A lot of you are working hard to get a promotion, or are gathering experience so you can finally apply for your dream job. Yet, not getting that promotion or a new job wouldn’t be the end of the world for most people… But do you know what would be a terrible scenario that is hard to overcome?
Imagine; you finally get that dream job of yours… and then fail at it, because you are simply overwhelmed.
Even if you are doing just fine right now, you should question the way you use your time. Are you spending your time wisely? Is there enough room for extra responsibilities? What about additional education?
Let’s find out what you can do to literally create time and be prepared for anything.
Unless you’ve been living in an old fashion hunter-gatherer society, you are probably bombarded with more tasks than you feel you are able to handle. But, where do all these tasks come from?
Well, usually tasks are grouped into two categories: your everyday tasks for your job, and, your private todos and appointments; family and friend’s requests, and so on... Tasks are coming from all kinds of directions.
Being able to categorize and label your tasks creates a little problem in itself- we tend to differentiate between them and almost feel urged to use different ways of organizing them. This is one major problem with most of the tips, tricks, and hacks you find online. They target either your private life or your work life but almost never both.
Here is a little example:
Using different systems is kind of ridiculous in my opinion. Either a system is good and works, then it should work for all kinds of categories, or the system is not good and doesn’t work, and therefore should not be used.
Why is it so important to have the same system and only one schedule? I’ve seen it time and time again, and maybe you can relate to it- students and young professionals start new jobs without any task management system whatsoever. At their workplace, you can find a mix of post-it notes, next to an open notebook with something scribbled inside. When you look further there are digital post-its on the screen and somewhere, I’m sure, is a notepad, OneNote, or google doc open with even more tasks collected.
Now, while that might work in the beginning, especially if you have an easygoing private life (or no private life at all - that helps), it’s definitely not a long-term strategy. Over time people develop some kind of system for their job, at least most of them. Not many however have the same kind of discipline in their private life- which makes it easy for your brain to focus on clearly visible work topics, and you tend to overwork and end up neglecting your private life.1
Even though that is the case with the majority of people, everyone talks about the importance of work-life balance. Success at work, however, should not lead to a lesser quality of your private life… when done right, it should be quite the opposite.
What can be done to prevent these scenarios? Well, the answer is actually pretty simple…
but first, we have to look at one more thing, because, we can't talk about task management without mentioning ‘Parkinson’s law’. I’m sure most of you have heard about it in some form or the other:
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”
In other words: if you are not aware of all the tasks ahead of you, you might spend way too much time completing the one in front of you.
Do you know what is better than perfect? DONE. Get it done and move on, don’t overthink and perfect every little task. On top of that, if you didn’t schedule specific times for your tasks, you might spend hours on the wrong tasks, and suddenly drown in tasks you weren’t aware of: The classic case of “putting out fires”, has begun.
How do we prevent all of that from happening?
Easy. You don’t need the latest trick, the newest hack, or the most ingenious tip... the need for an effective task management system is an old one, so in turn, there must be an old and reliable solution for it, right? That’s exactly the case.
You might have even heard about it… because apparently, Eisenhower used the same method. Now, you can say many things about Eisenhower (or politicians in general), but I think we can agree, that he, in particular, got a lot of stuff done.
So there it is. When used correctly, this is the one and only system you will ever need to handle all your tasks. If you are working a more classic 9-5 job you can definitely have two of them, one for work and one for private assignments, but not more than that. If you are freelancing or self-employed, I encourage you to try to use only one for everything. There simply is a charm to having all your tasks in one place, where they are comparable to each other… but, I’m skipping ahead.
How do you get started?
Take a piece of paper (it doesn’t have to be paper. it can easily be a chalkboard, a whiteboard, or even your fridge or wall…). Mark the four quadrants, and label them accordingly. Collect all your upcoming tasks, and write them on post-its, magnets, pieces of paper, or anything that is movable. Great, now, sort them into the four quadrants regarding their urgency and importance (A little guidance from me: if something is due in more than three days, let’s think of it as ‘not urgent’.)
If you want to get the most out of this, go ahead and do it now.
I’ll wait here, I promise.
Done?… Are you sure?
