My Time Management System

This is my long-overdue article on how I manage my time. My main issue with this is that I’ve had all these ideas floating around in my head for some time, but I’ve never managed to get them onto paper. I guess I’m writing this now because I’ve had so much of my time wasted running around government offices and the sort over the last week, and my productivity has taken a huge hit. This post is really more for my own benefit more than anything

So to start with, here’s the mindmap I came up with when I was putting this together:

So as you can see, there are two parts to this. The first is the concept of lists, which everyone should be using. The second are some principles which help me get through my lists. I’ll explain everything in detail.

Lists

Daily To-Do List

This is a very simple word document that uses bullet points to list all my daily / weekly goals. I carry this around with me all day, either on my phone or in paper format. It has everything from “go get groceries” to “ask VA to get in touch with xyz company”.

Project Plans (business)

I’m making modifications in this area. Originally I used these gigantic excel spreadsheets to map out the path of each business project, but I’m changing them to a more tactical role. These will list the mundane everyday things that need to be done for each projects – content than needs to be published, so-and-so that needs to be informed of this and that and so on. Basically this is a big maintenance schedule.

Each project that I’m working on gets one of these.

Project Mindmaps (business)

A new addition to my system. I know a lot of information marketers use these, so I think I’ll give them a spin. Generally they work like personal mindmaps (see below), only they are centred around one specific business project. I’ll be mapping out short (1-month), medium (3-month), long (6-month) term goals for each project. I believe that 6 months is a really, really long time when it comes to business, but if necessary I may start adding in 1-year or 3-year strategic plans as well later down the track.

Personal Mindmaps

These are my personal goals, categorised into health, wealth, relationships and peace of mind. At the moment I have 3-month, 6-month, 1-year, 3-year goals listed. Given the changes I’ve made to my business goals, I may also add in a 1-month goal sheet too (1 month is a long time). I review these every single morning, to make sure what I’m doing is on-track with them.

Daily Checklists

The thinking behind this is Earl Nightingale’s famous piece of advice which says that if you spend just 1 hour a day studying something for a year, you’ll become a world-class expert in that topic.

So these checklists are my must do items for everyday. 1 hour of this, 1 hour of that. At the moment for me, this includes exercise and language study.

Weekly Reviews

I was looking through some notes I had made on Dan Kennedy’s awesome time management book, and noticed a point that said ‘follow Kennedy’s weekly review template’. I realised that I hadn’t been doing this, so I looked it up and made my own review sheet.

Here’s my business one:

What do I know, or what have I completed this week, that I didn’t know or do last week, regarding…

1. My core business
2. My industry
3. My competitors
4. My Customers or Clients
5. Top 20% of my customers
6. Leaders in my field
7. Market trends (social, economic, cultural)
8. A Marketing Topic
9. My Business Processes

Here’s my personal one:

What do I know, or what have I completed this week, that I didn’t know or do last week regarding…

1. My Health
2. My Wealth
3. My Relationships
4. My Peace of Mind goals
5. A Success Topic

Of course, I’ll be using these in conjunction with my personal mindmaps which contain all my goals.

Principles

30-minute intervals

This is a Dan Kennedy idea. I block off parts of my day as an ‘appointment’, even if it’s just me working by myself. I’m taking it one-step further, as I tried this in the past and blocked off hours for ‘work’ and it didn’t work. I’m going to block off hours of my day in 30-minute intervals, and assign specific intervals to specific tasks. So if today’s task is ‘write 3 content articles’, I might block off 1 hour to complete that and only work on that. This also resolves the whole multitasking debate – if I’ve assigned specific time period to work on only one thing, then I won’t be multitasking during that time.

Regrouping

Regrouping is simply getting myself organised. Working my GTD system (in & out trays), checking my daily to-do, reviewing goals etc etc. Once in the morning, and once at night.

Tasks Aligned to Goals

Pretty simple. Make sure everything I do is driven towards achieving a goal. I’m ruthless about this. Unless I’m out having fun or partying, everything else I do has to be towards achieving a goal… or else I’m not doing it.

GTD

David Allen’s Getting Things Done book is a great read and great organisational system, but a bit too structured for my liking. I’ll stick with my lists that I’ve outlined above, but one thing I am borrowing from him is the concept of in and out trays, and the 2-minute rule. If any tasks in my in tray takes less than 2 minutes to handle, I’m doing it now. In fact, I’ll block out 30-60 minutes of my day to deal with all these small 2-minute tasks and make sure they get looked at.

iPod & Notebook

I carry an iPod and Notebook (paper) with me everywhere. I load audiobooks and seminar recordings onto my iPod, so if I’m every stuck in some waiting room somewhere I’ll have something to do and not be sitting idly. The paper notebook is so that if I have any ideas or epiphanies during the day I can jot them down somewhere. I might actually just use my phone for this instead.

Big 3 Concept

This is Dan Kennedy’s version of the 80/20 rule. Pick the 3 biggest things or actions I know I should complete every day and do them first. The key is to pick things that I know will have the biggest impact on my life and do them, then do everything else later.

Carrying Goals Around

Carry your goals on paper or in your PDA or whatever around with you everywhere, so they’re there for reference if you need them. Also acts as a litmus test when you think you’re about to do something that isn’t related to your goals. I think I’ll also be using my phone for this.

Never Reset Goals

If you fail to meet a deadline for a goal, don’t scrap the goal. Make it bigger. Make it more exciting. Call it the ‘goal of everlasting glory’ or something. If you set the goal in the first place, there’s probably a reason for it, so keep it and make it even more audacious.

VA To-Do Lists

I’m going to start doing this because I have a VA. It’s going to be a word document similar to my daily to-do list, that lists out all the tasks my VAs have to complete this week. All the planning comes from Project Plans & Mindmaps, and weekly or daily I’ll transfer them to this sheet and assign the tasks to my VAs.

Unrealistic Deadlines

Tim Ferriss talks about this. Basically projects or tasks tend to expand to fit the amount of time you allocate for them. So the way to get around this is to set really tight or unrealistic deadlines (say 20 minutes as opposed to an hour) to complete tasks, and then go all out to get it done. If you run overtime… don’t beat yourself up. You’ll probably get it done faster than you normally would have anyway.

Commitments and Obligations

I’ve found that any tasks that have an external commitment or obligation attached to them I tend to get done faster. Whilst this isn’t as much of a deal for me anymore (for reasons I won’t go into here), it’s useful if you’re delivering for clients to remind yourself that you’re obligated to carry through on a particular project or item. You’ll be much more efficient and get things done faster.

Thai version coming soon.

[tags]time management, tim ferriss, earl nightingale, getting things done, david allen, lists, management principle, GTD, iPod, goals, virtual assistants, regrouping, mindmaps, project management, lifehacks, health, wealth, relationships, lifestyle[/tags]

Tagged as: david allen, earl nightingale, getting things done, goals, GTD, Health, iPod, Lifehacks, Lifestyle, lists, management principle, mindmaps, project management, regrouping, Relationships, tim ferriss, Time Management, virtual assistants, Wealth