In the real world of getting things done, we all have to make tough decisions about how we spend our time. This involves sorting through a shitload of tasks, which I do by making To-Do lists and using my kick-ass new whiteboard system, and that others do by keeping Bullet Journals or using other systems.
Every workday, as part of my morning routine I make my bed and then write out a list of what I’m going to do that day, in the approximate order I’m going to do it in. I’ve talked about this process many times on this blog, but there’s one crucial thing I haven’t yet addressed: how exactly do I decide what goes on the list???
More and more, I’ve noticed several distinct factors that affect how I choose to spend my time. These factors range from doing certain things at my preferred time of the day to things that have to be done a little at a time. Some of these factors involve exterior deadlines and some of them don’t—rather, each factor on this list influences your decisionmaking on a micro-scale, and knowing how they affect you can help you make better decisions about how you prioritize your own time.
Enough chit-chat—here’s the list, in approximate order from highest- to lowest-priority:
1. For-Serious Exterior Deadlines
This is the factor that drives me most: having to finish something for my Day Job, submit a piece of writing by a certain date, and even file my taxes on time. These are strict deadlines set by others, and not meeting them can result in real consequences ranging from talking-tos to lost opportunities.
More than anything else on this list, exterior deadlines provide me with real incentive to get my ass in gear. For better or worse, I see these deadlines as holding more weight than tasks I prioritize myself, and this forces me to devote more time to them to make sure they get done.
The downside, though, is that rarely do exterior deadlines involve producing actual creative work (as I wrote about at length here), and having too many of them usually means that longer-term projects, along with actual time spent creating, get left in the dust, and that’s not cool.
2. Self-Imposed Deadlines I Make to Myself or Others
Some deadlines don’t come from outside, but hold just as much weight. If I tell someone (especially someone I don’t know that well) that I’m going to finish something by a certain day, I try to stick to that promise just like I would a real deadline because I don’t want the other person to think less of me if I fail to deliver. (This might stem from a greater preoccupation about how others see me, but that’s a topic for another post…)
The same holds true for promises I make to myself: if I tell myself that I’m absolutely going to finish something by a certain time, I usually end up doing it because making that promise to myself ratchets up the priority level in my planning process. This blog is a big part of that: when I first started it, I told myself I was going to post something every Monday, and with a few pre-scheduled exceptions, I’ve kept up that promise pretty well.
Making your own deadlines and then sticking to them as if they were real is one of the hardest things there is to do, but for creative people working on their own, it’s 1000% essential to getting things done. If only I did it a little more often…
3. Tasks That Get the Ball Rolling on Something Else
Rarely do we work entirely alone: sometimes we have to send emails, ask someone a question, or do small tasks that form a prerequisite for a bigger, more important task. For example, when I wanted to start planning the Japan talk at my hometown bookstore, the first step was emailing the bookstore owner to iron out specifics. Or, if I want to clean my clogged-up shower drain, I might have to go to the store first to buy gloves and cleaner.
Tasks like these often involve planning your time out even more carefully, because you have to do the main activity (e.g., making a presentation) after the person’s responded to your initial question, which could involve a waiting period. Managing these potentially long gaps can be stressful, and for this reason I also tend to place them high on my priorities list so I can get them out of the way faster and leave myself with fewer complexities to juggle to simplify my workload.
4. Things That I Like to Do at Certain Times of the Day/Week
Morning/Night preference can be a surprisingly powerful motivator: when I can, I like to write in the morning, or immediately after a post-Day Job de-stressing session. Likewise, I prefer doing laundry on weekend mornings (more time to air dry my clothes!), go grocery shopping on weekend evenings (after 6:00 when the staff starts doing markdowns!), and write letters and emails to my friends at night (when I still feel like being productive but prefer something with lower stakes).
In general, my daily chain of command involves doing things that involve greater concentration (like writing, heavy editing, or intensive projects) earlier in the day, and things that involve less concentration (such as lighter editing, research, writing emails, or household chores) later in the day.
Knowing that I’ll be at my best at the start of the workday is a HUGE motivator for making sure certain things get done, especially creative work. On the flipside, though, scheduling evening and night tasks later in the day often means these tasks get pushed back if I fall behind—which can then throw off my plan for the next day, or even the entire week (d’oh!).
While I overall tend to balance my working time preference with the previous three kinds of deadlines, knowing your own preferences for doing things at different times of the day can help keep you motivated and produce higher quality work.
5. Things That Need to Be Done Incrementally
Not everything can be accomplished in a single day: some things need to be done a little at a time, which means we need to make time for them day by day. In this category I place things like studying Japanese, the TEFL class I finally finished last spring, typing up an interview transcript, or even drafting out a novel—things that I simply can’t work on in larger chunks because spending too much time on them would cause me to collapse from sheer exhaustion (or worse, get distracted and reach for my phone!).
I find that dividing certain tasks into smaller chunks makes me naturally move them higher on my priority list because I don’t want to leave them to the last minute. Plus, telling myself that I’m going to spend a half hour on something makes it seem a lot less intimidating—and that’s really, really important for motivating me to sit down and work on it.
6. Things with No Deadline at All
Last but certainly not least are things that lack any real deadline or immediacy—the things that could always be done “later.” Things that (sadly) fall into this category include long-term projects of any kind, bigger cleaning/organizational tasks around my apartment, and, sadly, actual writing.
Not being able to prioritize these kinds of tasks because I’m spending too much time on factors 1-5 has been a source of discouragement and frustration for me for a long time. As always, being more aware of this in recent months has made it easier for me to improve my long-term planning so that these things don’t get left behind, but I’ve still got a long way to go.
Prioritizing Means Success
As humans we naturally prioritize things that are important to us, often without even thinking about it. Knowing what factors affect the way your prioritize your own work is a big step toward being able to control these priorities and make sure you’re spending your time wisely, so I hope this outline has given you some things to think about.
As for me, I’ll be trying to move more things from the “No Deadline” category into the “Self-Imposed Deadline” category so I’ll naturally choose to devote more time to them. This could well be the key to making sure important things don’t get left behind, so as always, I’ll keep you posted…
One more thing you could always make a priority…
But I Also Have a Day Job on Facebook
My Instagram where I post cool pics from Japan