Jedi Techniques: How to Conserve Thought Fuel at Work and in Everyday Life

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

If you are upset by the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day, the problem is not lack of time. You are using your mind irrationally. Maxim Dorofeev in his book "Jedi Techniques" explains in an accessible way how our thinking works and how this knowledge will help to efficiently use the resources of our brain.

What is thought fuel

Those involved in mental work are familiar with the constant ups and downs in productivity. Sometimes the work does not progress a step for a couple of days, and then a complex project is completed in a few hours.

We very often think that we do not have enough time, while in reality we are limited by thought-fuel. Maxim Dorofeev "Jedi Techniques"

Maxim Dorofeev calls a certain reserve of mental strength as thought-fuel, which helps us to remain rational and collected. When thought fuel runs out, we become impulsive and instead of work we do all sorts of nonsense: we look out the window or at the cats on Facebook.

How it relates to Jedi techniques

Jedi Techniques is a collection of proven techniques for conserving thought fuel.

You waste most of this resource and don't even notice when it happened. But you feel unpleasant consequences: you can hardly sit at work until the end of the working day, you understand what needs to be done, but you have no idea how, you feel tired and useless.

Maxim Dorofeev studied the literature on personal effectiveness for a long time, scientific research concerning our thinking and memory. This knowledge allowed him to develop a system that at one time helped him to save himself from overloads.

In fact, this is a combination of well-known personal efficiency systems: David Allen's GTD, Michael Linenberger's MYN, Stephen Covey's seven skills, Greg McKeon's essentialism, Gleb Arkhangelsky's time management elements and others. Only with an emphasis on practice, set out as accessible as possible and with detailed instructions on how to implement them in your life.

What to do

To save thought-fuel and use it when it is especially important - in incomprehensible situations.

The first universal rule, it is advice for all times: in any incomprehensible situation - think. Maxim Dorofeev "Jedi Techniques"

Of course, there are a lot of situations when it is necessary to turn on the brain. Therefore, for thinking over everything and all thought-fuel may not be enough. But you can help your brain by knowing one of its peculiarities: it loves everything that is simple and understandable.

If you set yourself the difficult task "Make an important project", then you will not last long. And go where everything is simple and clear (yes, to cats and entertainment). But if you give your brain simpler tasks ("Make a project plan", "Draw a draft layout", "Make a presentation plan", "Make the first slide with a title"), then it will start working, and in a few approaches an important project will be completed.

This is just one of the techniques for saving thought fuel. In "Jedi Techniques", more than a dozen of these techniques are considered.

What are the techniques for saving mental resources

It is they who are hiding under the Jedi techniques - the practices that will help save thought fuel and perfectly cope with their daily duties. Here are some helpful things to do on a regular basis to be more productive.

1. Recover regularly

You cannot constantly act to the limit of your capabilities: this is a direct road to burnout.

Dorofeev cites Nassim Taleb's theory of antifragility. Man is a perfect example of an antifragile system. Something fragile under the influence of stress breaks down, while something antifragile becomes better than before.

The example with training is illustrative. Imagine that you are running 1 km and exhale. During rest, you feel your legs ache and your body aches. But at the next workout, it will be easier for you, and after a couple more you can run 2 km. You have adapted. The same thing happens with a person in stressful situations.

But here's the most important point: Without rest, you won't get better, but break. Development takes place precisely at the point of rest. Therefore, after every difficult task, after every working day, week, month, give yourself time to calmly exhale and relax.

2. Clean the inboxes

Deal with everyone in your life. Get organized in notebooks, diaries, note books, lists of emails, unclosed tabs in the browser, documents on the desktop.

Dorofeev calls the work with inboxes a digestion stage. You don't need to rush to do all the things that you find in the diaries right away, or answer a dozen letters. Process them: carefully review and mentally decide for yourself what to do with them. Highlight the main thing and get rid of all unnecessary things.

3. Formulate tasks correctly

You've probably already heard about the Zeigarnik effect: unfinished business is better remembered and constantly spinning in your head, thereby taking away the thought-fuel from you.

To stop the unfinished business from bothering you, draw up an implementation plan. Not even a whole plan is enough, but a couple of steps. One thing: formulate the steps correctly. Don't just write “Meet Monday” or “Call” on your to-do list.

• The problem statement is the answer to the question "What needs to be done?"
• The wording must begin with an indefinite verb.
• The task should be chewed up to the smallest detail.
• The task should represent the first step towards the goal.

Going back to our example, the "Meeting on Monday" task should become several small tasks:

• Record information in the calendar and set a reminder.
• Meet with an ad agency representative in the office on Monday at 4:00 pm.
• To say that we did not like the first version of the advertising campaign.
• List the shortcomings.

