A lot of people I know and come into contact with on a daily basis have no form of time management system. For them, the age old system of maintaining a hazy list of things to do in their head and trying to complete the list as best they can is the only way to it. While this might work for someone's slow, lazy day, it can become a dangerous, time wasting behavior when things really need done. Trying to recall everything that needs done every day and re-remembering what has already been done takes a lot of unnecessary time! It's hard to remember everything about as many as 20 different things you need to do. Do you remember exactly what you were doing five, ten, or twenty hours ago? Can you list off everything you've gotten don in the last ten hours? It's tough! Even if you have a strong hold on that information, you're mind will still spend precious hours of time subconsciously wrestling with the list, going over it time and time again, making sure you know what has and hasn't been done, trying to think of every little thing that needs to be done that you might have forgotten, or everything little thing that you thought of before but have now forgotten, or…!
How can you concentrate and get anything done with THAT going on in your head?
The worst part of it all is that at the end of the day, when you probably didn't get every item on your list complete, you review all of the things that should have been done and you realize that you totally spaced out on the single most important item for the whole day! Feel like you can trust your brain now? This self-destructive behavior gets worse and worse as you advance in life - when there's more to think about and manage and when you have more and more lists to manage.
Fortunately, it's a pretty simple fix that take only a little time at the beginning of the day or the night before - organizing a physical task list and then writing a schedule for the day, and it can work for anyone! By doing these two things, you move the list of items in your head to a place that is safe and concrete, where you won't lose anything, and where everything is organized by what it is, how important it is, and exactly when it will be done.
The Task List
The Task Lists holds everything you have to do, no matter if it's a small item like getting the mail, a fun, leisurely item like going to a party, or a classic 'to-do' list item like studying for a test, going to a meeting, or writing a presentation. The first and only rule of the task list is that everything you have to complete, plan to complete, and want to complete today needs to be on the list.
The task list is not a collection of only school items or only work items; it includes these and house items, fun items, little five-second items, and everything in between. Everything goes on the list because everything takes up your time and is a part of your life. While not all of that content is equally important, it all has to fit together in some way because ideally, we would all like to get all of those items done today. The only things that don't go on my task list for the day that I eventually do are things that are standard parts of the day, like meals.
You can store the task list anywhere you'd like. It can be on the computer, on a piece of paper, in a planner, on a calendar, or anywhere else where you can visibly look at it and read what needs to be done in simple list form. I personally use a simple to-do list application on my phone which displays a basic list of tasks that are sorted and organized by date and priority. This is also where I put all of my appointments and notes and reminders for later on - I simply make an item for each thing. Ultimately, as I collect items that need doing, they form my task list for that day - everything that will and/or needs to be done for the day. There a few different types of items:
Mandatory Items
These need to be done, and these need to be done today. Mandatory items include meetings, appointments, tasks with due dates, etc. These are set in stone for the day. There are typically two types of these: items that are going to happen at certain times, like meetings and appointments, and items that can be done essentially anytime today, as long as it's today. These are the simplest items on the list because they are all a matter of basic completion. There aren't any options.
Project Related Items
Often there are projects you are working on that don't need done, but need progress made on them. In these situations, plan on what amount of the project you plan on getting done on that same day - don't plan out too far because things might change. Once you know how much you want done or how long you want to work on the project, these items are just like any other item on the list. Items like these are of slightly less priority than true mandatory items because you could put off some of that work until later, but they need to be generally held in the same standard as the rest of your items unless you absolutely cannot get them done because of other more mandatory items on the list. You might want to approach a project in one of two ways - by completing specific parts of the project or setting aside a specific amount of time to make as much progress as possible. Either method is fine; scheduling time blocks will be addressed later on.
Fun/Recreation
Because our goal is to get everything we want done today done, specific fun and recreational items need to be on your list. I'm not taking about vague, do-whatever-you-want sorts of things, but social gatherings, you favorite hobbies, and similar items, and these should be on your list. While it's not as important to schedule these, it's helpful to do this because like every other item, knowing when they will be done and if they will be done is important for getting them out of your head and organized. These are probably of less importance then most other tasks, but if they're on the list, you still want to get them done, which can be arranged. Listing also saves time on these items - call me crazy for saying it, but you can play very efficiently and productively too and it has the same benefits that standard work has.
