Time Management - One Hundred Mile Road #1

Throughout my student career, I realized that much of my personal and professional development goes beyond of what it is learned in the classroom. In fact, in order to be more productive, I started opting for alternative methodologies. This allowed me to engage in more projects than the average student, ensuring my development.

Thus, I will focus this Time Management on 2 main aspects:

• Task Management;
• Project Allocation Time Management.

The concepts I will address focus on the basics of several books that I have absorbed and taken into my life that are not necessarily about Time Management. The use of certain nomenclatures may not be correct conceptually, but what I want is to talk about my experience in a practical way.

In this article, I will only focus on Day-to-Day Management.

Importance of day-to-day management

Much of people's mental and emotional confusion arises from not having an efficient task organization. The reliability and confidence that we show to others is a consequence of this same organization, due to its repercussions in these areas.

More than a better achieved final product, a good day-to-day management substantially reduces stress levels and leads to higher personal fulfillment throughout the day/week. It allows a 100% focus on the underlying task and a sense of control over everything that goes on in my professional life.

To achieve this, and assuring that I never miss anything and organize myself mentally I developed some habits that I will explore later.

Objective task’s organization

The most important thing I've learned about Task Organization is that it can NEVER be done by our mind:

• Possibility of failure: No one is Superman and we will fail if we try to put our entire to-do list in our mind, like a shopping list;
• Stress: The mental organization of tasks is a major source of our daily stress, which affects our performance;
• Lack of temporal organization: Having a mental to-do list difficult the temporary organization of our tasks;
• Lack of "candy": There is no clear reward when performing a task, and mentally it can be miss-interpreted as a pain reliever, rather than something positive for its execution.

Of all the task management and listing tools I used, the one that best suits my needs is Google Keep, for the following reasons:

• Fast: Through the Widget on my Smartphone or through Chrome window, I can allocate a task in a few seconds, being extremely practical during meetings or studying, not interrupting the previous thought or requiring a great level of thinking;
• Visual: A clean and simple tool that allows us to do the same to our mind: keep it clean and organized to produce;
• Easy access: Keep is available on all platforms, and is a Google tool, being easy to integrate on any device, as long as you have Internet access. It is also possible to use it offline, with some limitations;
• Customizable: It is not a task organization tool, it's a note-pointing tool. However, it proves to be very customizable, allowing use for both purposes, replacing even Google Calendar in certain situations.

Moving from theory to practice

For me, there is a clear path between receiving a task and performing/delivering it:

1.    Fetching;

2.    Listing;

3.    Classifying;

4.    Sorting;

5.    Doing.

Fetching

In the first phase, we really need to understand which tasks we have to do, from the biggest to the smallest. I can split it into 2 practices:

• Weekly Fetching: I start by listing all the "sections" of my life, whether personal, family, professional or school-related - all the projects I'm involved with that can be sources of tasks (at first, this exercise is time-consuming, but the advantage is that it only has to be done periodically). Thinking about the structure and the current state of play, I can list a number of tasks, from connecting the X person to making an annual Y plan;
• Right-away fetching: When I am given a task, the annotation is made AT THE MOMENT, so it is not forgotten.

In Right-away Fetching, there is an extremely important rule of time organization: the 2-minute rule. If any task takes less than 2 minutes to do, it should be performed immediately. This is extremely powerful on a mental and emotional level, and logically productive.

Listing

An equally important part is the listing, and we must distinguish our tasks in those that are flexible in time (task) from those that are not (events).

These should be treated differently, and I personally point out tasks in Google Keep and events in Google Calendar (Note: If an event needs preparation, in addition to the event in Calendar, I put a task in Google Keep).

Classification

In Google Calendar, the classification of each event is done automatically, and we choose a calendar and an appropriate length for the event.

The same is not applicable in Keep, so I will deepen my use of the tool.

With the option of "Pinned", I place 3 main notes, listed with "Checkboxes":

• To do - Today: Here I put my tasks for the day.
• To do - Week: List of tasks for the week. Here appear the tasks I have chosen not to do today, but shall o be done at another time;
• Appointments: Listing all my current appointments. Crucial to Weekly Fetching.

Something very interesting in Google Keep is the possibility of putting reminders. A daily reminder in "To do - Today" and weekly in "To do - Week" and "Appointments" is amazing so no task passes you by unnoticed.

Ordering

Ordering lets us know not only what to do, but when to do it.

Interspersing fast tasks with time-consuming tasks is the key to having a relatively high and constant level of mental reward, contributing to our higher productivity.

When these lists become too large, or tasks take too long, it may be important to schedule some of the tasks or split them.

Achievement

The most important of all is really TO -DO.

I use a particular technique that helps me stay focused on my tasks or study: the Pomodoro technique (25-5). Briefly, it consists of working for 25-minute time intervals followed by 5-minute breaks.

Initially, it may seem counterproductive, but with simple mathematics, we realize that "coffee breaks" or "going to the bathroom" have a much greater impact on our productivity because they are not seen effectively as breaks, with no mental reset. This reset is necessary so that the next 25 minutes of work are as productive or even more than the previous 25 minutes.

The timing of our productive time also allows us to stay focused and try to break down personal barriers.

"One Hundred Mile road"

The reality is that I still have a lot to learn and to share and these tips have been working with me. This does not mean that they will help everyone, however, as I say, you have to test yourself.