I was reading a question posed on Mark Forster’s forum about whether doing the opposite of what others generally do is effective when it comes to productivity, and I realized that I have found that it is. Here is the advice I have NOT followed with great results.
#1 Collect all your to-do’s into one trusted system.
The gurus who preach this haven’t met people like me who can produce a potential task a second.
Every time I’ve followed this advice, I’ve become overwhelmed and have shut down. It becomes impossible for me to sort out the things I must do from the things I would like to do. A someday/maybe list within the same trusted system doesn’t work for me either. I need to keep all of my ideas and potential tasks in a separate place, so I don’t become confused. Right now, all of my legitimate tasks go into ToDoist and everything else is added to Evernote. Evernote is a great place for me to put things to cool off. I find there are very few of them that I want to do anything with when I review them later.
While it’s a good idea not to have your tasks in many different places, keeping absolutely everything in one place keeps me from getting things done.
#2 Get everything done on today’s list.
I’m like so many of David Allen‘s clients who are desperate for a “win.” But defining win as getting everything done on my list for today does not work for me.
Predicting the demands on my time for any given day is as accurate as a weather forecast. Things happen. People and circumstances can keep me from getting everything done, but so can I. I have no way of knowing when I will run out of gas physically or emotionally. Of course, I do what I can to improve my energy levels, but some days I’m unpredictable. I suddenly need a nap or idle entertainment to recharge.
When I use this principle of completion to evaluate my productivity, I feel like a failure and am less motivated, not more. Instead, I schedule my tasks using Timeful and if I get MOST of my tasks done for the day, I count it as a win.
#3 Don’t procrastinate.
Of course, there are times when procrastination makes more work for us and leads to strained relationships and poor self-esteem. But I’ve learned to be grateful for procrastination.
Procrastinating has kept me from working on projects that I wasn’t committed to. Sure it would have been better if I had said no in the first place, but sometimes I don’t consciously realize that I don’t want to or shouldn’t be doing something. Procrastinating has also lessened my workload. Many times I have put off doing something only to discover that it didn’t need to be done or someone else did it. Procrastinating on purchases has saved me money as well. I buy a tiny fraction of things I add to my wish list on Amazon. I allow the desire of the moment to cool. Mark Forster’s Do It Tomorrow is contrary to the advice not to procrastinate with excellent results.
Procrastinating isn’t always a bad thing and can actually help me get more done.
I’m someone whose energy and achievement are directly tied to being challenged. I would rather delegate many things I AM good at, because they’re boring and tedious. Things I’m not good at inspire me. I want to learn how to do them so I can get more done. A second problem I’ve found with delegating things I’m not good at is I lose control. My productivity slows down on specific projects as I wait for the delegated work to be done. I can also be taken advantage of by people who know more than I do, because they can tell me how long something will take and how much it will cost and I won’t know any better.
While delegating is the right choice in some circumstances, I’ve found that much of the time I shouldn’t delegate what I’m not good at.
#5 Don’t change systems frequently.
The typical advice is to find one approach to managing your tasks and stick with it. Fiddling with your system just wastes time, the gurus say. But as someone who intentionally changed systems nearly every week during A Year of Living Productively, I learned that doing the opposite has been very effective for me.
Looking back at the times I’ve changed approaches to tasks, one thing is clear: I didn’t make changes during times of high productivity. Instead, I made these changes when my productivity and motivation were low. I would read a new book, try a new app, or scour the Internet for a new way of thinking about work and BAM, my productivity would dramatically increase. I got out of bed excited to use my new system and found myself getting twice as much done.
Rather than being a means of wasting time, changing systems has been a consistently effective way for me to get more done.
How about you? Do you do the opposite of the standard advice with good results?
Loren Pinilis guest posts today. His blog keeps me focused on the one thing that really matters. I highly recommend pinning or saving his post for days when you’re overwhelmed by it all. I know I will be.
In the hustle of our modern world, no one has enough time. No one manages their time as well as they’d like. We read books, articles, and blog posts looking for that next tip or trick or system that will help us to be a little more productive.
But why do we have this anxiety? What are we really seeking?
If you dig deeply enough, I’m convinced we’re not anxious about how much we get done. We’re really concerned with how we feel.
We want to manage our time in such a way to avoid feelings of doubt, insecurity, and stress – while increasing our feelings of competence, worth, and success.
That’s what I want to focus on. Not the systems, but the mindset; not the tricks, but the perspective. Because if we’re honest, those answers are what we are truly chasing – those answers relieve our anxiety.
And for Christians, those answers are found by renewing our biblical worldview and connecting our faith to how we manage and think about our time.
Curing Busyness
Why are we so busy? Why do we load up our schedules with more, more, more?
The reason is because we’re seeking approval. We’re seeking to validate ourselves. We’re seeking to prove our worth.
