During my time studying I have experienced problems with planning my studies in a specific course, and have thus not been able to reach the goals that I sat up for myself.

The cause is that I have never been able to get an overview of the work load that I have had and therefore never been able to estimate how much time I needed to study and how I should allocate my time for the various courses.

With lean thinking (jit and jidoka), I have been able to create a visual overview of my studies and with thus been able to estimate how much time I need to spend on each of the courses to be able to reach the goal that I have set up for each course.

If you want inspiration to try to create something similar for the planning of you studies, you can take a look at my planning table. It is in Swedish [apologies for my English speaking readers] but I think you will understand the concept.

Today I had not managed to complete all my tasks when the end of the day came closer. I knew that I could have got more things done, therefore I decided not to let myself go to bed without finishing my tasks. As I was working hard to reach my goals for the day a friend of mine called and asked if I wanted to meet him. Without any consideration I said yes. However, after the call I realized that my intention with this project is to be efficient and since I had not reached my intention with the day I knew I had to re-consider my answer. I told my friend that I had a lot of school work to do and that we had to meet another day, he completely understood my situation so there were no hard feelings. The effect of my decision was that I managed to complete all of my goals for the day, thus giving me a good conscience.

In order to be efficient and productive it is vital that you comprehend what you must do, hence being capable of prioritizing.  By having a plan for each day you know what you must do and therefore it becomes much easier to keep to the important duties.

I often find myself complaining that I don’t have enough time, money or knowledge to be able to accomplish something that I have encountered or want to take on. This puts me in a negative state of mind and then makes it even harder to embrace the take.

But when I think about the amazing things that some people have accomplish I realized that when we really want something and go fore it, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish. When we have resourcefulness in mind we find and create the resources we need to accomplish what we want.

The learning point to take from this is that you should never focus on what resources you need to accomplish a certain task. That is contra-productive since it puts you in a “what do I need-state of mind”. Instead you should focus on what you want, because when you know what that is it puts you in a how “state of mind” and that gives you creative power and resourcefulness which is the only thing you really need to take on a task and accomplish it. Knowing what you want is the key to completing and succeeding (se article 2#).

Today I received disappointing results on an exam that I took recently. I study and run a company full time since the end of 2010 and have the ambition to manage both. During the last period I focused only on my company and did not put of much time for my studies, which resulted in me performing bad on one of my exams.

When I received the result that differed from my goals I immediately came in to a negative “state of mind”, that made me question my capability. When in this negative state of mind I am not able to be productive since my head is full of negative thoughts instead of on my tasks.

The learning point is that when you set up goals that are unrealistic or don’t devote enough time to for fill the goals. You will eventually become disappointed and go in to a negative state of mind which will decrease your state of efficiency.

This can be avoided by being proactive and putting up realistic goals which you follow up and put of time to for fill so that you reach the goals that you have put up and feel good about your performance. This will put you in a better state of mind and increase you state of efficiency.

A classic question is: “if you could chose one superpower which one would you chose”. Most people answer that they would want to be able to fly or that they would want to know all there is to know. But given that we have one life and that the best we can do with it, is to enjoy it as much as we can and make the best of it, I think that the best superpower one could have is to know exactly what you want.

People often complain that they can’t focus, that the task is to hard or that they are not motivated. But I believe that it is not the task it self that is the problem rather it is the person’s belief in the task and its purpose. As long as we really want something and recognize it, there is nothing that stands in are way or is to hard. The general problem is that we often make decisions and take action based on what other people or the society thinks is right or desirable.

The learning point I take from this is that the best thing we can do in all areas do become efficient is to really listen to ourselves and our gut feeling, because it is in the gut we tell ourselves what we want and it is only in the direction of what we want we can be truly efficient. So if there was an efficiency superpower it would be to know what we want because when we do, we can go 100% all in and then there is nothing that we can’t accomplish.