Trying to manage a long to do list is almost impossible. Every day the phone is ringing, messages are left that need to be answered, urgent and demanding e-mails pour in and a long list of meetings make the workload impossible to tame. There are never enough hours in the day, or for that matter days in the week! What you should do? What if you could have a plan that would increase productivity, and thus, give you extra hours within your weekly schedule?
Step 1. Summarize all tasks that compose your weekly to-do list. This will give you the ability to prioritize according to deadlines and importance. Then split your workload into chunks of time. Write the central idea for the specific day. Can you now specify a few main branches for the key tasks that you need to accomplish? Give those a title and arrange them as sub categories of the central idea. Under these sub categories list all the events, tasks, sub-tasks, deadlines, actions, etc. that are needed to complete each of the sub categories individually.
Step 2. Prioritize. You now have an educated view to decide what is important and what is not, objectively. Having clarity about how everything fits together will increase your productivity. You will be able to “find” those extra hours on your weekly schedule. If you created your summary correctly, you will be organized, calm and clear to tackle the main category of each day.
Yours truly,
Tommy Antonoopoulos, Blogger for OfficeTime
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