If I were my own client, I’d look at my to do list and tell me to cut it in half, at least.
And yet I don’t.
Each piece on my list of fourteen things to do each day is important if I want to grow my business and advance my fiction.
I bet you look at your own to do lists, and feel the same way, no?
Leo Babauta’s Power of Less talks about cutting back to look at just one thing at a time and about doing concentrated work in groups of four or five items.
While I agree in principle that’s a good thing and I often tell clients who fill up their lives with being busy instead of being productive, for me that just doesn’t work.
I get bored too easily working on just a few things.
I don’t like working in large blocks. I like variety and I like short (half-hour to one hour) burst of activity.
If you’re like me, then what do you do? There are only so many hours in the day and working full out all the time will just create burnout.
First, take a look at your to do list and be honest with yourself about the tasks you have on it. Are they really necessary? What dream do they serve? Can you get away without doing it? Do you enjoy doing it? Cut what isn’t necessary and what you don’t love.
I did that and came up with fourteen tasks each day. Normally I do about half of the tasks each day and when I’m feeling teenage-rebellious or brain-fried I get maybe three or four of them done.
This week, however, I want to plow through a whole bunch of these and take a leap forward rather than advancing in baby steps.
I don’t recommend you do this level of productivity every day – just as no one would ever recommend running a marathon every day either.
So, what have I done?
I’ve cut my day into pieces – 23 half hour blocks into which I’ve distributed my 14 tasks plus an hour and a half relaxing midday. Some tasks get two blocks and some get one. The very occasional task gets three blocks (like running and commenting on other blogs).
When the block is up, I stop, no matter where I am in the task. If I end something else early later on then if I want to I can go back to the unfinished tasks and tidy up loose ends.
And when the day’s done, it’s done. I close the computer and walk away, giving myself the evening completely off from work.
10 Responses to “Productivity Marathons: Dealing with Too Long To-Do Lists”
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Great post! I’m struggling with this myself. Right now I’m experimenting with 15-minute bursts of activity, which has been helpful. Do you have any tips for people who are trying to juggle a day job and other commitments with their dreams? When I write down what I want to accomplish outside of my job, I want to exercise for 1 hour, write for 2 hours, and practice music for 2 hours. The problem is that after factoring in 7 hours for sleep and 10+ hours for the job, I have only 2 hours left for showering, eating, errands, commuting, relationships, etc. I could do some of these things on the weekend, of course, but not all. And I still haven’t included much-needed down time into my schedule (a leftover from the dark side of productivity and time management seminars, I guess). Obviously, something’s not working here.
Alex, one of the issues I have always had with productivity systems and that they typically take a one size fits all approach. Your post is great in that you created a system that fits your work style. Some days I have lots of small tasks and my list is longer, other days I may have 2 things that I must do. If there’s extra time I can pull from my master list. I thrive on flexibility, so my structure has room to breathe. Thanks for sharing that there are many ways to get organized and stay on track with our goals.
Karen Swim´s last blog post..Hop, Skip, Double and a Dip
You have some great advice in this post. I think a lot of people (including me!) can get overwhelemed with their To Do lists. It’s really important to prioritize and figure out what really needs to be done. Sometimes I go over my To Do list and realize that there are things on it that I really don’t need to do.
@Cara
Brett Legree over at 6weeks.ca mentioned once how author Cory Doctorow writes for 20 minutes a day every day and publishes one book a year doing so. Perhaps instead of unsuccessfully trying to fit in 2 hours of writing each day you could do 20 minutes of concentrated writing. What do you think?
@Karen
You’re very welcome. I love flexibility. Being too rigid just leads to self-judgment and guilt and I’m so not about that.
@Positively Present
I regularly scan the To Do list for things to cut back on, or I ask people I know who’ve already done what I’m working on to find out what really are the important pieces.
@Alex: thanks for the advice! I will have to try that. Slow and steady. . . .
@Cara, I have the same problem in that there’s just not enough hours in a day to fit in “the day job” and “the good stuff”.
However, I’m loving Alex’s approach and going to see if I can apply it and see if it works. There must be a whiteboard around here somewhere…
Andy Hayes´s last blog post..Bremen, Germany: The Small Village with a Tram
I am the opposite. When I’ve had a lot of client projects on the go, I’ve tried to spend a bit of time on each so no one feels neglected, but I end up feeling scattered and stressed out. I work better when I can focus on one thing at a time, preferably until it’s finished, although that’s not always a realistic expectation. So I keep that in mind and when I’m already involved in some large projects, I let clients know that there will be a delay before I can start their new ones (unless of course, it’s urgent; I can be flexible when it’s necessary).
Janet Barclay´s last blog post..Facebook Revisited
@Janet
That’s a perfect example of why one system does not work for everyone.
[...] But instead of feeling overwhelmed, I’m amazed at my productivity! Over the last few weeks, I’ve been timeblocking - moving as many as 14 different tasks forward each day in half-hour [...]
[...] Alex Fayle says that “While often people suggest focusing on only a few tasks is the best way to get things done, I do much better working on a lot of projects a little at a time.” Learn more about his strategy in Productivity Marathons: Dealing with Too Long To-Do Lists. [...]