The Productive Innovator

In today’s show we take a look at time blocking and task management based on priorities and commitments.

TODAY’S TOPICS

00:00:00 - Why You Should Manage Your Time

00:01:52 - Priority-based Task Management

00:04:03 - Tools for Tasks and Time Management

00:06:03 - Time Blocking

SHOW NOTES

Why You Should Manage Your Time

Time Blocking can set you up for success. It helps you to be clear and focussed on what is ahead. The sweet spot probably lies in doing it well enough so that you can keep peace of mind and by keeping the effort to the minimum so that you do not have to constantly tweak and adjust your task and time management system.

Priority-based Task Management

The root cause of too much work lies in us as we often give in and say yes too quickly. Saying yes in most cases means that we have made a commitment with consequences.

The first part of your time and task management is that you use your priorities as a guide to decide if a task is important. This can be life priorities combined with priorities you have determined for your business, your work and some are externally determined, for example, by your manager.

Secondary to this is the time component. How soon a task is expected to be completed by you or in a collaboration with others. You should challenge yourself if a date by when a task is due is truly critical or if it is made up.

I tend to only add larger tasks or sometimes even entire projects with their due date in my task management app. This approach works very well especially if you make use of time blocking.

Tools for Tasks and Time Management

OmniFocus is a powerful task management tool with tons of customization features. But I spent too much time tweaking and adjusting things and I moved to the Things task manager next.

Things is much easier to set up and have just the right amount of features. But I felt the urge to go even a step further in simplifying.

Then I landed at Apple Reminders which seamlessly syncs between my Apple devices. Reminders has quite a few shortcomings and lacks a few features. But then I discovered the app GoodTask which is a task manager that sits on top of Apple Reminders. It basically adds functionality and features that allow for more granular sorting, tagging and scheduling of tasks.

Time Blocking

If you work with Google Calendars you have a lot of the needed features already. Just keep using the native apps if you are happy with it.

I use Fantastical which is a powerful but simple calendar management app.

Time blocking means that you schedule blocks of time for certain tasks and purposes. I have time blocks for private commitments and I block off time for basic needs such as time in the morning hours for my morning routine, lunch time, and time in the evening that is strictly reserved for private life.

During my weekly reviews I go through my week or two weeks ahead and confirm that I have sufficient time for what I have to work on and for a few things that I would like to spend time on.

I also keep an eye on how many meetings I have during each day and I tend to block time if there are too many meetings or I may even move them to ensure there is enough time left to work on the important things and to keep room for creativity which cannot be scheduled or planned.

Time blocking keeps me in 90% of the situations focussed and allows me sufficient time to approach work in my way and how I can deliver my best work. Being in control makes life much less stressful. It will be easier for you to say no I have a commitment and I can’t meet this week and it will be easier to judge if you can work on something different than what you had planned because you can see if there is time available the next day when you may have more energy to work on this difficult task. Take control and block time in your own systems based on your own priorities and rules.

Please share your questions, comments, ideas and suggestions via the contact form on my website or via email.

Access the RSS feed and links to major podcast apps at theproductiveinnovator.com/pod.

Sign up for The Productive Innovator Newsletter and visit The Productive Innovator website and blog for additional resources.

LINKS IN THIS EPISODE:

Apps that I use and which I talked about in this episode:

Google Calendar - The native app (browser-based or for your mobile OS) from Google for the calendar that comes with your Google account
Fantastical - I have tried endless calendar apps and finally found one that I may keep for the long run. Fantastical keeps expanding functionality and integrates nicely with calendar services and the major video conferencing services. I like the natural language interface, the 100% customizable calendar views and the advanced scheduling features that can help find group meeting time slots no matter what app the participants use.
GoodTask - This is my latest addition. I like that I finally have full control over customization features for my task management system based on the Apple Reminder app. If you use Reminders but struggle with its limited features, try this app.
Things - Flexible and feature rich task manager that offers everything that most of you will need.
OmniFocus - A powerful task manager that lets you dial into your tasks and projects. It is tailored towards the Getting Things Done system but also comes with modern features such as tags.