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Escape the tyranny of the to-do list: how to schedule your priorities, not your time | The JotForm Blog
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The Planning Fallacy
We all have busy schedules, but we are incorrectly planning our day around the time we have, not around priorities.
Our estimates on how long certain tasks will take are almost always not realistic.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
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The 4 Kinds of Priorities
The Decision Matrix on how to approach tasks has 4 quadrants:
- Quadrant 1: The Urgent Problems which are important.
- Quadrant 2: Not Urgent but important tasks
- Quadrant 3: Urgent but not really important
- Quadrant 4: Distractions and time-wasting tasks.
Prioritize the important (Quadrant 2) to attain maximum benefit from your work.
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Prioritize your Peak Energy Time
There are certain times of the day when you are at peak productivity. For some, it's early morning, and for others, it can be the quiet night time.
Reorganize your tasks to engage and benefit from your peak times.
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Maker or Manager
Creative people have a different schedule than managers.
Managers work on a time-based scheduled calendar, but makers or creators cannot be bothered with time. They go deep in their work, forgetting any schedule.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Key Ideas
"By far the most significant learning experience in adulthood involves critical self-reflection - reassessin..."
Jack Mezirow
3 areas of life to clarify
You need to have absolute clarity over 3 fundamental facts:
- Your goals (the destination)
- Your current situation (your coordinates)
- The path that connects both of them (the route).
A very simple, but crucial principle: if you don’t know where you are, you can never reach the place where you want to be.
The world of the status quo bias
Making an alternative choice is hard because we are neurologically wired to favor the default solution, even if it brings suboptimal results.
As the complexity of a decision increases, so does our tendency to stick with the answer we know.
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Key Ideas
Personal Operations Category
- Task management. This one is most commonly taught and includes systems like Getting Things Done.
- Knowledge management. This is embodied in systems like productivity educa...
What's on your plate
Prioritizing tasks at work involves getting all your tasks and commitments in one place. Take a piece of paper and make a list of everything you need to get done. Questions to help you:
- Do you have commitments to others like your boss, partner, kids, or clients?
- Do you have anything you need to submit?
- Do you have any financial tasks that need to get done?
- Do you have any planning that needs to get done?
- Do you have any administrative tasks? Legal, insurance, staffing, or training?
- Do you have any professional development tasks that need to get done? Training, areas to research, skills to develop, books to read or study, or classes to take?
Brainstorm your goals
Find your goals. Without them, it is impossible to prioritize your tasks. Try to set 90-day goals, which is long enough to make meaningful progress. Questions to prompt goals:
- What’s the one thing you could do that makes everything else easier or unnecessary?
- If you were giving advice to someone else in your position, what 1-3 things would you tell them to focus on?
- What do you want to have accomplished over the next five years?
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Key Ideas
The Action Hero
Give them a seemingly impossible list of tasks and they will have them done and dusted faster than a speeding bullet. But in their haste, they can miss things and prioritize...
The Diva
Very sociable and upbeat but with a tendency to procrastinate, they often boast about their nonexistent achievements giving the impression they are more productive than they really are.
Strategy: breaking tasks into tiny steps, scheduling their resolution and setting reminders works well. Email management according to urgency is also crucial considering how much time it usually consumes.
The Workhorse
Thoughtful, cautious, methodical and quite independent in terms in carrying out tasks. They plan and prioritize well, but may be seen as overcautious, while others can be frustrated by their inertia. Their dedication to the job can also lead to an unwillingness to share the burden of work.
Strategy: Choose the most important things you need to focus on and those that only you can do, while delegating the rest according to staff skills.