5 Tips for doing it all

I've had a few people ask me recently about time management. How do I manage to do all the things I do with my life? How do I do my job, go to all the events, surf, write articles, spend time at home? A few people have asked me if someone else writes my articles and does my social media for me. I was pretty pleased with that question. But no, I do it all myself.

#1 Know what your goal is

I went to a friends house last night. She invites cool women to her house every couple of months for dinner and enlightening conversation and I was talking to one of them about the 10 year plan I had to move to Australia, and the focus I have now on what I do and how that contributes to where I want to go. As we chatted it became obvious to her that when I talk about having a plan - I didn't mean every action was laid out in detail with budget and specific timeline assigned. But I knew where I was headed and could clearly assess if any action would move me towards or away from that goal. I said that I tended to explore a range of activities, but as the timeline shortened on those things, I would reassess which would provide the best and most aligned outcomes. I do a lot of things, but ultimately they are all pointed in the same direction - and while at some point it might look like a single, specific task is the one thing that got me to my goal - it is more the relentless press of momentum in that direction that made the outcome inevitable.

#2 Align your activities to your goals, so you are ticking several boxes in one go:

For example - I went to the WiTWA event on Personal Branding last week. That one event ticks several boxes for me. Several of my closest friends are on their committee - so it's an opportunity to see them and catch up. WiTWA is a sister organisation to ACS-Women, of which I am the Director - so we support each other by going to each others events. Women from my customers, my industry and my community were there - so its a chance to share ideas with people I have things in common with. The event was on Personal Branding - which is a topic of interest to me and an opportunity to learn something. I'm standing to be Chair of the ACS in WA this year - so it was an opportunity to recruit new members and to remind people to vote. By attending that one event, I ticked at least 5 boxes. I also wrote a post on LinkedIn about it while I was there that got over 3K views - so that's at least 3 more boxes. Raising my LinkedIn profile, increasing my influence in my network, engaging more people in topics I care about - Diversity, inclusion, tech, branding.

So when deciding on what activities to put in my calendar or on my to-do list I look for alignment to my goals.

#3 Don't be tricked into doing an endless list of small tasks:

One of my friends tells me she starts with her list and is constantly interrupted by other people who bring her critical tasks and decisions that need to be addressed immediately. She said it meant she often had to work late getting through her increasingly long task list throughout the day. She also noticed that the people handing off those critical tasks to her seemed to have plenty of time to focus on what they found interesting, while she never had any to dedicate to what was important to her.

Email steals time from me in the same way. If I start in there and leave it open the whole day then I never get anything significant done. Email keeps you in reactive mode. You see an email. You respond to it. Or worse, you see an email, it adds a task to your day, and after you have completed that task you still have to respond to that email. Maybe you responded when you got it saying you would let them know when you had completed the task. So read email, task assignment, reply to email, task action, completion email - 5 actions that were not on your list at the start of the day. 8 Emails in a day and you are done... but who gets 8? I get 100. I don't have time to do those 5 actions on all 100.

You have to decide what is important and do those things. Reactive mode is endlessly tempting. There is nothing easier than focusing on the endless supply of small urgent tasks in front of you, and ticking off those things feels great - because it's easy to tick off lots of things. But if you look back on your day and did nothing significant. If you look back on your week and did nothing to be proud of. If you can't even remember the tasks you have completed - then you are wasting your time.

Stop. Focus. Ask yourself what is important to you. What do you want to achieve? - and if the tasks you are doing do not move you closer to that goal - then cross them off your list.

#4 Eat that Frog

There is often some task you don't want to do, and you put it off - saying you'll get to it later. But it's hanging over you the whole day. Just get it done. Do it first. Eat that Frog.

I can't tell you the number of times I've not been able to sleep thinking about the task I have put off, then when I do it, it takes 20 minutes and it's such a relief to have it done.

If you put it off, you will waste time thinking about it, and finding other distractions to help you procrastinate.

#JFDI

#5. Use the tools

If you do everything manually, and by yourself - it will take you a really long time. Yes you might prefer to "do things in person". You might want to shake everyone by the hand and address every query personally and that's a very nice sentiment - but you are definitely restricting yourself. Writing and sending a letter by post will take at least 2 days, maybe more than a week to cross the world to be read by one person. An email can be written in minutes, sent in seconds and be sent to hundreds of people simultaneously. My LinkedIn posts are read by between 2K and 3K people each time. By using the tools I can connect with people across the world, I can transfer my ideas to thousands of them simultaneously and I can connect in advance of any physical meeting, which saves time both in the sharing of ideas and the building of relationships.

Technology is there to augment human capability. To automate the boring, repetitive tasks and to enable us to focus on the goals that matter to us. We can ignore it if we want to, it doesn't care. But if you want to get more done - then it will enable you.

Michelle Sandford works for Microsoft. She is the Vice Chair of the Australian Computer Society in WA, a Tedx Speaker, a Tech Girl Superhero and one of MCV's 30 Most Influential Women in Games. You can follow Michelle on LinkedIn for her articles; on Twitter for events, interesting shares and occasional commentary in 140 characters, Facebook to see where she is presenting next, YouTube for Video's and Instagram for the life of a Microsoftie in photographs.