Life Balance and the tactical necessity of organizing your weeks
In last three posts we have talked about some very high level life balance concepts but today I’m going to go all the way in the other direction and give you a practical method to manage your weeks and days.
Why do you care? You care if you always feel like you’re running behind and you feel like you’re not getting anything done and not getting anywhere towards your goals. Everyone has too much to do and not enough time to do it but it helps to have a system to get things done. By ‘getting things done’ I don’t just mean getting to the end of your to-do list by the end of the day. I mean getting to the end of your to-do list AND accomplishing some things that over the long haul will bring progress, meaning and purpose to your life.
Tactically I would rather have you be proactive in the way you approach life than reactive. Because when you are reactive, chances are that you are giving up control, abdicating your free will to someone or something else. I want you to work off of your agenda not someone else’s. I want you to become the tactical center of gravity in your interactions within your peer group whether in the office or at home.
Does that make sense? What I’m really trying to give you is the gift of control, to enable you.
Let’s begin with the assumptions that you’re one of those smart people who make an effort to write down your goals. You have some short term and long term goals. In order to move towards those goals you need to take action. Action takes the form of tasks and projects.
I’ve talked to you about the distinction between tasks and projects before. You need to understand that when you write your to-do list for a day or a week you will be, or should be, writing tasks. Some of those tasks will be part of a larger project. Those larger projects will be things that support and move you to your goals.
This is an important distinction because if your to-do lists contain projects, like ‘paint the house’, with no associated tasks or steps, you won’t ever get them done and you will become frustrated and disempowered. It is a critical skill to be able to recognize the difference between tasks and projects.
I carry with me five basic lists that I update each week. I do this on paper, but you can feel free to digitize it if that’s better for you.
The first list I have is labeled “Work Tasks” at the top. These are all the things that I have to get done. This is my work to-do list. An example might be “Scan cards into LinkedIn”. This means at some point during the week I’ll take all the business cards I’ve collected and scan them and I’ll upload that list into LinkedIn and invite those people to connect into my professional network.
Let’s think about this for a second. Why am I doing this? I am doing this because I understand the business value of these contacts and one of my goals is to consistently expand my professional network. This adds value to my career. This task, as simple as it is, is aligned with a higher level goal.
This alignment is important, because, let’s face it, scanning business cards is never going to be an urgent task. No customer or partner is ever going to be on the phone yelling at me because I forgot to scan my business cards. If I didn’t prioritize it because it aligns with a long term goal it would never ever make it to the top of the list.
The flip side of this is true as well. There are urgent tasks that you will discover have no impact on your long term goals and can be de-prioritized or re-prioritized.
Examples might be “do expenses” or “approve time sheets”. These really have no higher level goal alignment but they are part of the necessary bureaucracy of life. As an aside, when you see tasks that do not align with higher level value, those are great candidates to outsource to someone else.
The second list I have is labeled “Work Projects”. An example of this might be “write white paper on XYZ”. This is a project, not a task. This is not something I can just knock off. I have to do some research and write some notes and drafts before I can deliver on this project. It’ might be a full day’s worth of work. I won’t know until I start. But, each of those things; research, notes and drafts are tasks that I can schedule into my day or week, thus leading to a project completion in support of a goal.
The reason the distinction between projects and tasks is important is that it will keep you from getting frustrated and from getting a bunch of stuff half way done. It will help you manage all your balls that you have in the air without losing control. If you just drop “write white paper’ on your task list you’ll end up staring at it for a few minutes then ignoring it and skipping to the next task that you can actually execute. You won’t get it done.
Got it? List one and list two are Work Tasks and Work Projects. I keep this with me so that when I’m on the phone with a co-worker or at a client and some new task or project comes up I can capture it. By having them all on the list I can visually prioritize. Some projects may never get done, but they will not get done by choice, by my prioritization, not by chance and external pressures.
See how it works? A simple device to put you in the driver’s seat.
The next two lists are the same thing for personal stuff. I have a list of personal tasks and a list of personal projects. A personal task might be “workout”. A personal project might be “create new website for XYZ”
Again, I may not get everything done on my task list. I may not get everything on my project list done. But, what I do get done will be what I have chosen to get done. The truth we all know is that there is only so much time and you can’t do everything even if you wanted to. You need to use time efficiently and prioritize.
Perhaps the MOST valuable thing about these lists is that it moves the tasks and projects out of my brain into a secure holding area so that I don’t need to be constantly reviewing them subconsciously. This constant subconscious review of all these things will keep you awake at night. If your subconscious knows they are accounted for it can relax, and you’ll sleep better knowing that everything is accounted for.
This also allows me to think about my tasks and projects and how I will approach them. For example this post was on one of my lists for the last three weeks. I have been able to form the outline of it in my mind and that makes for an faster and higher quality first draft! It helps me be more efficient by mentally organizing ahead of time. Using that subconscious energy to organize instead of using it to try and remember everything I’ve got in my queue.
A fifth list I keep is a catch-all for ideas. I label it simply ‘ideas’. I might have one for work and one for personal. I am either cursed or blessed with an active mind and I’m always coming up with interesting thoughts. When they come up I write them on the ideas list. They may turn into a task or a project or a blog post or may never come to fruition but whatever happens I capture them and come back to them when appropriate.
For those ideas that become projects I may start a separate list of ideas specifically for that project. What are the tasks that need to be done? What are the constraints? What are the prerequisites? Who do I need to talk to?
Thos are my lists.
That’s great but how do I use those lists to stay on top of things and become the center of gravity in my peer groups? Here is how to use your lists to manage your days, your weeks and your life balance.
Sunday night sit down and review your calendar for the week. Review your lists of tasks and projects and start to loosely schedule in what you are going to execute. Take whatever steps and do whatever communication you need to do to get a jump on the week.
I know you value your free time, but successful people get ahead by spending a little bit of time planning their week in advance. This simple act of reviewing your calendar, tasks and projects for the week will allow you to plan instead of react. Try it. Instead of showing up for work Monday morning and getting overwhelmed by incoming crap you can be the one in control and managing that crap.
This also sends a very effective message to the people you interact with. If they see you organizing your week ahead of time, on Saturday or Sunday they will get the message that you care about your job and you are taking steps to do well at it. In a sense you are managing your professional avatar. You are saying ‘yeah, I’m that kind of person’ and that puts you in a different club.
Along the same line of thinking and action – successful people repeat this planning session each morning when they start their day. Take out your task list, take out your project list, take out your calendar for the day and come up with a basic outline of a plan on how that day is going to play out. Even if you can’t do it every day, a couple times a week will still help. Even if your day gets blown up by events outside your control you can still manage the reschedule and recovery much more effectively.
I know what you’re thinking. This sounds like extra work. It isn’t. The amount of time you will gain through efficiency and control will be ten times what you spend on your 5-10 minute daily planning sessions.
The real win is that It puts you in control of your life. It allows you to start inserting tasks and projects that you choose – that align with your goals and life balance agenda. It allows your big brain to think about something else, something more important. You let the process juggle the balls and you do the work and get stuff done.
I’m going to ask you an important question. Think about it before you answer.
Are you willing to do a 1/2-hour of prep work for your week before it starts and 5 minutes a day if it would put you in control of your life balance and enable you to reach your goals?