Alright, then pat yourself on the back, because I have seen people struggling with this task more than once. Why? Because we didn’t talk about how to know if something is important to you or not. If you are one of them, then maybe think about a one-on-one coaching session with me, where I’ll walk you through the process, using your own tasks.
You might think, that getting a special birthday card for your best friend is important to you. (Of course, you only forgot about it the last time, because you didn’t have a better system… and you were just too busy.) Well, sure you can keep lying to yourself, or, you can take a minute to reflect and get a clear understanding of what ‘important’ really means to you.
Maybe sending a birthday card is not as important to you as delivering your work on time and in exceeding quality. No judgment on my part! I think you have every reason to decide that way. What I am trying to convey with my little made-up story here, is that not all your ‘shortcomings’ can, and will, be solved with a better system. Maybe, you need to get a better understanding of your own values.
What is it, that you value in your life?
The answer, of course, is very hard to define and is different for every one of us… which is exactly the reason why there is no “one fits all” prioritization method.
However, let’s assume you found a way to differentiate the important from the non-important tasks. Every task that you sorted as ‘important’ should be in there for a reason. Are you sure that this is the case? If I would come to your house right now and randomly pick a task, could you give me an answer as to why this one is important to you? The reason I’m so relentless about this, is, that sometimes we feel that something is important, but we can’t explain why. We mix up urgency with importance.
So how should you prioritize the tasks?
You should first focus, of course, on the upper left corner (quadrant I- ‘important and urgent’), since todos in there are not only important but also urgent. Then, you can move on to quadrant II, and start planning and scheduling all your important, but not urgent tasks. This is a little warning for all you perfectionists out there: Never waste your time optimizing and prioritizing the todos in all the fields. The goal is to get rid of urgent and important stuff- as quickly as possible. This way you can focus on the important long-term things you need to do to advance in life.
How do you focus on the long-term important things, and not get lost in all the urgent but unimportant tasks?
Your time will always be filled with things to do, the key is, to work on the right things. That is, unfortunately, the point most people struggle with. We want to focus on the urgent things - the imminent threats. But, just because something is urgent doesn’t mean that it is automatically important.
Repeat after me: Just because something is urgent doesn’t mean that it is automatically important.
Saying no to a task, or to someone, is not easy. In fact, it is extremely hard. That’s exactly why you need to learn it. It will set you apart from your peers, who try to juggle everything at once. Focus on what’s important first, schedule your priorities, and learn to say no.
I urge you to try this system for a couple of weeks. Whether you do it physically with post-its or digitally with a google sheet or any tool of your choice is irrelevant. However, let me say this: Removing a physical to-do sticky note from my list and sticking it in my little notebook to keep track, feels extremely rewarding and satisfying… Oh, that’s Ok, you can make fun of me… I know that I’m weird.
But if you are as nerdy as me, I suggest that you use real post-its and give the system a try.
One last thing… you might be asking yourself: If you focus on the important stuff, then why do you even collect the not-important todos? Great question, you are really on top of your game today.
There are two reasons you should do it: First, you want these nagging tasks out of your brain, so you can relax (this is especially important before you go to sleep to get the nagging things out of your head), Second, there will be a time in your day when your energy is getting low. Maybe you can’t concentrate on the important things any longer, well, that’s why there are still not-important todos waiting for you. Who knows, maybe now is the time to finally write and send that birthday card. In an upcoming newsletter, you will learn how to match tasks to your energy level throughout the whole day.
Great now your todos are out of your mind, and (hopefully) displayed on the wall (or in my case: on the fridge), we covered the system for your tasks, and you listened to me ranting about discipline.
Here is a quick recap:
collect all todos with the same system
differentiate the urgent from the important
always work on the important tasks first
schedule your important tasks
use one, and only one, schedule2
We didn’t talk about how and when to consolidate and schedule your tasks. Well, that will be part of another chapter on how to manage your time, coming very soon.
Until then, have a successful day
GNF
If this is hard to implement for you, feel free to use the comment section for your questions or answer this email. I read every email myself and try to answer quickly. If you want a one-on-one session, where we will walk through the steps together, check out my offer on gumroad.
Bonus: Sometimes a little humor is all you need to get started or to keep going:
I am of course aware that a missing work-life balance can have many reasons.
You can link and synchronize most schedules together. For example outlook and google calendar.