4. Use external storage

You must have a backup of your brain. That is, all information about meetings, tasks, projects and personal affairs should be stored somewhere else. Typically, external storage should have four components.

1. Task list. Use the simplest possible list for personal and business matters - no hierarchy, priorities, and no specific dates. Just write down everything you need to do, review it regularly and add new tasks. When you need it, just open it, watch for 3-5 seconds and decide what to do right now.
2. List of projects. This is a list of big things that you haven't finished yet. The ideal option is to use a program where you can both keep a list of tasks and attach tasks to large projects. This makes it easier to track your progress and add new steps.
3. Calendar. If you usually have no more than 1-2 meetings a week, then you don't need a calendar - the list of tasks is enough. Otherwise, write down all appointments in the calendar and set reminders to be sure.
4. Reference information storage system. Do not seek to find the only application for a smartphone, where it is equally convenient to keep a list of books, save interesting links and store receipts for housing and utilities payments. Think over several archives suitable for your purposes, where you will put everything you need and interesting. But do not forget that all information has an expiration date, so you need to regularly review your halls of mind and clean out everything that has lost relevance from there.

5. Review the system regularly

In order for the work to proceed efficiently and without interruptions, it is necessary to check from time to time whether everything is in order with it. To do this, Maxim Dorofeev advises to conduct regular reviews.

• Weekly review. Even a cursory and quick overview is better than a thoughtless approach or nothing at all. Spend 5 minutes a week and check the to-do list, correct the wording, delete the excess and add a new one.
• Daily review. At the end of the day, look at the tasks completed in the day. Consider whether you need to make an addition (for example, reformulate the task "Ask the designer to make a layout" in "Remind the designer about the layout"). And then move on to the unfulfilled ones and think about what to do with them tomorrow, a week or a month later.
• Spontaneous review. When you have free time, but for some reason you do not want to start a big business, conduct a quick review of the system. Take care of your to-do list.

6. Reduce harmful switching

To get back to business after a small switch or distraction, you have to spend additional thought fuel. The main enemy is in your pocket - your smartphone, which constantly receives new notifications.

Turn off notifications from apps and web services. Leave only alerts from people whose messages really require an immediate response. Experience suggests that e-mail contacts are also not such and do not require an immediate response.

Process all incoming messages asynchronously. This means that the message arrives in a special drive, and you refer to this drive at the moment when you are personally ready for it.

7. Use the "closet - balcony - summer cottage" method

In addition to tasks and projects, sometimes we have to work with another entity - an idea.

An idea is something that may come in handy for something someday. But we do not know when, for what and in what form it will be useful, and whether it will be useful at all. Maxim Dorofeev "Jedi Techniques"

I don’t want to lose it, so just in case we need to keep it. And here it is better to apply the same system as with material objects. We put everything that we use often in the closet. When there are too many things, some of them are sent to the balcony. When there are too many things on the balcony that we do not use, they are taken to the dacha once a year.

When you have too many ideas that you still have no idea how to implement, start three storages and look at them with different frequency: look in the "closet" once a week, on the "balcony" - once a month, and at the "dacha" - a couple of times a year.

Will it turn us into biorobots

Dorofeev admits that often in his speeches he hears questions like "Will I turn into a biorobot when everything is laid out on the shelves and all tasks are clearly formulated and doable without much brain effort?" Allegedly, in such a system, there is absolutely no room for creative impulses.

But if you scrutinize the system, you will be sure that the Jedi techniques are aimed at the opposite: you get creative with the list of tasks and turn on your head. You have the confidence that nothing important will be lost. From the to-do list, you can always choose what you want to do at the moment.

And most importantly, you always have an understanding of the consequences: what will happen if you do not do an important thing now, but spontaneously do something meaningless.

How long does it take to follow these rules?

It is necessary to conduct a daily review (three to five minutes a day), a weekly review (15–20 minutes a week), correctly formulate tasks in the list (additional 10–20 seconds per task) - this can run up to an hour a week. Maxim Dorofeev "Jedi Techniques"

Not critical, agree. But the benefits are obvious. In addition, do not forget that our efforts are not aimed at saving time (you have the same amount of time as the rest), but at caring for your mind.

If during work you are constantly distracted by checking your mail, forget about your promises, complain about lack of time, accuse yourself of laziness - it's time for you to switch to the bright side of productivity. Maxim Dorofeev's book is one of the best publications in order not only to learn about effective techniques, but also to really learn how to apply them in practice.