When you have a lot of things to do, you start justifying not doing them. It’s called procrastination, kids, and it’s a real problem.
Here’s what happens.
I have a Google Calendar with several sub-calenders (eg: real work, client work, life, bills, etc.) Because you can easily drag one activity from day to day, I tend to over-crowd my daily calendar with 10 activities, when realistically I know I can only accomplish say, 4 of them (even if they’re not the most important 4). The other 6 get dragged to the next day.
There are lots of problems with this. Mainly, important and somewhat urgent things like “reply to emails” can’t keep getting moved to the next day and the next. They should and need to be done today.
A slightly junior problem is that I have a lot of longer-term, important but non-urgent to-do items like “fix cast-iron skillet.” I can either put them on a list (that will surely never get looked at) or I can put them on the calendar where they’ll inevitably get mixed up with REAL to-do items and then I’ll just get overwhelmed.
My solution, at least I think, is that I’m going to create ANOTHER Google calendar for long-term to-do items where it’s OKAY to drag them to the next day if I can’t get them done. But anything else on the calendar absolutely has to get done. No questions. No more dragging.
I’m also going to start using Stephen Covey’s quadrants for time management a little more. There’s A LOT of things in quadrants III and IV I need to eliminate to make more time for I and II.
We’ll see how it goes but I’m REALLY trying to stay on this “super jazzed up productive best year ever” bandwagon and I think this will help me. I need to consolidate and attack! One day at a time.
