I developed this little system that has been working great for me, so I wanted to share it. You already know about my to-do list technique. It’s low-tech (on paper) and involves setting priorities within specified categories that I’ve set up for myself. This system is based on that one.
Remember when I mentioned the day I had “a 6:45 a.m. breakfast meeting and an errand I had to run immediately afterward, then a specific class at the gym that I wanted to take, and finally a meeting in the afternoon. Clearly, I had very little time throughout the day to do my full list of things. I set up a shorter list, and got everything done that I wanted to…precisely because I didn’t overload myself”?
I’m all about not overloading myself (primarily because I’ve done it in years past), and I’ve got a lot on my plate at the moment, so I’ve been very disciplined lately about calculating which days are highly productive days, which days are medium days, and which days have lower productivity levels. I classify days depending on how many hours of coaching sessions, appointments, and meetings I may have on those days, plus other events such as courses or Meetups.
I’m in the middle of one distance learning course at the moment, and I’m starting a second course in March, so I want to get as far along on the first course before starting the second one, so I’m not overloading myself with two courses at once (Notice that I looked ahead in my schedule for the next couple of months to plan ahead and avoid future overload? Don’t forget to do this.). Plus, the more information I have from the first course, it will give me a lot of background information that will help me take advantage of the second one, which is a lot more comprehensive.
The issue is, I wasn’t sure if this was a realistic goal or not. It’s what I wanted to do, and I needed to find out if I could actually achieve it. How to figure this out?
Since my immediate goal is to finish my first course before March 4th, I set up a quick Excel sheet with days, dates, productivity levels for each day, and the different tasks I have to get done, which are basically reading chapters and answering essay questions.
I’m a visual person, so I set this all up with colours and printed it out so I can literally cross things off when I get them done. I like to see my accomplishments on paper. The columns on my spreadsheet are: Day, Date, Read, Question, Question (on high productivity days, I work on two questions). Again, this is in addition to all of the other things I do, so if you’re a full time student, you can easily adapt this to your schedule as needed.
I indicate the level of productivity for each day with a colour: red days are days where I’ll get minimal work done, so I didn’t even schedule reading or writing for those days. I’ll be happy to just get some emailing done and make it to the gym on those days. Reasons for upcoming red days include a weekend visit from family and an all-day course.
Green days are high productivity days. Read: weekends. Yes, I’m studying and working on weekends. Again, I know that I’ve been capable of overloading myself in the past, and I have learned the importance of work-life balance, so these high-productivity weekends are a short term situation for me. I need to take advantage of them for now, so I schedule as much studying as I can on these days.
Yellow days are medium-productivity days, where I can get a bit of studying in, but I don’t want to commit to too much and end up disappointed in my progress. So I schedule just a couple of things and add more if I find I have time left at the end of the day. Yesterday was a yellow day, I ended up answering a second essay question.
Orange days are low productivity days. Here, I schedule just one thing to study: I either read one chapter or I respond to one essay question. Again, if I end up working through everything that I planned, I’ll add one more chapter or question to get ahead.
Since I want to work through this course before March 4th, I mapped out all of the days from now until then and started filling out the study tasks for each day: one, two, or three tasks each day depending on the productivity level. I made sure to leave a couple of days at the end with no tasks in case I get behind. This way, I can plan for the unexpected (unplanned things often come up) and have some time to make up tasks at the end.
I set this system up on Thursday, and so far I’m already a bit ahead of schedule. So I know it’s a realistic goal, and that it’s something I can clearly achieve. And the stress from worrying about whether or not I could get this done on time is totally gone because I now know I can do it.
Again, this highly organised approach works for me. It may not work for you. So far, a handful of people have mentioned being good about getting things done using a much more fluid technique. If that works for you, definitely go with that.
Have you ever tried a productivity system like this, classifying days according to how much time you know you have, rather than treating each day the same? Does it work for you, or do you prefer a loose system so you can flow through tasks?
Are you a visual person? Do you like seeing everything printed out on paper or on your computer calendar? Or do you tend to keep everything in your head? What works for you?
That’s a really great advise about treating not only hours in a day, but also days in a week with a productivity system.
So far, thanks to you, I found out my best productive hours are between 8-12 and then 18-22. Can’t wait to figure out how it is with my days. This will certainly be helpful as before I didn’t take that into consideration at all and sometimes ended with a lot of undone stuff at the end of the day that I would normally have done.
Great! I’m so happy you’ve discovered your most productive hours. Did that make a difference in energy level throughout the day? Did you find it easier to get things done?
Let me know how it goes with this system. It’s been really helpful to me so far. Good luck!
I used to print out a tracking sheet for each month, now I just keep things in my head. It works since my schedule is so simplified. I do plan ahead when I have company visiting. I pre-schedule blog posts and let go of lower priority items, and medium and high priority ones to. One of my most productive times is when I am staying in a hotel. I love the freedom of not having the phone or household chores pulling on me. When I travel I try to add in lots of time alone in a hotel room to accomplish.
The same kind of thing happens when I go to a local art group twice a week and am away form other distractions.
XD
Hotel time can be very productive. I used to get a lot done in hotel rooms when I would travel for work. There are fewer distractions.
I some ways having an end date in mind and breaking tasks down while planning backwards to get things done works very well.
***While writing that sentence I just decided to INVENT an end date for a project that has been somewhat dragging in order to give it a new boost. It is something with factors beyond my control, but an invented end date would give me more of a sense of control.***
Are you estimating an amount of time for each color code? Are you tracking estimated time vs. actual time spent? Congratulations on being ahead of your schedule!
I just said this on your other comment, but whenever I need to get something done, and there’s no one else to give me a deadline, then I have to give it to myself. That’s what works for me.
No, I’m not estimating an amount of time for each color code. So far, I’ve been loosely estimating, depending on what other things I already have planned for each day. And that’s been working out well. I’ve had days where I didn’t get the last task done because I underestimated the time needed for something, and then I made it up the next day because I’d overestimated. So it all has worked out in the end…so far. I’ll update once I have more experience with this system.