We want to look in the mirror and feel great about who we are, and we want to receive praise and affection from others because of it.
But this is a harsh treadmill to jump on. We’re never quite where we want to be and are always fighting off impending feelings of failure.
Instead, as Christians, we have the solution – we just need to remember the truth. We already have God’s approval. We are beautifully created in his image. He loved us enough to die for us, and now when God looks at us He sees the righteousness of Christ.
Christ’s victory on the cross was so complete that no amount of work or busyness from us is going to make God love us any more or less. This allows us to breathe a sigh of relief – and for once, to truly relax.
Curing a Lack of Motivation
But when we truly grasp what God has done for us, our proper reaction is not one of passivity. We are now infused with new motivation, new gratitude, and a new fire in our lives.
Our love now propels us forward – not because we think we can repay God, but because it is our pleasure to serve Him. Our days now have meaning as we love God and love others.
Because we are forgiven and accepted in Christ, we are free to take risks. We’re free to be ambitious for God, to plan great things, and to fearlessly launch ourselves forward knowing we could fall flat on our face. The fear of failure loses its power.
Curing Unrealistic Expectations
Finally, the Bible allows us to break free from the tyranny of our own expectations and standards. God’s model of success is one based on stewardship: being faithful with what you have been given.
God understands we are limited, finite, created beings. He’s not going to expect us to do 36 hours of work in a 24-hour day. He knows we must sleep (He created us that way). He knows our capabilities. He knows our strengths and weaknesses.
Add to God’s supreme knowledge the reality of his supreme power: God controls everything. Every obstacle and obligation that comes our way is under the sovereign hand of God.
Knowing this, we can release ourselves to strive for the best that we can do – and leave the rest up to Him.
How do you think remembering these realities will change the way you live?
Loren Pinilis operates Life of a Steward, a site about time management from a Christian perspective. He is passionate about showing busy, stressed people that the solution to their anxiety isn’t time management but a deeper understanding of the gospel.
I don’t know any homeschoolers who don’t have a lot to do.
Cooking, housekeeping, kids’ activities, church and homeschool group responsibilities, and outside work on top of parenting and teaching can keep you really, really busy.
No matter what your situation, you have a lot of tasks to manage–possibly more than you’ve had at any time in your life. If you haven’t found a way of managing your workload efficiently, your tasks may get in the way of your homeschooling.
This week we will focus on managing our to-do’s so they don’t manage us.
Want to watch this challenge on video instead? Scroll to the bottom.
Your Challenge for This Week
#1 Discuss task approaches and choose one to try
All work is managed with a to-do list, whether that list is in your head, on your calendar, or in a fancy app. But just as with curriculum, there are many, many kinds of to-do lists for many different kinds of homeschoolers.
Older children can (and probably should) be included in a discussion of managing tasks. They will be managing to-do’s on their own soon and teaching them how is a wonderful life skill. However, they may want to use a different approach than mom or dad because they have different personalities and workloads. The best approach to try is one that isn’t wildly different than what you’re doing now.
#2 Acquire the materials you need and set them up.
If you’re going to use a notebook and a pen or your calendar, you’re good to go. But if you want a new planner or an app, for example, you’ll need to get them and prep them for use. If you are going to use forms you download, you’ll need to print, copy, and probably 3-hole punch them.
Think about how you will use your approach when you’re away from home. Do you need a small notebook / datebook for your purse? Should you download an app for your phone? How will you make sure that tasks don’t fall through the cracks?
#3 Add a small number of tasks to your list and work on them.
Getting Things Done emphasizes the importance of adding absolutely everything you need or want to do to your list and later deciding that some of the tasks are someday/maybe tasks. Most homeschoolers could come up with thousands of tasks in no time, quickly producing overwhelm.
Whatever approach or list type you use, I recommend against adding every conceivable thing to your list right now. First, look at the upcoming quarter. Is there anything you need to start working on now? Second, look at the upcoming month. If you need to get started on something that is due in the next 30 days, add it to your list. At this point, don’t add things that you’d just like to do, but actually need to. You can add the want-to’s to your list as you find your managing your must-do’s. Third, add tasks that you have to complete this week. Finally, add things you need to get done today.
This may be the one list you work from every day or it may be the main list that you use to create a short list of tasks you want to accomplish today. Remember, that if you have a routine, you don’t have to add regular occurring tasks to your list.
#4 Continue working on your tasks and discuss your likes and dislikes.
I really enjoy buying planners, apps, and pens as well as spending time setting up new systems. That’s why I wrote a year-long series on living productively. But the point of this week’s challenge is to get more of your tasks done, so we have to get busy! Keep working on managing your to-do’s and take time to regularly discuss what’s working and what’s not.
I would love to hear about what you’re trying and whether it’s working for you. Discussing the pros and cons of your task management approach helps you remember that you’re not failing. You just need to keep working out a way to get things done that works for you–even if that means having to change it up frequently so you don’t get bored.
