Focusing is about saying no. And you’ve got to say no, no, no. When you say no, you piss off people. –Steve Jobs

From Randy Pausch‘s time management lecture, via Warren:

Verbs are important: You do not FIND time for important things, you MAKE it. And you make time by electing not to do something else. There’s a term from economics that everybody should hold near and dear to their heart, and that term is “opportunity cost”. The bad thing about doing something that isn’t very valuable is not that it’s a bad thing to have done it. The problem is that once you spent an hour doing it, that’s an hour you can never again spend in any other way. And that’s important.

When can we say yes?

Everybody has good and bad times. The big thing about time management is, find your creative time and defend it ruthlessly. Spend it alone, maybe at home if you have to. But defend it ruthlessly. The other thing is, find your dead time. Schedule meetings, phone calls, exercise, mundane stuff, but do stuff during that where you don’t need to be at your best.

According to Github, my dead time is from 5am to 8am. If you need anything from me, schedule it during those times :). Any other time, I’m probably coding.

See Also:
Randy Pausch – Time Management — University of Virginia, November 2007