www.asianefficiency.com: You spent Sunday evening building the perfect calendar. Deep work in the morning. Meetings after lunch. Email in its own window. Every block in place. You start Monday feeling like you finally have a grip on the week.
Then one meeting runs long. One urgent email shows up. By 11 AM, the plan is already broken. And you feel behind rather than in control.
Does this sound familiar?
6 comments:
I really needed these tips! Moving into college has been new and difficult. Picking back up with mandatory classes, doing work-study, participating in sports, making new friends, connecting with old friends, managing my own sanity, and maintaining my identity amidst all this transformation all consume a lot of time and energy. Learning to keep up with schoolwork can become a challenge, especially now that the work patterns and assignments are different from what we’ve been used to in high school. I really appreciate how this article presents ways to manage time and maintain efficiency in simple, direct, and easy-to-follow forms. I especially liked the concept of assigning different tasks to different hours based on their level of importance. I’ve noticed that while lunch breaks are long, I can’t really do much effective work because I get sleepy after eating. I could then allocate less important or easier tasks to that time and save more demanding work for the afternoon and evening. I also like the shift from focusing on the tasks that need to get done to instead thinking about the outcomes of the day, as well as perceiving things as “in progress” rather than “incomplete.” I think these approaches can make work feel more productive while also helping you feel better about what you’ve accomplished.
I rely on my paper planner heavily, but I always find myself marking up my entire week in white-out and sticky notes to make what feels like a hundred adjustments a day. This article really seemed intriguing to me because while hand-writing a planner can be tedious at times, I really do appreciate having a paper planner over a digital one because I feel like I retain deadlines better after I write them down. I read this article hoping it would provide some tips on how to better maintain my planner. I did like how the article suggested to track outcomes rather than tasks; it seems like it would help time management between the days get a more realistic, organized flow. I also liked the tip to reframe “unfinished” as “in progress,” because I typically feel uncomfortable if I don’t finish something and have to walk away for another task/event. This mentality might help me reassess what I am actually planning for in a week. I also struggle with planning time to rest and recharge, so I might start adding in “buffer blocks” to my weekly planner as well.
These are really great concepts that I find particularly useful as manager, not even considering how useful it is generally as a student and human. Over my time as CMU, I have implemented a few of these strategies already without really putting a name to them. I've had to learn which timeframes I'm more productive in for what kind of work and structure when I do tasks that way, as well as letting myself be okay with do work anywhere at anytime. This is where they type of work also becomes really important because if I only have an hour and after 5-7 minutes one task isn't working it's time to pivot to another. I also have a planner that I list out all my tasks by day and each day I go through and put stars next to the ones that need to be completed that day, so I know what I need to prioritize. I hadn't considered the theme idea, and I am working on not feeling guilty for taking breaks, because when I do classify it as a break I feel okay but I typically feel like I'm supposed to be doing work so then I feel guilty.
I enjoyed this article, and I specifically enjoyed the part about disregarding imperfect blocks of time. I think he makes a good point by saying that a lot of our leftover time ends up going to email. Even though email does not seem like something that’s inherently a waste of time, I find myself using it as an escape from what I actually should be doing (usually an assignment). I think there are a lot of things that we find to do that trick us into thinking we’re productive. When I was in high school I used to clean my room when I didn’t want to do my French homework – it’s the same thing.
One thing that he doesn’t acknowledge in the article is that building the perfect calendar is now easier than it ever was, and it’s also easy to change. My perfect calendar gets build on sunday night, and yes, it’s usually destroyed by Monday morning, but now I can change it, and rebuild it so easily.
Calendars are great until things start to go wrong. We cannot anticipate every eventuality to plan for them. I find that when I do have a plan for the day and something messes it up it can put me in a sour mood for the rest of the day, so having a more flexible schedule may work out best for me. The recommendation of picking outcomes makes a lot of sense to me, and I think I may incorporate it into my to do list. Aiming for outcomes instead of just looking at each thing to do as a task can make the list of things to accomplish seem less intimidating. As for the rest of the suggestions in this article I think they would work best for someone who doesn’t have a lot of meetings and instead has to schedule each of their own tasks into their own schedule.
This article really brought up some points about time management that I appreciate. A lot of these things are new methods I am implementing this year and so far it has been really helpful. Taking time when you can to study, leaving contingency time between meetings, and not blocking out every single bit of your day.
I do the same thing where I spend Sunday evening creating something that is perfect for the week to come, and then by Monday morning I either have to add to it or move things around. A saying I tend to live by is that “you can’t control what others do, only yourself” so of course others are going to affect your time and that isn’t something you can plan for. I find that I would rather plan for meetings to be shorter rather than be longer, as they rarely end early. Having implemented a lot of these methods already I can say they definitely work and make my life just the tiniest bit easier.
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