Manage Your Time and Increase Your Productivity With a Simple List

Time management is something that all of us have to do. However, in addition to being able to manage time well, a good time management system should also help us to avoid being overly stressed while juggling the many things we have to or are expected to do in our work and personal lives.

The number of hours in a day are limited to 24 and, since we need to take some time for personal needs like sleeping and eating, the hours left for work and other personal activities is further limited.

Being trained in economics and having worked in systems for a while, I have always been on the lookout for ways to save time by automating routine tasks that suck up time during the day.

Things like setting up filters and color coded labels in my Gmail which make it easier to quickly check my email and deal immediately with what is important and either leave or delete the other things.  

Managing my banking and bills online also saves time as I can check accounts at any time and, with a few clicks can retrieve monthly statements, use my bank’s bill pay system to set them up to be paid and then, with another click or two, file the statement.

In addition to setting up simple systems for routine things that have to be done on a daily, weekly or monthly basis there is also a need to find ways to organize and manage all of the various things that need to be done during our day especially our work or school day.  

Students, office workers, managers, sales people and other professionals usually find themselves faced with a changing variety of tasks and deadlines in their work day.  Facing this wide array of changing and competing tasks can be both daunting and stressful especially when one’s approach is disorganized.

In addition to outside requests and interruptions, there workers are often surrounded by numerous little distractions.  Reading emails some of which are important and need to be addressed immediately but most can be either put aside until later or simply ignored and deleted.

Other distractions surrounding workers include working on low priority, but more enjoyable projects,  chatting with co-workers and other busy work and distractions.

A major reason many people have for avoiding doing any type of daily scheduling or prioritizing of their work day is the fact that they are surrounded with numerous projects and tasks as well as facing interruptions and changes in plans during the work day.  

This has always been one of my major reasons for not doing any type of written prioritizing and planning.  I have always maintained a calendar with meeting times and deadlines for important project, but for years I mostly kept myself flexible and mentally tracked and juggled my workload.

A major reason for my not doing any type of serious written planning in the past was to avoid reaching the end of the workday and having to look at a big To-Do List with only one or two items crossed out.  

Of course, even without an unfinished To-Do List staring me in the face at the end of the day, I would often leave my office frustrated by a feeling of not having accomplished anything of significance due to a flood of interruptions and distractions.

A few months ago I ran across an article in a magazine that mentioned making a short list at the beginning of the day listing the things that you wanted to accomplish or had to finish that day.

It was obviously a type of To-Do List, however, unlike a list one keeps adding to as new things come up and checking off things that have been taken care of, the list was only used for the current day and then thrown out.

The list was also a type of  priority list, but, again, just listed your priorities for that day.

I liked the simplicity of the list idea and it also reminded me of something I had read in one of the books by the late Dr. Norman Vincent Peale regarding stress management.  

In that passage, Dr. Peale discussed how a certain business acquaintance managed the daily stress of work by making a short list like each day of the things he wanted to accomplish that day.  As he finished each task on the list he crossed it off.  At the end of the day everything was crossed off and his last act of the day was to toss the list in the waste basket as he left his office.

This man left the office each day feeling he had accomplished everything that was needed and didn’t think about work or things that needed to be done at work for the rest of the evening.

The magazine article I recently read  included a comment that the late writer and motivational speaker, Earl Nightingale, had used a similar system and claimed to have never lost a night’s sleep due to worrying about issues at work.

While I have always been good at multi-tasking and juggling a number of projects at once, I have rarely relied on more than a calendar to manage appointments and occasional deadline.  

However, in the past couple of years things have been becoming more complicated as responsibilities in my regular day job have been increasing while my outside teaching responsibilities and HubPage writing have been consuming more of my time outside my regular job.   

While my preference would be to quit the day job and devote my time to the more enjoyable online teaching and writing, this is currently not an option financially.  My alternative has been to work on organizing my time better while continuing to seek more efficient ways of doing things.

I have been experimenting using this simple to-do list system and have found it to be quite useful for me.  It only takes a minute or two to come up with a list of things I want to do and then write them down.

Once written, I keep the list handy on my  desk as a reminder of which things I want to accomplish that day.  As I complete tasks on the list, I cross them off and this gives me a feeling of meeting and accomplishing things as I go about my day.

Because the list is short, there is time available to handle the numerous unplanned interruptions that come with managing people and work flow in an organization.  Also, since the list is just that, a list of things I want to accomplish and which are not tied to specific times in my day, I have the luxury of doing each one when I want to.  

The goal is to accomplish the things on the list and not get distracted by doing other tasks not on the list.  However, I am free to decide when and how they will be accomplished that day.

For me, the beauty of the list is that am better able to select and focus  on a set of tasks that eventually need to be accomplished  and complete them that day.  There is also a discipline element in that the things that I usually put on the list are ones that need to be done eventually but are also usually the less desirable tasks that I tend to put aside and avoid until thay absolutely have to be done.  

While I still don’t enjoy doing these less desirable things, focusing on and completing a few of them each day has reduced the stress associated with leaving work each day knowing that these things are still hanging over me.  I now know why Earl Nightingale and the business executive cited by Dr. Peale in his book did not lose sleep at night worrying about problems left at the office.

Because of my success with using this type of to-do list at work, I have also started using a similar list to help better manage the time that I set aside outside of my regular job for teaching and writing.  

A separate list is now helping me to manage this, more limited, time better and making it easier to maintain limits on the time I spend at home doing this additional work outside my regular job.

Knowing that I have completed what needed to be completed in the limited time available for this outside activity allows  me to pull away to relax and spend time with my family without worrying about unfinished assignments to correct or Hubs to be finished and published.