Wednesday 22 August 2012

Time management is consciously planning your time to ensure that you maximize your productivity.

To achieve this, 

  • organize your work by tasks (why not break into projects?)
  • create blocks of time where you can focus your attention (why there should be no multi-tasking. high concentration levels, focusing, )
and,
  • set goals to help you stay motivated. (remembering why you are doing this, set deadlines, meet the deadlines, just do it or take a break and go on later. balanced work and rest times. rest times being mandatory.)


I wrote this on august 13. Over the past 2 weeks, I've kept it in thought, churning it over and over in my mind: organize your work by tasks?

And then i saw it! @.@

i have a little post-it note pad which i use to write down things that are running on my mind, that i know i NEED to get done. Otherwise those tasks would just bother me in the head and take up all my brainy RAM (random-access memory). i picked up this habit when i read that Tim Ferris carried around a paper-and-pen task list and never wrote down more than a few tasks to complete for that one day only. And true enough, when i started using the Post-It note, i was never able to write down more than 5 items to complete, maybe squeeze in 1 more task and a few scratchy notes for the first 5 items. After i complete, i would strike them off. i had fun doing that. once i complete to about 4 out of the 5 tasks, i would take a new paper and transfer that ONE incomplete task over, along with now new tasks to be completed. 

My notebook is full of post-it notes instead of writing on the actual A5 note book. I always wondered do i really need a paper A5 notebook then. 

Now you must be wondering why i said all that. Because i soon notice, i always had that ONE incomplete task that kept getting transferred from paper to paper. And its always a very short description of the task. Like, "PM". Which means Project Management. Now what exactly is that? No one knows, its like a secret code between me and myself. But I KNEW what i needed to do. For that one task named "PM", i had to do this, and that, and this, and this and then this again and then that. Now by now you would also realise PM is not exactly A TASK, but a group of tasks, more like a huge chain of actions. And then you would have realise why it is so hard to get rid of the task named "PM". 

So that is:
1. Against the rule of putting down only tasks on the post-it. 
2. A cluster of tasks that needs to be broken down into 2-3 post-its
3. Will never get strike off because such a huge project can never be completed in one sitting !

Time management is consciously planning your time to ensure that you maximize your productivity.

To achieve this, 

  • organize your work by tasks (why not break into projects?)
  • create blocks of time where you can focus your attention (why there should be no multi-tasking. high concentration levels, focusing, )
and,
  • set goals to help you stay motivated. (remembering why you are doing this, set deadlines, meet the deadlines, just do it or take a break and go on later. balanced work and rest times. rest times being mandatory.)


I wrote this on august 13. Over the past 2 weeks, I've kept it in thought, churning it over and over in my mind: organize your work by tasks?

And then i saw it! @.@

i have a little post-it note pad which i use to write down things that are running on my mind, that i know i NEED to get done. Otherwise those tasks would just bother me in the head and take up all my brainy RAM (random-access memory). i picked up this habit when i read that Tim Ferris carried around a paper-and-pen task list and never wrote down more than a few tasks to complete for that one day only. And true enough, when i started using the Post-It note, i was never able to write down more than 5 items to complete, maybe squeeze in 1 more task and a few scratchy notes for the first 5 items. After i complete, i would strike them off. i had fun doing that. once i complete to about 4 out of the 5 tasks, i would take a new paper and transfer that ONE incomplete task over, along with now new tasks to be completed. 

My notebook is full of post-it notes instead of writing on the actual A5 note book. I always wondered do i really need a paper A5 notebook then. 

Now you must be wondering why i said all that. Because i soon notice, i always had that ONE incomplete task that kept getting transferred from paper to paper. And its always a very short description of the task. Like, "PM". Which means Project Management. Now what exactly is that? No one knows, its like a secret code between me and myself. But I KNEW what i needed to do. For that one task named "PM", i had to do this, and that, and this, and this and then this again and then that. Now by now you would also realise PM is not exactly A TASK, but a group of tasks, more like a huge chain of actions. And then you would have realise why it is so hard to get rid of the task named "PM". 

So that is:
1. Against the rule of putting down only tasks on the post-it. 
2. A cluster of tasks that needs to be broken down into 2-3 post-its
3. Will never get strike off because such a huge project can never be completed in one sitting !