The Triple Threat of Time Mastery: Part 1
What do you think you would need to:
Finally stop feeling overwhelmed and burnt out from a towering workload?
Finally stop feeling dread, wondering if this is really what you wanted to be when you “grew up”?
Finally have so much trust in yourself that you knew, without a doubt, you could complete whatever you put your mind to?
The magic pill to achieve all of this is…time.
With enough time at your disposal, you can overcome and accomplish anything.
Now this isn’t just an impossible fantasy or premise for an action-packed thriller about time travel (staring an overworked but fabulous She Boss).
In real life, you can get there.
Taking back control of your time and your life requires practicing three simple concepts:
Organizing Your Goals and Priorities: Understanding all the things that you need to, and actually want to get done, then proactively choosing which are the most important,
Taking Action: Setting yourself up to be massively productive at knocking out whatever you consciously decide to work on,
Getting Your Mind Right: Improving your mindset and how you think about your time and your life.
Without all three of these pieces in place, you’ll likely unsuccessfully stumble through life, feeling like time is slipping through your fingers, feeling stuck.
If you’re aligned with your priorities and know exactly what you need to do to achieve your goals, but you don’t ever create the space and time to take action…you’re likely not making progress. Stuck.
Or if you are a master at knowing your priorities and taking action but you still believe that a 60-hour work week is the only way to have a successful career…your work/life balance will be completely misaligned. Stuck.
You need all three.
In Part 1 of this 3-part series, we’re going to dive into everything you need to know to organize and prioritize your mountainous list of to-dos that are ready to topple over at any moment.
(At the end of this, you may be able to alleviate just a little bit of that dramatic visual and find that it’s actually not that daunting.)
Organizing
Organizing your to-dos is all about understanding everything that’s on your plate.
Without knowing all of the things you need to or want to act on, you’ll never be able to effectively prioritize.
If you’re staring at a list of 20 flagged emails, but aren’t referencing your department or business goals for the year, you’ll likely jump on an email request from a coworker (their to-do) before you spend any time thinking big picture.
You’ll never really be able to know what you’re saying “no” to when you say “yes” to something else.
An organized list of to-dos helps you focus your time acting on your real top priorities instead of filling time and jumping from task to task with busy work. You can avoid this constant moving that doesn’t actually get you anywhere.
A few simple practices can help get you organized and focused on what matters.
Create a Master To-Do List
If you’ve read many of my previous articles, this isn’t a new concept. This is a key piece of keeping your to-dos in order while reducing the brain power needed to understand everything that might pull on your time.
There are three basic steps for building a master to-do list:
Decide on a location
The only criterion here is that it’s easy to access.
Is your phone always just inches away? Use the Notes app. Does your company leverage OneNote or Confluence? Create a page. Do you like shiny new apps for task management? Go wild.
Your master to-do list should never be more than a click or two away.
2. Identify all your sources for to-dos
Now you need to understand where requests for action come from.
Identify all the sources where you get to-dos: email, texts, IMs, random notes scribbled on a piece of paper on your desk…etc. Make a list of all of these sources.
3. Transfer all to-dos to your master to-do list
Open up all of the sources identified above and transfer any outstanding to-dos to your master to-do list.
Categorize them in a way that makes sense for your type of work (such as by project or by type of action needed like “research” or “follow-ups”.)
From now on, regularly move all to-dos from these various sources to the master to-do list.
This will serve as your ongoing reference list to prioritize from and act on. You’ll never have to scramble between separate sources or lose track of real priorities again.
(Pro Tip! For a deeper dive into how to create and manage a master to-do list, checkout 4 Steps for Building an External Hard-drive for Your Brain.)
Keep Your To-Do List Clean
There will always be constant additions being made to a master to-do list as new opportunities or whims come up.
This is great. Grow and evolve and continue to set big dreams and goals!
But don’t let your master to-do list get so cluttered and unruly you lose track of what really deserves your focus.
A simple practice for keeping it clean is to ignore, minimize, and delegate.
Ignore:
Remove tasks that aren’t essential or that you really don’t have to get done.
Do you have “Organize department retreat notes” on your list that’s been sitting around, collecting digital dust for the last 6 months? Girl…nothing has crashed and burned. Move on. It doesn’t need to happen.
Delete.
Minimize:
Look to items where you can reduce the time commitment or frequency.
Take that hour-long weekly project sync. You already spend time beforehand making notes to prep for the meeting. Put those notes in an email, send, then cancel that meeting.
Or, if you’d still prefer to meet in person, shorten the meeting to 30 minutes or move the meeting to bi-weekly. Take back those hours and invest them in your next priority.
Delegate:
Look for tasks that could be completed by someone else.
For example, someone else might be able to get to the task faster than you, someone else may have a better skill set to complete the task, or someone else would get value from the learning experience of doing the task.
Reassign then remove it from your to-dos.
This regular practice will keep your master to-do list clean and only full of high-value tasks you’re ready to act on.
(Pro Tip! Check out The Power of Not Doing for other ideas on what might not belong on your to-do list.)
Your master to-do list is organized and prioritized.
You know exactly all the things you need to and want to get done.
Your top priorities are selected. But…
“I don’t have time for this.”
“I better check my email or phone again.”
“Joe needs help with that report. I’ll jump on that first.”
You’re not taking action. You’re distracted. You’re being busy, not productive.
It’s okay, we’ve got this! Stay tuned for Part 2 all about setting yourself up to start making massive progress.
Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed? Do you feel like there are always important tasks left undone, hanging over your head? It's time to take control of your productivity and prove to yourself you can accomplish anything you put your mind to.
Check out the 7 Days: Consider it Done! guide to transform the way you approach your to-do list.
Say goodbye to procrastination and unfulfilled goals and hello to a sense of control and reignited passion for life. Consider it done!
