You are reading the FRACAT Blog Archive (also known as "FRACAT 1.0") for all posts prior to October 29th, 2007.
How To Get More Done Now That Summer Is Eating Your Days
Did you know that yesterday (Thursday, June 21st) was the official First Day of Summer? So, Happy Summer from FRACAT!
There are two ways to look at the first day of summer:
1) Hooray! Summer is here! Put away the coats and boots and get outside! Cookouts! Vacations! What could be better!?
2) Oh. Summer is here. That means every day until December is getting shorter (if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway). My family wants to go on vacation. I have to go to more of my kids sports events. I’d better figure out how to get some work done!
Now, maybe it’s the fact that I live in Houston and summer means 95+ degree days with 95%+ humidity, but I tend to take the second view.
Something that I’ve started to do without a lot of conscious effort to make the most of my days is specifically limit the amount of work that I do while setting up a system to get the most out of that time.
Because I’m such a nice guy, I’m going to share that system with you.
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STARTING WITH A 4 DAY WORK WEEK
Ryan Carson has a a great discussion of a 4 day work week over at A List Apart (although his great productivity blog is over at Carsonified).
In it, he described how he and his wife, both entrepreneurs, had a tough time not being swallowed alive by all of their work and, as a result, didn’t have much time left for them. His wife suggested the try to shorten their workweek to 4 days only and see how that worked.
At first, this seemed impossible. After all, they had more than enough work to fill 5+ days. How would they get it all fit into 4 days?!? Then, Ryan came to the same realization that I had not too long ago:
And then it hit me: there will always be more to do. Working more won’t change that. In fact, working more is actually counter-productive. I was starting work everyday at 5:30 AM and working till 10:00 PM, but I still wasn’t done with everything. If I was working those extreme hours and still couldn’t keep up with my to-dos, then clearly working more wasn’t the solution.
The key? What I like to call forced priorities.
GETTING THINGS DONE WITH “FORCED PRIORITIES”
Once you realize that there are more things to do than the hours to contain them all, the question is how do you get the important stuff done and slough off the unimportant stuff?
For Jason Alba over at JibberJobber, he figured out how to live life in 16 minute segments. That’s worked well for a lot of people, but not me.
I don’t know if it’s my ADD or just my life, but my world doesn’t get organized into time blocks very well. I’ve made intricate schedules that I’ve been unable to keep.
So, for me, the one thing that has worked the absolute best has been a “Top Things To Do Today” list. I know this doesn’t seem very revolutionary, but stick with me.
I pick a group of things that must get done in a day. This group is small enough that it is possible to get it all done, but big enough that I’ve actually accomplished something when the day is over. Throughout my scheduling life, this has ranged from 3-6 things.
Doesn’t seem like much, does it? But if you are forced into picking the top 3-6 things (it shouldn’t be much more than that) that have to get done in a day AND you realize that anything else on your list will have to wait for another day, you tend to focus in on what’s most important.
That forced prioritization ensures that you’re getting the very most important things done in a day and, after a while, you also get used to the fact that you’ll always have a full To-Do list waiting for a day with an open slot.
Well, this is a lot to digest and this post has gotten long enough. So someday soon, I’ll tell you what to do with the time that you’ve created through your new forced priorities.
Enjoy the Search!
Dan
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Daniel R. Sweet
Owner / Author / Chief Cook-And-Bottle-Washer / Technical Recruiter
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June 23rd, 2007 at 7:02 am
I like the idea of a “Top Things To Do Today” list. Picking the top 3-6 things that have to be done in a day and do them. That is another approach to the 80/20 rule, try to cut away what is not necessary.