Time Management Tip 1 - PUB POWER!

So surely this must be the strangest time management tip ever... Head to the pub for a pint of beer?

Let me explain...

I live and work in Birmingham and my daughters used to live in Dorset (3 hours drive). As a divorced dad, I had them every other weekend and did the driving to make it happen. So every other Friday, I would head down the M5 to Dorset, to pick them up from school.

Because I hate being late in general and because the M5 can get very snarled up with traffic, I would aim to arrive in Dorset for 12:00, which left me (on most occasions) with a 3 hour window of time.

Being keen to make good use of the time, I found a quiet pub and started taking work to do whilst I waited … and then I discovered a couple of things:

1) The quality of the work I completed in that space of time was vastly superior to anything I was doing at the office or at home. 

2) The things which I was getting bogged down in at work during the week, were resolved almost instantly, once I sat down in that pub with my pot of tea (sadly I had to pass on the beer due to the driving!).

Whether I was struggling with a task due to it's complexity, or just because I was finding it difficult to get started, it would always be sorted in that space of time and in that pub...in fact, I can say with full sincerity, that I have a 100% hit-rate of sorting things out when I am in that pub, (and as a pub, it's not even that nice, although it has a special place in my heart!).

So what was it about that pub that made such an impact on my brain power? 

Was it something in the pot of tea? 

There are a number of reasons why that space was so effective for my work:

1) The pub had no wifi, which meant no internet or email disturbance.

2) The pub had lousy signal for my phone, which meant no calls, no texts and no emails.

3) The pub was pretty dismal and so very few people would be in it, therefore there were no distractions for me from the lure of people watching.

4) My hands were free, which meant I had room to commit my thoughts to paper/laptop

5) It was a completely different space, so I was not bored of the physical space

6) The 3 hour slot left me plenty of time to get really stuck into things, so if the creative flow didn't get going immediately, it was no great problem (although I can't remember a time when the creative flow ever got blocked).

7) I felt relaxed. After a 3 hour drive, sitting down with a pot of tea was a nice thing to do and I always felt relaxed, as well as being in a good mood because I knew I would be seeing my daughters soon.

So should everyone be heading to the pub for a pot of tea or a pint of beer?

Not necessarily, but when you feel you are getting bogged down in things, or your are struggling to progress with a complicated task, it helps if you go easy on yourself and take practical steps to change the physical space, eliminate distractions and manage your state so you are relaxed.

It also helps if you can identify and utilise a thinking space of your own, where you can work through the more complex things you have to deal with and produce better quality work, more easily and more quickly.

Thanks for reading

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