Time Management Guide (from Tu Junjie & Jian Fei)

🛠 Tools and Programming
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A tutorial on relative systems, shared with comrades interested in quantitative time management
剑飞
涂俊杰

Jianfei’s post is from seven years ago, and the description of tools is outdated, but the concept feels good. I personally recommend the tool Toggl Track.

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After watching “A Wonderful Life,” I kept track for two years (on iOS, you can use the TimeBlocks app; it’s convenient and easy to use). Later, I realized that the record-keeping wasn’t the main point—the key was learning to perceive the passage of time through this method.

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You reminded me, I went to read “A Wonderful Life” by Gaoben.

However, I think “learning to perceive the passage of time” is one of the key points of meaning, but not all of it. Here are my notes:

Tutorial Excerpt: The Meaning of Time Tracking

Meaning

“Know yourself,” “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”

  • Distribution of sleep time
  • What are you doing during entertainment time
  • Within the 7*24 hours, what are you doing besides attending classes
  • How much time each task actually takes / can be allotted

Align thoughts and actions

  • Instantly discover mismatches between the two: You say you want to pursue a clinical path, but how much time do you actually spend on clinical work?
    • Metrics can be quantified

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  1. Have a “long-distance runner’s mindset,” not only living in the moment but also focusing on the future
  2. Establish order in life, enhance the sense of control, reduce anxiety and chaos
  3. Discover your interests through real data
  4. “See” your growth and changes
  5. Cultivate your patience and experience the power of constant effort wearing down resistance

Judging and Improving the Feasibility of Goals

Because when we “hope to achieve a goal,” most of the time it is imagined out of thin air, without any historical data to support whether this goal is reasonable or how likely it is to be achieved. Time tracking can help us find out the “real time consumption,” help us understand ourselves, and proactively control the flow of time to complete goals more effectively.

Sharpening the Perception of Time

  • Even now, I may be completely unaware of some time-consuming things hidden behind the filled Toggl timeline… or not sufficiently detailed or comprehensive to be noticed and changed

I often ask “Where did the time go?”—within various cycles

Semester, week, facing each frustrating unfinished project

Discover Your Potential, Make Correct Attributions

You will find from data that your various excuses no longer hold up, for example, self-comforting by saying “I’ve been too busy recently, no time to exercise,” but time analysis shows you still have more than 2 hours daily, which you instead use for binge-watching;

Understand Phenomena With Minimal Errors

The Foundation of Rational Planning (Thinking about How to Change)—Accurately Understand the Current Situation

Once you record time, you actually record your current state

Looking back a few years ago, when I suddenly realized time was passing day by day, and I was grasping nothing, I eagerly wanted to change, but didn’t even know where to start, so I tried recording time to first find out where the problem was.

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I recently started using this method again, will share it in a few days.