Small Items
Lastly there will be a few items on your list that are of almost no importance at all but still need to get done, like taking the trash out. These still need to be on the list because they still need doing, but they will be of minimal priority. Basically, they take very little time and effort.
At the beginning of the day, look around you, and pull together your complete list of items that you plan on completing today. Think about which type of items each of them are.
Prioritizing
At this point, you probably have a decent list of things to do for the day! How does it feel to know exactly what needs done? It's all right in front of you and ready to be completed. All you have to do now is just that - complete the list. The first step of completing everything is prioritizing everything - if there are more tasks on your list then time in your day, you're going to want to get as much of the important stuff done as possible. Depending on what you have to get done, there are plenty of different ways to prioritize, but overall, it's most effective to follow two rules:
1) Start with the most important and most unappealing items first, then complete the rest in order of descending importance and/or ascending appeal so your last tasks are not very important and/or much more appealing.
2) Block together similar tasks for time saving.
The first rule might seem painful and unappealing, but it will really help - trust me. By starting with what's most important, you are most effective. Almost everything on your list can be divided into three categories:
1) Things that are mandatory for today.
2) Things that you would really like to get done today or that should get done.
3) Things that really don't have to get done, but you would like them to.
By prioritizing, if you don't get everything done you will have allocated your resources as efficiently as possible because you will have gotten as much important stuff done as you could have. This also makes it easier to relax as you get more done - you'll have the most important stuff done already. If you complete everything in the opposite order, that most important item on your list would haunt and stress you out all day until the end when you finally got it done, and this also leads to the possibility that it doesn't get done at all. Along with this, starting with unappealing work has the same effect - you won't have to think about those things later in the day, and the work will become easier over time because it is easier work and because you have gotten the harder work out of the way.
The Second rule makes things easier - if you have 3 different email related items to take care of, it will be more economical to get them all done at once. This works with any similar items on your list. By organizing your time this way, you spend less time switching tasks, saving time and energy and maintaining better overall focus.
These two rules optimize your energy, drive, and focus: you handle the hardest, worst tasks first, and as the day progresses things become easier, more appealing, and less stressful as you lose your energy, drive, and focus. This also sets a great tone for the rest of the day. If you can get the worst thing done, then everything is downhill from there.
Now we're done, right? We have a complete list of things to do and know what to do first!
WRONG.
While you have made good progress and will work much better than if you didn't have a prioritized list, there's still one major step that will really energize your productivity. This is where a lot of people stop when they're trying to productive, and while it's better than nothing, it's not the best they can do.
The Schedule
The key element that I have mentioned a good deal so far is the schedule. The schedule is an organized listing of all of the time in the day and when you will complete every task. Think of a itinerary of the day that has meetings, appointments, and blocks of free work time. There is to some degree information on what you should and will be doing at every point of the day. This is what the schedule is, except it's much more rigorous and detailed than a few meetings and blocks of work time in a day: it includes every single task from your list, showing exactly when and for how long you work on every task.
Like the list, you can put the schedule really any place where you can look at it and review it. Make sure it's accessible because you'll probably need to look at it throughout the day. I use a note taking program online called Evernote, which essentially acts as a basic text editor. This way, I can look at my schedule on my phone as well, a very nice bonus, but you can use paper or anything else for the schedule.
For each item of the list, you will have to group tasks, prioritize, determine how long each item will take to be completed, and put them all together on the schedule. I'll walk through this process for a very simple schedule you might have for the day: imagine you've got a busy Saturday of household chores to complete. Right now, it's a little before 8 o'clock. Maybe that's really early for you, but just go with me on this: I'm a morning person who gets up at 5:30 or 6 seven days a week and yes I'm crazy.
You need to get these things done today:
Go to the Grocery Store
Mow the Lawn
Pay Bills/Update Finances
Catch Up On Email
Watch an Afternoon Baseball Game
Clean up the Garage
Go out to Dinner with your Family
This is everything you have to do today. First, Prioritize your list be going through the entire list each time and looking for the next most important item:
Go out to Dinner with your Family - this will be happening - there's no question about it. Priority: 1.
