My experience with time management started when I served as a missionary for the LDS Church. As a missionary, we were trained to use various time management tools (all paper-based at the time) and we had a strict schedule of when we woke up and went to bed, when we studied, and when we ate. We also had virtually complete control. I had no girlfriend, no wife, no kids, no job, no classes, and no other commitments. It was one thing and one thing only I needed to concern myself with, and that made time management relatively easy. I had a simple calendar book, with a page for each day. Each morning I looked at it, and then we left the house, went to our appointments, created new ones, and that was that.
Time management is not so simple these days. I have a business, I have time zones, I write for Forbes, I write on this blog, I have meetings, I have a wife and kids, there are emergencies, appointments, meetings, and a host of other factors I have to deal with. I’ve worked with the FranklinCovey system, to-do lists, reminder lists, Basecamp, Highrise, and a number of other tools, although my primary tool for getting things done remains email and my Google calendar. But it’s not enough. Things fall through the cracks. Emails accidentally get deleted or marked as read. Emails stack up and important ones go below the fold. I forget to look at my calendar. Events get placed in the wrong week on accident. And many of the things that I want to do don’t lend themselves to being managed by email or an online calendar. Things like priorities.
I’ve got some ideas and I’m looking into more, but what’s your time management and task management system? How do you make sure you’re taking care of everything that needs to be done and not missing things that are important? Are there any books that have helped you? I’m reading the Power of Habit right now, looking for further ideas on managing myself better.
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Hey Josh, the best advice I ever heard was from Tim, the one and only:
He said to list no more than two critical tasks the night before. If you’re having trouble deciding, then ask yourself: Does this really have to happen tomorrow? If it didn’t, what would happen? Would the world end? In practice, this forces me to ruthlessly prioritize. And it helps me avoid getting distracted by email because email’s rarely (probably never) one of the two critical tasks.
In practice, after I finish the two tasks, if I have more time, I stop and come up with two more. The mistake is coming up with the “next two” the night before. Things change, including priorities. It’s better to come up with two more after you finish the original two. And it doesn’t really work to say you have two critical tasks but in reality have more. That’s cheating, and then you find yourself back where we started — overwhelmed with 100 “critical” tasks.
In any case, that two-critical task advice alone has been a huge help for me. I feel better when I follow it. When I finish those two tasks, if I can’t do anything else that day, I at least know that I did those two things, which means I feel less stress in the back of my head, which means I’m less likely to yell at the kids, go to bed late, and all the other stuff that goes along with feeling like I need to do more to have really accomplished something that day.
Hi Ben, that’s great advice. But you gotta help me out. I’m feeling stupid, but who is the one and only Tim? I keep thinking of the guy in The Search For The Holy Grail.
Ha ha, Tim Ferriss. 🙂
By the way, asking yourself what two tasks really have to be done forces yourself to really start questioning everything? Why in the world am I even doing this? And is that goal really important?
That itself is time-consuming, but it’s totally worth it since I’ve discovered that most of my time is wasted on things I might have deemed “important” under the Covey framework, but since realized that although they were more important than, say, checking Facebook, they were far less important than goals I’ve started calling “game changers,” for a lack of better term. Things that, if I actually accomplished them, would dramatically change my life. Moving out of the country is a definite game changer, for example. So tasks that might help me accomplish that goal would be more important than other tasks that might just keep the business (or life) going along.
I think I saw that you read Steve Jobs. Do you remember when Jobs unplugged the plug on that programmer he wanted to start working for him? He said that whatever that guy was working on was going to be dead in two years. It was time to focus on the Mac (or something) and come over to his team immediately. It’s a great example of moving onto a game changer vs. an “important” task that that guy felt like he “had” to do or “should” finish up before leaving to go with Jobs.
In any case, I don’t mean to go on and on…
Oh yeah, duh, that Tim. I should have known. Anyway, thanks again, I’m going to try this one out.
I really like the ideas explained in Getting Things Done (GTD). I haven’t fully implemented it in my regular routine, but I like how David Allen puts things in perspective. Definitely worth the time to read, to get ideas on how to think about we send our time and our mental energy.
I have Getting Things Done on my to-read list. I actually have the files on my computer, ready to be loaded onto my iPod. Maybe I need to read that before Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire which I’m currently slaving away at 🙂
Thanks for the suggestion, Matt. As a follow up, I’ve noticed that when I read a helpful book, the book isn’t helpful because I remember everything in it, but because one or two things from it stick in my head and keep going around and around until they modify my behavior. Are there any gems from the book that stand out to you?
The key point that hit me was that if you have lists of things to do, but no clear plan on how or when you will get to these things they end up being a burden hanging over you even if you are not actually doing anything about them.
However, if you have a trusted systems for capturing ideas and things that need to get done, a system that allows you to know that they are available to be processed later, you can forget about them until you are actually ready to do something about them. This is a very liberating thing to experience!
I use Evernote for my trusted system to capture things that I need to do and ideas for the future.
… now, if only I was better at the processing part!
On that note (no pun intended), I’d be very curious to hear about your experience with Evernote. A lot of people swear by it, but I tried it out once (very briefly) and couldn’t see a compelling reason to keep using it. But I keep thinking I should go back and try again since so many people seem to love it. How exactly do you use it and where do you find it to be most useful?
Evernote has allowed me to become almost completely paperless in my business. It is the one place that I keep anything that I want to reference later (meeting notes, documents, emails, business cards, websites, etc… I even keep my handwritten notes in it). And the secret sauce is that it is completely searchable. So if I need something, I know where to look and I know I can find it.
I use Wunderlist. I especially like the ability to offload something that is using up thought time in my head. I can write it down and then come back to it later. I can prioritize, schedule, and manage different groups of tasks (Scouts, Church, Projects, Family, Personal Goals, etc.)
I also schedule my day and use multiple Google calendars with reminders to help me stay on schedule. Sharing my calendar with my family helps them to understand my priorities. It certainly facilitates negotiating time priorities when we have conflicts.
I’ve started using Wunderlist (per your suggestion) and I do really like it for being able to save ideas. I’m using it to track ideas for blog posts here, article ideas for Forbes, ideas for dates with my wife, etc.
I haven’t yet tried tracking tasks with it. Are there any flaws with using it for task management? Do you ever find yourself missing something, or missing the timing on something, while using Wunderlist?
Thanks!