A deadline that requires you to work and work endlessly is, to put it nicely, overly-ambitious or, not so nicely, dangerous. When it comes to setting a deadline, be sure to leave sufficient time to accommodate healthy working practices. Research has shown that we work harder when we are aware of deadlines, whilst the Yerkes–Dodson Law has suggested – for over a hundred years – a clear relationship between pressure and performance. As painful as they may be, clear timeframes boost productivity. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.” It’s true they aren’t amazingly fun but rather a fact of life. Set time limits and deadlinesĪs American writer Rita Mae Brown said, “A deadline is negative inspiration. Friday's planner allows users to add tasks conveniently and schedule a block of time to complete them (with reminders!), making you that much likelier to commit to your goals. One place means one focus point, so it’s vastly easier to manage work and plan life. Unifying everything under one planner is fundamentally faster because it eliminates the time wasted when physically switching between modalities, but also the cognitive time taken by the brain cognitively resetting, too. It gets complicated when your day is scattered here and there, in two notebooks, a phone, a calendar, a diary and a carrier pigeon. Once you’ve decided on an effective method for recording tasks and responsibilities, make sure you’re keeping it all in a single planner, otherwise there’s no real benefit to creating the to-do list at all. It may seem obvious that the most important tasks need completing first, but by collating your jobs and targets, you can efficiently manage your time, able to stay on track and get the pressing tasks out of the way. ![]() Important, but not urgent: Schedule time for itĤ. Urgent and important: Do it immediatelyĢ. There’s quite a few priority to-do list approaches, but the Eisenhower matrix is a notable one, allowing you to categorize tasks into four quadrants:ġ. Regardless of whether it’s physical or digital, form the habit of adding items as they occur to you.Ĭreating a priority system brings added benefits, namely a clearer view of your most critical tasks, but also a sense of relief from knowing that you’re working on the right focus. A to-do list can be as simple as a piece of paper and some rapid logging, a digital planner, or even specialized project management software. Having your tasks as an easily accessible record helps you stay on top of things. Create a priority to-do listĪs intelligent a being we may be, it’s insanely difficult to mentally juggle many ideas simultaneously. Instead, it would be much more productive to start with “introduce myself,” make the process habitual, “learn 10 new words a day,” and ultimately a series of achievable milestones, each one bringing you closer to your goal. If your goal is to “be fluent in Spanish”, it would hardly do you much good to blindly stare at such an imposing goal. Smaller tasks with clear completion criteria can make a project seem less daunting and boosts motivation, effectively giving you greater confidence in your abilities beforehand, and then reaffirming them through lots of small victories along the way. It’s vital to recognize the difference between the projects and create actionable plans in a form of smaller chunks to achieve it. It may seem counter-intuitive to give yourself “more” tasks, but it’s really just a way to visualize a large-scope project, which can be overwhelming and stress-inducing, in more manageable and (more importantly) measurable chunks. ![]() One of the easiest and most significant things one can do before undertaking a large project is to break it up into smaller parts.
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