Speaker 1: Hello there, it's Amantha. I'm currently on a Christmas break,
Speaker 1: so I've handpicked a bunch of my favorite episodes from
Speaker 1: the last year to share with you. Okay, on with
Speaker 1: today's best of episode. Are you looking for ways to
Speaker 1: save time? I mean, there are plenty of tools out
Speaker 1: there to help streamline your work processes, but how do
Speaker 1: you know which ones work best? Well? Today, I want
Speaker 1: to give you three tools so that you can find
Speaker 1: out which websites are causing you too many minutes of distraction.
Speaker 1: Learn how to batch check your emails rather than becoming
Speaker 1: a slave to the inbox, and stop using I don't
Speaker 1: have time as an excuse not to do things. My
Speaker 1: name is doctor Amantha Inba. I'm an organizational psychologist and
Speaker 1: the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is
Speaker 1: how I work a show about how to help you
Speaker 1: do your best work. If I were to ask you
Speaker 1: how you spent your time online yesterday, would you actually know?
Speaker 1: Would you know about how many minutes you spend on
Speaker 1: various sites like YouTube, Facebook, your local news website, true
Speaker 1: to collaborative websites like Google Docs. Chances are you probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't know. But self awareness is everything when it comes
Speaker 1: to managing our time. If we don't know how we
Speaker 1: are spending our time, it's really hard to know what
Speaker 1: changes that we can make to save time or use
Speaker 1: our time more wisely. So this is where Rooster comes
Speaker 1: in very handy. Rooster is a Chrome plugin which means
Speaker 1: you install it and it runs in the background of
Speaker 1: your Chrome browser and it tracks your online behavior in
Speaker 1: the background as you go about your date. So what
Speaker 1: it does it tells you spec typically how much time
Speaker 1: you're spending on every single website you visit throughout the day,
Speaker 1: and you can even set it to be the default
Speaker 1: homepage when you open up a new browser window, so
Speaker 1: that you're constantly reminded of how you were choosing to
Speaker 1: spend your time. So, for example, I'm recording this episode
Speaker 1: in the morning, and I'm looking at Rooster now and
Speaker 1: it's telling me that I haven't done much web surfing today,
Speaker 1: So it's saying I've spent fourteen minutes on Gmail, which
Speaker 1: is very unusual for me, because firstly, I don't use
Speaker 1: Gmail as my email checking software, but it was because
Speaker 1: I was programming a mail merch to go out. And
Speaker 1: I've also spent six minutes in Google Docs, which was
Speaker 1: related to that task that I was doing this morning.
Speaker 1: So I find Rooster super helpful because I think it's
Speaker 1: really easy to go down Internet black holes and be
Speaker 1: completely unaware of it. So I love anything that brings
Speaker 1: more self awareness in terms of how I'm using my time.
Speaker 1: So I strongly recommend trying out Rooster. Go to get
Speaker 1: rooster dot inn to check it out, and I also
Speaker 1: linked to that in the show notes. Now, have you
Speaker 1: ever thought to yourself, I don't have time for more
Speaker 1: things in my life? You know, it might be that
Speaker 1: you think you don't have time to take up a
Speaker 1: new hobby, or to exercise more than once or twice
Speaker 1: a week, or perhaps you feel like you're too busy
Speaker 1: to adopt a new habit that you know would be
Speaker 1: good for you, maybe like meditation for example. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing you probably do, which brings me to the
Speaker 1: second tool I want to talk about, which is Eric
Speaker 1: Rud's free Time calculator. So this comes from Eric Rud
Speaker 1: er Ic Rood, and I linked to that in the
Speaker 1: show notes. Eric has created a very cool tool that
Speaker 1: calculates and visualizes the free time that you have. So
Speaker 1: this calculator ask you to input things like how much
Speaker 1: time you spend sleeping, how much time you spend at work,
Speaker 1: how much time you spend working out, how much time
Speaker 1: you spend doing chores, eating, all those sorts of things,
Speaker 1: and then it runs an analysis and tells you how
Speaker 1: many free hours you have per week. I personally found
Speaker 1: this free time calculator really puts time in perspective and
Speaker 1: will definitely make you think twice before you say I'd
Speaker 1: like to do that, but I don't have the time.
Speaker 1: I dare say that this free time Calculator will really
Speaker 1: challenge this assumption. And I think that that's very, very useful. Okay,
Speaker 1: I want you to think about your workday yesterday, and
Speaker 1: I want to know how many times did you dip
Speaker 1: into your inbox. If you're like the average person, you
Speaker 1: would have done this every six minutes. And I think
Speaker 1: that you know that that's probably not ideal. And you know,
Speaker 1: we all know that email is highly addictive. It's designed
Speaker 1: to be that way. But if we can ditch our
Speaker 1: email addiction and batch check our email instead, whereby you
Speaker 1: only check your inbox three or four times a day,
Speaker 1: you'll be far more productive and far less reactive. And
Speaker 1: this final tool will help you do just that. It's
Speaker 1: a tool that I found out about from tech entrepreneur
Speaker 1: Ashtosh Priyadashi, who is the founder of Sansama. And this
Speaker 1: tool is an email client, which means that if you're
Speaker 1: using say Outlook or Gmail, you can actually run your
Speaker 1: email through this software and have this be the main
Speaker 1: interface that you check your email through and respond to
Speaker 1: email with. So this software is called Tempo, and what
Speaker 1: Tempo does is it actually forces batch checking of email.
Speaker 1: So the default setting in Tempo is that it only
Speaker 1: lets you receive emails two or three times a day.
Speaker 1: And I love this. I think this is a really
Speaker 1: brave choice in terms of software design, because everyone wants
Speaker 1: their software to be sticky, everyone wants you using their
Speaker 1: software as much as possible. But instead Tempo said, well,
Speaker 1: actually no, you'll be more productive if you're not constantly
Speaker 1: checking email. So look, you can override the default if
Speaker 1: you really want to. But I think that Tempo is
Speaker 1: a really interesting email software to try out. Now I
Speaker 1: must add some full disclosure here. I have not actually
Speaker 1: tried out Tempo because I am completely in love with Superhuman,
Speaker 1: another email client that I do talk about on the show. Occasionally,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I've invested so much time in
Speaker 1: learning all the shortcuts in Superhuman that it does become
Speaker 1: very quick for me. And to make sure I'm not
Speaker 1: checking it constantly, I just close the software application when
Speaker 1: I'm not using it. But I think that if you're
Speaker 1: not like me, and you're not particularly attached to the
Speaker 1: email client or email software that you're currently using, Tempo
Speaker 1: is an awesome thing to give a go to, and
Speaker 1: it might help you be more productive and tame your
Speaker 1: email addiction. So there we have it. Three things that
Speaker 1: you might want to try out today or this week
Speaker 1: to help manage your time better. Hello. There that is
Speaker 1: in for today's show. If you enjoyed today's episode, why
Speaker 1: not share it with someone else that you think would
Speaker 1: benefit and maybe get some useful tips to improve the
Speaker 1: way that they work. How I Work is produced by
Speaker 1: Inventing with production support from Dead Set Studios. And thank
Speaker 1: you to Martin Nimba who does the audio mix for
Speaker 1: every show and makes everything sound so much better than
Speaker 1: it would have otherwise. See you next time.