I recently became part of a mastermind group comprised of some pretty awesome kick-a$ women living their dreams and aiming for more. One of the gals in the group mentioned she was having challenges with time management: too many things to do and not nearly enough hours in the day. So I offered to help her out. I've used a particular time management system that accounts for every single hour of my day and helps break down major tasks into bite-size pieces.
I'm grateful to one of my life coaches from last year for providing a template to help with accomplishing daunting tasks. I altered some things in her system and added to it to fit my needs and personality. Here's what I came up with. Hope it helps you.
Most folks start off with a huge list of all the things they have to do. From that major action list I suggest the following:
Step 1Create categories from your huge list. If you have a list of 25 things you need to do, group your to-dos into major areas or "chunks." For example, let's say the following types of things are on your list of 25 things to do: Go to the gym daily, meditate, research new home on MLS and find an editor for short film. You might create the following categories
Personal, Home-Buying and
Production Project. Why is this important? Categorizing your things-to-do into different life areas helps you see clearer. Instead of looking at one big long list and feeling overwhelmed, categorization breaks your activities into chunks and helps makes things more manageable. Step 2
Place all of your to-dos into their appropriate categories.
Step 3List your major goals for each chunk, or category. What do you aim to accomplish within the next 3-6 months under each area? Using the above example, here's what this step might look like:
- Personal: Three months from now I want to achieve 25% body fat and donate my baggy clothes to Goodwill.
- Home-Buying: Three months from now I want to put a down payment on my house of choice in my ideal part of town.
- Production Project: Three months from now I want editing to be complete on the short film I've shot.
Why is this important? Let's put it this way...You can get from New York to Mexico by just hopping in your car and driving with no destination in mind. You might get to Mexico and you might not. Or you can be infinitely more effective in getting to Mexico by having already decided that that is where you want to go. Your goal for each category is the reason behind why your list even exists. When you attach a valuable vision or worthwhile goal to your categories, it helps propel you into action on those days where you feel like doing absolutely nothing. Even if you know your reason or goal in your head, write it down on your master action list as a constant reminder for what you're working toward.
Step 4Go through your list and assign a duration of time to each task. How long will it realistically take you to accomplish each task? As you go through each item, you might come across a few tasks that induce a sense of overwhelm because you don't know how long it will take you to do it. Chances are, this task is too big and needs to be further reduced to even smaller chunks.
For example, let's use the example in Step 1. "Find an editor for short film" is not something you can sanely put a time frame on. Finding an editor involves other tasks. When you think about it further, "Find an editor" may actually look like this:
- Have phone conversation with filmmaker friend about editors she would recommend. Get contact information for these editors (30 minutes)
- Write and send email to top 3 editor choices requesting 10-minute conversation to discuss current project (15 minutes)
- Have the conversations with the editors (30 minutes)
- Contemplate and select the best person for the job (20 minutes)
You get the drift. So something that initially induced a state of "How the heck am I going to do this?" has been reduced to manageable schedule-able tasks that don't even take more than 2 hours to complete. Do this process for every task that seems "too big." Break it down break it down break it down.
Step 5You may now find that you've got more on your action list than when you'd originally begun (especially with the breaking down of daunting tasks.) You may be wondering how you're going to get it all done. Now it's time to prioritize. Go through each task and assign a value. I like to use the 1-5 scale, with 1 being very important and 5 being not important at all. Ask yourself for each and every task, "How important is it for me to complete this particular action? Is completing this action necessary for me to reach the goals I'd written in step 3?"
When I did this step, the pressure of "all the things I had to do" was alleviated even further because I realized there were things on there that I
thought I had to do because I told myself I needed to do them a long time ago, but in the grand scheme of things, they had very little to no effect on my overarching vision.
Step 6You've got your tasks and you've got how long it will take to do each task. Now whip out your calendar, PDA or planner and schedule them in. Schedule in your high priority items FIRST then work your way down. Remember to schedule in mealtimes and add some transition-time in between tasks so you're not jumping from one action directly to the next.
Good luck!
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