Tickling the Task List

I’m adding a Monday post as well now, in addition to my Wednesday and Friday ones, so it’s three times a week from now on!

In my first couple of posts so far, we’ve talked about building up your calendar, but where do all those appointments come from? Depending on your role, there will be some form of task management, but we’ll assume you are able to use a tool such as Outlook to keep a track of all your work tasks.

Follow the calendar, not the task list

Yes, it’s great to tick things off in your task list once you’ve done them. However, it is vital to use the calendar and not your task list as your ‘driver’ for the day. In your weekly planning time, you can mark tasks to be completed by certain days or weeks, but then you need to actually schedule blocks of time on specific days to get those tasks done. One of the worst errors is to schedule a whole bunch of tasks without actually knowing when you’re going to do them. No wonder some tasks just keep getting deferred or never done!

Finding tasks

Now where do tasks themselves come from? Some might come from a project management system, some you will enter manually (as a result of a meeting for instance), while others will come from email.

In Outlook, you can mark an email as ‘to do’ and it will show up in your task list to be scheduled just like any other. You can also create categories of tasks and folders of tasks, so there are lots of ways of grouping and organising them.

If you use a notepad (paper or digital) to jot down things to do while you are in a meeting or brainstorming, then you’ll want to dump them into your task list right away, so you don’t lose track of them. Some might need to be done today, tomorrow, or later in the week, while others can be deferred till later. In your next scheduling session (you do have that, right?), you might then book time in your calendar to actually do them.

Create a task list

If you don’t already have a task list, then its’ time to start off with one. Dump everything that you need to do into the Outlook task list (or whatever task management app you are using). This could be everything from sending an email to somebody, preparing a document, researching something, etc. Get everything and anything into the task list and categorise them if possible. Don’t allow anything to stay just in your head. Dump it all into the list. Flag each one to note by when it needs to be done.

But don’t stop there

I’ll repeat ad nauseum that the key thing to remember is that having a task list is not enough—you must book time in your calendar to actually do these tasks. In Outlook, you can even drag and drop a task onto the calendar to create an appointment for it—it will automatically copy all the details of the task and its category colour as well.

Batching tasks into time blocks

Now this doesn’t mean that you need finely grained appointments in your calendar for each and every task—your calendar would become far too cluttered. Rather, you might group a bunch of related tasks and book time to deal with them all. For instance, if you have a set of tasks related to a certain project, then you would just book some time for that project and finish off everything you need to do during that time. You then get the satisfaction of ‘ticking off’ several tasks from your list during that period.

Size of the time blocks

It’s up to you how granular you are in how you arrange your calendar. Personally, I used to never go less than 30 minutes, but I gradually moved to using 15 min blocks. In Outlook, you can set up your calendar to even show 10 min or 6 min blocks if you really want to go that far. Personally, I think 15- or 30-minute blocks are sufficient to incorporate set up time, execution time, summary time and any breaks. If you really do have time left over, well that’s a bonus which leaves you free to decide whether to just go on straight to the next task in your schedule, take a break, tick off something minor on your to-do list which didn’t make it onto the calendar, etc.

Add a deadline on every task

It’s worth repeating again that every task in your task list should have a date on it. Don’t add vague tasks that might need to be done at some point but you’re not really sure when. Only add things that actually do need to get done within the foreseeable future. Vague projects, ideas, and so on without fixed times don’t belong in the to-do list. If there is a task that you keep postponing, consider whether it really is a task at all. It’s a waste of your time and brain space to deal with them and keep seeing them. Vague stuff like this belongs in a notebook of some kind; call it an ‘Ideas’ notebook, so you don’t lose them entirely. Review them from time to time and only add something to the task list when you do actually have a firm intention of getting it done.