Hello!
Last month I wrote about building your daily routine list to help you stay on track, click here.
This month I’ll continue with another one of my favorite ways to stay on track with daily planning: My ToDoNow list.
First, I like to set my top priority goals for the day in a spreadsheet, ideally in 3 main categories:
Work
Personal
Health and Fitness
Next, I put one of these goals or something else that comes up during the day into my ToDoNow section. Once something goes under the ToDoNow heading, I try to focus completely so I do nothing else in life until that activity is finished and checked off.
There are a few ways to do this:
If it’s a simple task, I just list the task, like “Start laundry” or “Post to the PeopleOne Health community”
If the task is part of a larger project, I’ll break it down by either being specific to complete a named part of the task or to work on this project for a time period like 15-30 minutes. Often when I do this, I’ll get into the flow of the project and go beyond my allotted time and finish or nearly finish the project because I put myself into a focused state of mind.
The most advanced way I use this is to give myself an artificial deadline and write, “Complete [this task] in 30 minutes” (or whatever time period you think best fits). In this situation, I race to complete the task to the best of my ability before the time is up giving myself positive pressure to make this happen.
This last one is an advanced time management concept, so I’ll share more about this.
My first job out of college was in a management training program for a large company known to be great at developing young managers. My boss told me at one point that the company leaders liked to test young managers to “see how many balls they could keep in the air” and “see what happens when they dropped a ball.”
This was training to learn how to work under pressure including deadline pressure I had in my role. I do believe that learning to work under this type of pressure including deadlines is great career training because you can get dramatically more efficient and productive when you literally have to have something completed in a certain amount of time.
The benefits from this type of training can carry over and make you more efficient the rest of your career. I remember some of our interns being amazed at what I could “crank out” in a short amount of time because I had practiced this so much.
But, this can be stressful and we also want you to avoid stress.
Using this form of ToDoNow with an artificial deadline gives you positive stress that you control so this helps you become more productive on your own terms.
I have read research showing that if you view something as an opportunity and not a stressor your body will have an entirely different reaction and this is a way to practice this. Hmm, I might write more about this concept in next month’s article.
Best wishes reaching your goals. I hope these last two articles help you with simple ways to increase your chances of reaching not only health and fitness goals, but also goals in all areas of life!
If you haven’t connected with me yet in the community, here is my profile (you need to be logged in). I’d love to connect! Let me know if you have any questions about my time management concepts or anything else once we connect.
Have a great month!
Chris “SparkGuy” Downie
PeopleOne Health Co-founder & Executive Board Chair
