My brother Glen stopped in late last night on his way home from travel. He has a book contract with the same publisher that did my other brother Lyle's book. His book is going to be on energy policy. An hour chat with Glen keeps me scared on the impact we are having on the environment - he know all the stats.
Looks like I need to pull up my authoring to keep up. The problem is the SYNNEX Canada CEO job is fairly full as it is.
The Simple To Do List
The basis of virtually all time management systems that I have studied is the simple to do list. Do not let the simplicity fool you. There is power in the basics.
Why the To do List? It reduces the stress of rememberng what to do. It helps you to know how much you have to do so you can tactfully decline tasks or know they will not be done until next week. And most important, it keeps you working on the right things.
More important though is prioritizing the list. The priority should be based on your goals so before prioritizing, look at your goals.
Some Tricks:
One trick that helps me get through tasks on the to do list is to put the first action item I need to do to accomplish the task. Often this causes me to just do it. Often this causes me to be able to do it more easily later.
Another trick is to have a short version of the list so I do not become overwhelmed. If my to do list has 80 things on it, even if they are prioritized, just looking at it will cause stress and often a lower priority task calls out to be done. What I do is simply put the 3-5 most important things to do on a blank sheet on top of my list.
I only have one list. Having multiple scraps of paper with lists can be counterproductive.
I like to spend 5-10 minutes at the end of the day organizing my list. When I miss this time, I find I am less efficient the next day than when I do it.
Time Management is simple. Have a To Do List.
Nice post, Jim. Let me add two comments.
ReplyDeleteFirst, it helps to know your own energy flow. You describe reviewing your To Do list at the end of the day. That won't work for me. At the end of the day I want to drop my toolbelt and reach for a beer.
What I need is to go into the next day with my first and important thing to do clear in my mind. I get up and work on it. When I get to the end of the work on that, I stop, run through my day start checklist and figure out what else needs to be done.
I'm very competitive and I've learned to use that as a motivator by competing with myself. My To Do list is five items with point values of 30-15-7-5-3 for a total of sixty. That gives me a "score" for the day that's part of my motivation.
I agree with the "To-Do" list...
ReplyDeleteAs much as I keep and move everything to digital... I still keep a note pad to the left of my keyboard and on it I write down [with ink] the top 2-7 things that MUST GET DONE today.
As things are accomplished, I cross them off and feel the satisfaction feeling for 1-2 seconds; then on to the next one.
I keep my daily To Do list to no more than five things. I'm a very competitive soul and I've found that I can turn that to my advantage by competing with myself. So I give point values to every item on my list. They're 30-15-7-5-3. Keeping score helps keep me motivated and gives me a quick measure how well I'm staying on point.
ReplyDelete