Francis Wade is guest posting today. I was a fan of his time-management novel and he became a fan of A Year of Living Productively. If you’re a busy person, I think you’ll be rewarded by reading.
Top college students and CEO’s share a few things in common. They both lead time-starved lives which are filled with short-term deliverables. Furthermore, in both professions, the penalties for failure are high. A meeting with a shareholder that is forgotten can cost a CEO his/her job, while a college student can flunk out of school by handing in a term paper only five minutes late.
Some other symptoms these very hard-working people share are:
– a tendency to give up personal time to do work
– a need to be available 24×7 to respond to emergencies
– the real likelihood of skipping meals, sometimes without realizing it
– having the experience of moving from one thing to another without having time to breathe
– finding they have not time to “do nothing”
– a restless feeling when, after graduation or retirement, the number of time demands is radically reduced
– a willingness to work at extreme hours, either late at night or early in the morning
– a difficulty in maintaining a balanced life
Obviously, this kind of life isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Nor should it be. Those who choose to live this way are part of an exclusive club whose members place results at the forefront, while everything else follows behind. The demands they place on themselves are tremendous.
What are the techniques they use to cope with the pressures they face each day? My research shows that their primary tool is their personal calendar as shown by the following video which shows a student building her weekly schedule in real time.
Notice how packed her schedule is with activity, and the care she takes to include items like eating and bathing that she’s likely to forget. She obviously takes her college success seriously and isn’t willing to leave her schedule to chance.
Here on the Psychowith6 blog, Melanie did a monumental job in 2013 of trying out new time management techniques and sharing the results. In week 11 she wrote a post about her experience using a daily calendar entitled “Could Scheduling Tasks Help You Get More Done?“
Her positive findings echo those discovered in academic research performed by separate researchers such as Dezhi Wu, Christine Bartholomew and E.J. Masicampo/Roy Baumeister. Their separate studies have shown that maintaining a schedule of activity results in greater productivity; notably, the first two researchers did their work with college students.
Furthermore, there is anecdotal evidence gathered by Mark Horstman at manager-tools.com that the vast majority of executives he’s worked with use detailed calendars such as the one developed in the video. He has completed a number of podcasts on time management which can be found here, repeating this finding in a number of episodes.
All the evidence, however, doesn’t mean that you should use this technique. There are other alternatives.
Another very popular approach is to place most tasks on a list, while only using the calendar for appointments. (The only other alternative – to use memory – is widely held to be ineffective.) Incidentally, Melanie has also experimented with using a To-Do list and found that it was difficult to be effective without one.
The key here is to understand that there are benefits to each approach and that there’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all. You are the only one who can decide how best to proceed. Here are some guidelines.
1) Never rely on memory
Both list and schedule-based approaches are built on the philosophy that trying to use your memory to manage the demands on your time is a poor practice. While it may work for a teenager, it fails miserably when the teen becomes an adult with a wide range of responsibilities. When the adult enters middle-age and his/her ability to recall short-term memories diminishes, the problem only gets worse, making the use of memory the least effective technique (although perhaps the most common.)
2) Start by making lists
If you are making the transition from using memory, it’s best to start by learning to use a single list. It’s a relatively easy new habit to learn, although it might become hard to manage as you get busier. This happens because lists require constant checking throughout the day, and when they grow past a certain length, this routine becomes tedious.
The remedy is to find a way to avoid having to look at the entire list, and instead focus on a subset. There are a number of techniques that one can use, but the first approach that people try is to tag or categorize each task in some way, and then use the tag as a way to filter the list.
There are any number of tags that can be used, but some popular categories include physical location (e.g. home vs. office,) person (e.g. spouse, boss, coach) and equipment required (e.g. desktop computer, printer, scanner.) The choice of tags is up to each person – there is no perfect system. In general, however, people choose tags that represent their scarcest resources.
3) Upgrade to a single calendar
If, like a CEO or college student, you are time-starved, then you might consider a major upgrade: using your calendar instead of lists.
A calendar of tasks differs from a list of tasks in two important ways. When we use a calendar we are adding three pieces of information, in a single step. By placing a task on a calendar we are giving it a start time/date and an expected duration. We also show, in graphic form, the relationship of that task to all the others around it. A calendar is a rich source of information.
For CEO’s, college students and other time-starved professionals, this information is critical to have in front of them as they attempt to make the most of their scarcest resource – time. Their calendars are usually electronic and mobile, synchronized between several platforms including the cloud.
For them, their calendar is their central point of control and they only use lists in conjunction with their calendar in the cases where it’s a practical add-on: such as a grocery list, or agenda.
