3 Time Management Lessons Learnt From BNLF Suman November 17, 2015

3 Time Management Lessons Learnt From BNLF

I love attending different events because learning is everywhere. I have been to blogging event, social media weeks, TED talks and I have a couple of women entrepreneur events lined up before the year ends. It’s been an enriching experience to be a part of these events. Today I want to share time management lessons that I learnt from this blogging event called Blog Now, Live Forever (BNLF) organized by Indiblogger.

The speaker line up was impressive and had the best in their fields. A couple of them I’d like to mention for the purpose of this blog are Bruce Dickinson and Christoph
Trappe. If you look them up online, you will know that both are prolific in their work, managing a lot in their lives and yet doing all of it well. True enough, one among the audience asked Bruce – how do you find the time to do so much. Now this what all of want to know – how do some people find the time to do so much in a day? The answers weren’t evident in their talks since it was a blogging event and not a conference on time management.

bruce

Bruce Dickinson

But when I came back home and dug deeper, I realized that each of these two people had a few things in common that kept them going. They had the passion, had prioritized well and really loved what they do – to sum up in a few words. So here are a few things that I gathered about their time management secrets.

1. Passion sustains all: The passion with which Bruce talks about his journey from making great music as the singer of Iron Maiden to becoming a commercial pilot, an entrepreneur and now talking about his journey traveling across the globe – it is clear that passion is the fuel that keeps him going.

One has to certainly love what one does to be able to do that day in and day out. And you need to love all the things that you do to keep up with all of them. Since I took the November blogging challenge on my personal blog, I have realised what passion can do to consistency. Once you make that resolve to keep with things that really matter to you, it gets easier from there.

Chris

Christoph Trappe

2. Prioritize your tasks: Christoph is up at 4.45 am to make it to the gym so that he can spend the evening after office with his girls. He has typed blog posts with his phone in one hand while his baby girl slept on his other shoulder! He edits his upcoming book on flights so that he can spend time with his family once he is home. And I think this is enough evidence that one doesn’t have to sacrifice one part of life to be able to do justice to the others. Just fit them in their right slot. Easier said than done, right? But not impossible I am guessing. After all, all of us have the same 24 hours in a day. It is what we are doing with them is what is making the critical difference.

3. Plug the gaps: The top lesson I learnt from Christoph. I’d always want specific time allocated to tasks. I couldn’t do things on the move. But after the inspiring talk, I realized that there are a lot of things I can do just by plugging gaps. For instance, I woke up the morning after this event to find a blog chat happening on Twitter. Now, I had just woken up and would usually dismiss something like that for catching up with later. But this time I went to the hashtag and opened the chat. I glanced at it a few times as I brushed my teeth and made my bed. And I had done some learning through the chat without much effort! Similarly, I catch up with a couple of course videos on Cousera at the end of the day when I am too tired to do anything and not sleepy enough.

You may find 7 rules of personal productivity useful too.

While trying to do too many things at the same time can spell doom, finding your own method to the madness can do wonders. What is your style of time management? Are you a multi tasker or a single tasker? Drop me a line in the comments. I’d love you to share your experiences with the other readers.