Grocery Store - this HAS to get done. Priority: 2.
Mow Lawn - this also needs to get done. Priority: 3.
Catch Up On Email - this needs to be done today. Priority: 4.
Pay Bills/Update Finances - can wait but should be done today. Priority: 5.
Clean up the Garage - this is an ongoing project. Priority: 6.
Watch an Afternoon Baseball Game - this doesn't need to be done, but it would be great to do it. It's the lowest priority. Priority: 7.
If items are of similar priority, don't worry about what order you do them in. If you can, apply rule 2, or place then in any arbitrary order. Also see how long it will take to get it done; you might want to shift it around so everything fits right.
Next, it's time to schedule your tasks. Determine how long each item will take and notice any time restraints The most important part of this entire process is correctly estimating how long each task will take. Be cool and calculating towards each, and make sure you are factoring all the time necessary - from the end of one task to the time you'll be ready to do the next. For example, make sure when you consider the trip to the grocery store that you are thinking of it as the time between when you leave the house until when your are back and the groceries are completely put away. Also, make sure you think of these times like you are working in a focused, driven manner - as fast as you expect you should be able to get these done if you are aren't getting distracted. Set times as if you are preparing to complete your work in a perfect manner.
1) Dinner with Family - 1.5 Hours between leaving and arriving back home. Reservations are at 6 PM and you will need to leave 15 minutes before.
2) Grocery Story - one hour
3) Mow Lawn - 45 minutes
4) Catch up on Email - 30 minutes
5) Pay Bills/Update Finances - 40 minutes
6) Clean garage - because you don't know how much you can get done but you want to make progress, set an amount of time you want to work on it. Today, shoot for one hour.
7) Baseball Game - about 3 hours, to be safe. It's on at 1 PM.
Now, schedule it all. Make sure to plan around items that are locked into a certain time. Also, plan in routine things like meals, even if they aren't on the list. When I make my schedule it includes everything I will do from now until I go to bed. First priority: dinner, but we can't do it now, so it will sit in it's appointed time. Make sure to add any time in there for preparation:
5:30 Prepare for dinner
5:45 Leave For dinner
7:15 Get back from dinner (something else will be set at this time later.)
Next priority is the Grocery Store. It will take 1 Hour and we are starting at 8:
8:00 Grocery Store
(Dinner)
Next is Mowing the Lawn. It will take 45 minutes, and because the grocery store took an hour, we will start at 9:
8:00 Grocery Store
9:00 Mow Lawn
(Dinner)
Next is Catching up on email, followed by paying bills and then cleaning garage. Mowing the lawn will take 45 minutes, email will take 30 minutes, and paying bills will take 40 minutes:
8:00 Grocery Store
9:00 Mow Lawn
9:45 Email
10:15 Pay Bills
10:55 Clean Garage
(Dinner)
At this point, you only have the baseball game and dinner left! It's also about time for lunch, so you should schedule this and the rest of the items.
8:00 Grocery Store
9:00 Mow Lawn
9:45 Email
10:15 Pay Bills
10:55 Clean Garage
11:55 Lunch
12:25 Free Time
2:00 Baseball Game
5:00 (When the game gets over) Free Time
5:30 Prepare for dinner
5:45 Leave For dinner
7:15 Free Time
As you can see, because you got all of your tasks done back-to-back, you have opened up some free time for the day! Do whatever you want in those time periods - you've earned it!
And there you have it - a complete layout of your entire day. You know how much work will be done, if anything won't get done, and what you'll be doing at every point of the day. The question is, what's the point? The point is the pressure of the schedule to keep you on schedule so you get as much done as possible and you can maximize your free time. When we work, if there is no apparent deadline other than the end of the day, there is nothing keeping us from allowing our distractions take hold and slow down our work. When you have to get one thing done today, it could be done in one hour if you're focused and determined or five hours is you slowly complete it, buying into distractions.
