Time management

I explained the limitations of the todo-list system in the previous article about time management introduction and todo-list limitations . You are not about to discover a brand new way of managing your time but maybe another way of dealing with all your tasks.

Using your calendar as your todo-list

The calendar is usually used by people to write appointments with other people like meetings, business lunches, workshops and so on. A common representation of the calendar is based on columns, one for each day of the week :

There are many softwares which provide a calendar tool : Microsoft Outlook, KOrganizer, Evolution, Google Agenda, … As long as they are easy to use for you, with drag’n’drop to move tasks, it’s ok.

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« The best way to save time is about not losing time. » That was one of the first sentence during the time management training I used to lead. You cannot do anything to have more time in your life, but you can do something about how you spend it. And especially how many times you are doing the same task or micro-task. We’ll tackle with that in the next practices.

Everybody usually has a few tasks to achieve to reach an objective and the way you’re managing them can be a source of painful stress. Let’s see if a todo-list can be a solution.

Simple todo-list to manage your time

At first, there is a list of tasks, also called a todo-list, organized with a series of bullets and the description of the tasks :

- Find an expert for project A

- Calling client B

- Reread the specification document for project C

Simple, quick, relatively efficient. Todo-listing is the number one tool to get things done, on real paper or using a software (text editor, dedicated software, ..). You can quickly clear your head by putting down all the things you have to do and update the list regularly.

Limitations : you will not be able to distinguish the urgent matter of your boss and the search of gift ideas for next christmas (and you are in June). Ok, maybe if you have 3 items in your list, you will but with 10 items, the answer to « What do I have to do next ? » should be more difficult (if not try it with 30 items …).

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