesting in your overall working performance and higher reading speed is only a means for performing better. Think what your critical work tasks are. If speed reading will allow you to work faster then you could achieve your goals in shorter time. It means that you can finish a market research in a lower number of days or you can go through your company’s accounts faster. At the same time speed reading allows you to work more, do little extra during your working hours. Present these results to your boss and ask for more complicated work-tasks. If you can be successful in them, then you are likely to impress your boss, which could lead to a wage increase or promotion. There are many techniques for getting a promotion and you can read about them in a “1,001 Ways to Get Promoted” by David E. Rye. http://www.amazon.com/1-001-Ways-Get-Promoted/dp/1564144305

Alternatively you may pursue for shorter working hours. If you are working more efficiently then it can be possible that you can handle them same workload even if you finish your day a couple of hours earlier. Again you have to discuss it with your boss and show him that you can work more efficiently due to your speed reading skills. You may even want to get permission for working at home on some days. You can find many ways how you can do it from “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich” by Timothy Ferriss. http://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Workweek-Escape-Live-Anywhere/dp/0307353133

However in case of some jobs working faster could not lead to a higher income. Or it may be the case the boss will not understand the benefits of you working more efficiently and he/she will not reward you for working faster. In that case you may consider taking a side job, which you can do simultaneously while working on your main job. For example, if you are a salesman in a hardware store and during some hours there are very few customers, then you could do at the same time some other work with your computer like some research, data processing, etc. Of course you have to get an agreement from your boss for that.

If there are no such possibilities either then you can always consider changing your job. If you want to be efficient and get reward for that, then you have to consider it when choosing your job. Look for the jobs, where flexible pay systems are and where you have possibilities for getting bonuses for successful efforts.

Alternatively you can think about becoming self-employed and being your own boss. Usually it will allow you to get the biggest share of your increased efficiency. For example, since have learned speed reading and increased my working efficiency I have been more and more working as self-employed and less as a regular employee. Although many people are afraid of that perspective, it will provide you the biggest flexibility and biggest possibilities of getting money for your efficiency.

kristjan Speed Reading efficiency, flexibility, productivity, speed reading

The ongoing world-wide economic crisis is probably the worst since 1930s. All major industrial countries are in a recession, the financial system is in critical situation and the income of millions of people is under threat. Companies are downsizing and people become unemployed. More and more people are losing hope in the future.

That kind of crisis was a natural result of a long boom, which included heavy loaning and consumption. It was easy to get credit, easy to consume or buy real estate. It increased the demand, which meant that it was easy for firms to make profit. During the boom years the companies did not have to be efficient for earning profits. Even if they had high and pointless costs they were still able to make nice money. The companies did not have to monitor the productivity and cost-efficiency so much as it was more profitable to increase the output for meeting the growing demand.

Now the things have changed and the companies have to cut down the costs in order to survive in the situation, where the demand has decreased. It is not possible to sell so many products, which means the income is lower and therefore the costs have to be lower for earning profit. Wage costs are one of the most importance costs for many companies and therefore firms are looking for ways to operate with the lower number of employees. It means that companies are downsizing. Those employees who are left have to do the work of those, who are fired. It means that on the average there has to be more output per one worker, so the labor productivity has to increase.

In developed economies many workers have perform different reading tasks. They have to read email, product documentation, invoices, manuals etc. In case of a typical office worker reading can take 20-30% of working time. Therefore if an employee could read faster, then he could do more work in one day. It concludes that faster reading speed results in more output and higher productivity.

As companies are firing employees for cutting labor costs and increasing labor productivity then it makes sense to get ride of the most unproductive employees first. As reading speed affects productivity then in case of all other things equal employees with higher reading speed are more productive. So fast readers have lower probability of getting fired. Therefore learning to speed read may help workers to keep their jobs. It is really impressive if you show your boss your speed reading skills, you may not only prevent getting fired by this but gain promotion or wage bonus

As the economy is in the recession phase now, it is a good time for employees to upgrade their skills. As the demand for products is lower the work load for many employees is lower than average. It means that people have more time available for learning at it would be wise to use it. They only problem may be that companies some companies are not so willing to pay for their employees training. It is so easy to save money of training costs, but in the long run it will decrease the company’s revenues and profit as the skills of employees are not enhanced. But if you employer is not paying for your training then it does not mean that you should not educate yourself. It may seem costly to cover your training costs on your own, but it actually pays off. If you increase your productivity, you will end up with higher income. Your boss will be impressed that you have trained yourself on your own budget and it will benefit your career.

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Yesterday I was very busy working on a recruitment plan of a new company. Although this was not so urgent, I wanted to complete the draft before I went to sleep. It was definitely too much, but I still wanted to see if I could succeed. As I progressed with my work, I got more and more tired and started to feel sleepy. Still, I decided not to give in, even though it was already 11 PM. I drank a lot of coffee to stay awake and kept on working, but it was getting very difficult to be productive. In the end, I did get it finished, but by that time it was already 2.20 AM.

As I got to bed so late and had consumed too much coffee, I did not sleep well. Obviously, when I woke up in the morning (I set an alarm to 8.30 AM) I did not feel very well. I was sleepy and it took me a lot of time to start working. Yesterdays late working hours had a very negative effect on my productivity in the next morning. Soon I realized that if I had stopped working earlier yesterday, then I could have completed the recruitment plan in just an hour or two in the morning. So, not only was I unproductive with finishing that plan, but, by working so late, I also ruined the start of the next day

That kind of experiment proved the fact that working for more hours means less efficiency. The more you work, the more tired you will get and the less productive you will be. It means that the amount of work done per one hour will decrease. Therefore if you work three hours on top of your normal working day, you might not get the three hour’s work done. Maybe instead you will only manage to complete the amount of tasks, which under normal circumstances would take you 2 hours.

The concept is so easy and everyone knows it but we still violate it. One reason is that we are behind schedule with our work and if the deadline is the next morning then we have no choice but to work late into the night. That kind of situation is the result of poor time management. It can be avoided by better planning, delegation, working more efficiently etc. This, however, was not the case yesterday, as I was not in a hurry with that project. There were still three more days remaining until the deadline. And yet, I did not stop working at the right time.

The reason that I worked for so long was that I was too eager to carry on with my work that I did not consider that it could be very ineffective. I overestimated my abilities and did not want to waste time on that tomorrow. I wanted to spend tomorrow’s time on new tasks. As a principle I succeeded, as I did not have to work on the recruitment plan on the following day, but as a result, my productivity was low. Therefore working late last night still wasted time the following morning.

How could this have been avoided? First, if I had not decided to finish that plan yesterday, there would not even have been such a problem. It is good to remind yourself that completing a task is likely to take more time than we think. If I had kept my schedule less tight then I could have avoided working so long.

Second, I should have followed the main rules of time management. Work less, work smart is a well-proven rule and there is no need to experiment about it.

Third, at the point were I noticed I was behind my schedule I should have admitted it and made a change to my schedule and finished that task on the next day. It takes some bravery to do it, but it pays off.

And fourth, I should have simply kept in mind that I should not work at night if there is no absolute need to do that.

kristjan time management efficiency, productivity, sleep, time management, working hours