To repeat the point – this particular approach isn’t for everyone. It’s not easy to learn and it requires constant practice and a high degree of discipline. New, fancy technology can make the learning curve a bit easier, but the underlying practices to be mastered remain the same.
This challenge reinforces the point – one size simply doesn’t fit all. Each of us must choose the approach that fits our particular needs and consists of habits that we can learn successfully. The decision to use one approach or another is up to you, and hopefully you can use these insights to make a choice that allows you to live a life that’s as productive as it can be.
Francis Wade is the author of Bill’s Im-Perfect Time Management Adventure, (http://perfect.mytimedesign.com) and a consultant who started Framework Consulting Inc., after leaving AT&T Bell Labs in 1993. Today, he lives in Jamaica, inspired by the differences he’s discovered between productivity in the Caribbean and North America. It’s led him to continue the learning he started as a student at Cornell University, where he completed Bachelors and Masters degrees in the discipline of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering. He’s been a proponent of Time Management 2.0, a robust set of ideas that are challenging the conventional wisdom in the area of time-based productivity. When he is not working, Francis is an enthusiastic triathlete.
Have you ever gotten to the end of a summer and been disappointed? I have, many times.
I’m a homeschooling mom who takes time off in the summer and I hope to get so much accomplished. Somehow very little of it gets done. I’m not talking about the fun activities we always manage to squeeze in (barbecues with friends, float trips, swimming, etc.). I’m talking about the projects I can’t get around to doing the other nine months of the year.
This summer I am determined to have a different outcome. I am so excited about the simple solution to my end-of-summer blues that I want to share it with you. In just three steps, you can make a satisfying summer a reality.
#1 Create a wish list.
Dream a little. What would you love to accomplish this summer? Are there any projects that you’ve procrastinated doing that would feel great to get out of the way? Are there things you could do to make life much easier the rest of the year? Or is there something you’ve always dreamed of doing that you’ve never made time for? Add all of these things to your list. At this point, don’t worry about adding too many things.
#2 Consolidate.
Look at your list and combine tasks into weekly projects or areas of focus. For example, would you like to defrost the freezer and clean out the pantry? These tasks can become Organizing or Cleaning. Each weekly project will include a number of tasks required to complete it. My consolidated weekly projects for the summer should give you the idea:
sort clothing
sort and sell books
organize
deep clean
book project #1
book project #2
school prep
video editing
blogging
scrapbooking
freezer cooking
#3 Schedule
This step is critical to making your summer satisfying. Make a list of each week this summer. Because I start school the second week of August, I have 11 weeks from 5/26 to 8/4. I have assigned each of the above projects to a week. If you will be on vacation for a week, that will be your week’s project. Assign projects to logical weeks. For example, freezer cooking is my last project because I want dinner in the freezer before I start school. Otherwise, start with top priority projects. For me, that’s sorting the kids’ clothing for the season and selling books we no longer need.
Schedule time at the beginning of each day to work on that week’s project. If your schedule doesn’t permit you working at the beginning of the day, make sure you work on these projects during the first part of your work period. Why? You’re more likely to accomplish your wish list if you work on it first.
What if you want to do something that will take more than one week? You can either assign it to more than one week or schedule it on a daily or weekly basis. I will be spending more time than a week each on blogging and book projects, but those weeks I will devote extra time to them.
What if you planned to finish a project in a week and you don’t? I don’t anticipate spending every day of the week on my planned projects. Things come up and I love being spontaneous in the summer. If I spend just one day a week on each of these projects, I will be thrilled! But if it’s really important that you finish a project before moving on to something else, you can definitely edit the schedule. If you have your projects in order by priority, you’d simply move everything back a week and the lowest priority project would be dropped from the summer schedule to be worked on another time.
I can’t wait to hear about the projects you have planned and to see if these steps make this summer a more satisfying one for you. What’s the first project on your list?
We can do school in our jammies, so it’s only appropriate that we can learn how to homeschool better in our jammies, too.
Today (May 13, 2013) at noon central time, I will be sharing how to get school done–tomorrow! I’d love to have you join me for the free live session here. Click the Listen Live button on the top left.
Can’t make it? You can pick up two recorded sessions I did on homeschooling strong-willed kids and disciplining between the extremes as well as 53 other audios for a bargain price. Hear leading homeschool experts like Andrew Pudewa all year long in the comfort of your home.
Before I was a speaker for the Ultimate Homeschool Expo, I was an attendee. I downloaded the incredible sessions to enjoy while I was cleaning, working out, and grocery shopping and came away inspired. Can’t afford to buy the audios? Look for more free live sessions this week!
I hope you’ll join me live today or will pick up the audios so we can connect at another convenient time. God bless your homeschooling this week and in the weeks to come.
I’m a Christian psychologist turned homeschooling mother of six. My life can be a little crazy, so I look for sanity-saving ideas to use and share. I hope you’ll read my About page to learn more.