Another objective of using the schedule is to completely separate free/down time from work. By doing this, your brain has less to do when switching tasks because other than when you get every work item done, it's going to be in work mode for one part of the day and relax/fun mode for the second part of the day. You won't have to switch back and forth between higher and lower levels of brain function, and you also won't waste your free time doing pointless things to procrastinate from your work. Ask yourself - do you have more fun when you're feeding distractions in the middle of work, or when everything's done and you can do anything you want? The free time after work is done is much more fulfilling.
Not separating these two is a problem because it A) wastes time during work, B) eats up any completely free time you might have if you finish everything early, and C) doesn't allow you to complete more things with any of that extra time. If there are 14 hours left in your day before you start, you could either have 13 hours of freedom or 9 hours of freedom. Which sounds better and more efficient? When you don't commit to a set time your tasks take any potential extra time at the end and starts wastefully spreading it among all of your daily tasks. In the case of the example schedule, most of those items would have probably still gotten done, but there wouldn't have been the completely open blocks of time before and after the ball game or after dinner (if you were still committed to getting everything done). Either way, you would have either had less free time or you would have gotten less done.
You could calculate how much free time you might have in a day and put it at the beginning of the day or intermix it with work, but this will yield you two problems: first, you won't enjoy the free time as much because you have work that still needs to be done and that still sits around in your head, and second, after free time and relaxation you might not be in the ideal mood to get back to work in a forceful, driven manner.
Possible Issues with the Schedule
There are still some possible problems that might arise when you commit most of your time to very specific tasks:
Items with Unknown Time
Say you have a project you are working on and to move on to the next step, you need to get an email back from someone. The next step needs to be done today, but you don't know when you can begin. In this situation, guess as best you can as to when the email will come in and when you can start, and then place it on your schedule. When the time rolls along, either you can use that specifically blocked out time to complete that item if the email came through before, or, if it comes later than you expect, shift your schedule so you complete the items after it until it comes in. It's not a big deal if you have to shift around the order of your work a little bit, as long as the time is blocked out and you are prepared to move some things around.
Unexpected Items
Unexpected items come up every day, and it depends on what they are for you to handle them. If an unexpected item can be put off until later, this is your first and best option. If its needs to happen now, or possibly at a certain time later in the day, shift your schedule to make up for it - just make sure you are blocking out that time so none of your other items suffer. It's always a little rough adjusting to any changes in the schedule, but it's well worth it because it means that you are ensuring that everything will still get done - you are maintaining the same piece of mind you acquired when you wrote the original schedule for the day.
Getting Behind
If it's time to move on and you're still working, examine what you're working on. If it's something that can wait, stop what you're doing and move on according to schedule. I would suggest only doing this if you don't have to go back to it later in the day. If it's something that really needs to get done or you don't want to stop, go ahead and finish it and then shift your schedule accordingly. If it has to be done today and there is no additional room on the schedule, start examining your schedule to see where you can make up time and do it the best you can. Look for items you can do faster, items you can delegate to others, items that can wait, and items that flat out don't need to be done. The first couple of times you write a schedule for the day you could very easily make an estimation mistake, but after some practice you will eventually be able to accurately estimate how long everything takes.
Getting Ahead
If you're lucky, you might even get ahead of the schedule! This often happens to me when I start early in the day and get into a good working routine - I end up doing things quicker then scheduled. If this happens, move right on to the next item. You want to move every bit of free time to the end.
And that's it! You know exactly what you need to do, you know exactly when it will get done, and you won't be nearly as inclined to get distracted because you have a time deadline for every item and the knowledge that you might have a block of completely free time later in the day. Everything is out of your head and planned out, and you can go about focusing on what needs done in a productive way. There are a lot more elements to the whole concept of productive working, but this is a great starting spot because it gives you a complete template for what to do. It gives you an complete objective view of your day, making work easy!
Now it's your turn - considering you've made it all the way through this massive article, you probably haven't given up on the possibilities of these techniques, so try this out for yourself! You might not have the perfect day when you use these the first time, but it should be a major improvement if you don't have a time management system in the first place. Try it out, and let me know how it goes in the comments. Good luck!
Awesome advice!
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