Guerrilla Warfare for Goals
Today more than ever, time is at a premium. If time were a traded commodity, it would probably trade at a million times multiple of gold or diamond. All of us have competing and unrelenting demands made on us personally, professionally and socially. With the world getting ever closer and more integrated, our ability to detach and unplug has become the number one casualty. Social media, with its constant in-your-face projections of larger-than-life experiences of families and friends, hasn’t helped. There is a pressure to match up, be happier, healthier, more successful, more travelled, more everything else. This pressure of being an ‘achiever’ impedes and intimidates many of us from taking small but firm steps towards our priorities, which, if accomplished, will help us on our cycle of growth.
New years are typically time for resolutions. But as I started down that (often precarious) road, I realized what has kept me from achieving my goals in the years (and for the better part of January 2020) that went by. It has not been a lack of intent or passion. It really has been my inability to find time for things that matter to me. I’ve been unable to consistently prioritize what’s important to me vs. where I spend my time. And this seems to be pandemic.
Traditional time management focuses on making the most of the time you already have. While this view is all encompassing, I see two challenges with it. First, the list of activities and chores (including new ones) that needs to be accomplished daily for the business of life, together with distractions such as social media, keeps expanding based on the available time. This is Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion” at work! Second, since we are trying to cram a lot in an already packed schedule, the focus we can bring to the goal at hand is limited, even if we spend the time allotted on it. This results in limited success, which then leads to a vicious cycle of deprioritizing our goals because we don’t see results.
To overcome this, it’s vital to create a guerrilla warfare technique for time management. Applied to time management, it's about stealing (or finding) pockets of time on a daily/ regular basis to achieve your specific goal(s) and priorities. Further, like guerrilla warfare, it is about fiercely protecting and sticking to the plans once made, with undivided focus on the time pockets carved out for working on your goals. Equally, being resilient to change these plans and steal (find) new pockets of time if life situations change (hopefully, not every day/week).
To illustrate the application of the guerrilla technique to time management, let’s say your goal is to write frequently.
The first step is to make the goal very SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. For instance, writing 25 blog posts a year (and not just keeping a blog), running 500 km in a year (and not running regularly), or reading 30 books in a year (and not just reading more).
The second step is about breaking your SMART goal into smaller chunks of actions/tasks/sub-goals that need to be completed within a shorter time window – typically daily/weekly (though it really varies based on the goal). In the above example of writing 25 blog posts in a year, step two can look something like posting every week, writing 500 words every day/week or spending an hour writing every week.
Step 3 is the most critical part, and something that mirrors guerrilla warfare closely. Identify small pocket(s) of time to achieve the sub-goals and tasks (defined in step 2), and stick to the plan. Ensure these pockets of time are very carefully picked (where you will have minimal distractions and competing demands) and fiercely guarded from everyone, including you. Further, it helps to define and visualize the place of action – where are you going to make this short and precise attack on the sub-goal at hand.
In the example above, let’s say that the sub-goal is to write for 5 hours every week. For some of us the time pocket could be 4am–5am/11pm–12am Monday to Friday at the writing table (or living room) before the family wakes up/after they sleep. For someone else with the same goal, these time capsules could look like 1.5 hours each at a specific coffee shop on Saturday and Sunday, and 30 minutes during lunch at the office desk on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. For another person, it could be 6–7pm, Monday–Friday in the waiting lounge of a gymnastic class you may be taking your child to.
Step 4 is about reviewing at predefined intervals, ideally at the end of time capsules, the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the warfare tactics. This is then an opportunity to continue revisiting the ‘why’ of the larger goal and how the smaller sub-goals will pave the way to it. In our example, the review can be planned weekly or fortnightly, to assess if our planned way of attacking the goal is working or not. In case it is not working it is important to –
4(a)Recognize the part of the plan that is not working for lack of effort/focus/ other events, and refocus our efforts to make it a success. OR
4(b) Be nimble enough to pivot on the tactical plan (where a change is really needed vs. making up excuses) if its effectiveness is compromised by changing life situations.
In case of 4(b), for instance, you realize that during this week there is added work (or social) commitments, which means that you can no longer leverage the earlier planned time slot of 11–12pm for writing. The first approach needs to be to accommodate the sub-goal by adjusting time slots and tactics, but if it is really required, then the sub-goal can be realigned (or reduced) for a week (the expectation is that you will make up for it next week). Assuming these are genuine priorities that cannot be postponed, you may need to pivot on the warfare expectations and tactics to be used. This could mean, say, spending 3 hours that week (vs. the 5 originally planned) and then accomplishing all of it out on a Sunday morning/night (vs. an hour every day).
I started out in January 2020, committing to writing 2 blogs a month. But sitting on the 30th day of January, I haven’t managed to post even a single piece. I am now committed to piloting this guerrilla time management technique and see how the next few months pan out. It’d be g
