Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's tip comes from a listener who has upgraded her
Speaker 1: to do lists by giving all tasks a time frame.
Speaker 1: People love to hate to do lists, and certainly many
Speaker 1: people don't use them effectively. Over the years, lots of
Speaker 1: people have sent me one study that found that about
Speaker 1: half of the tasks on people's to do lists are
Speaker 1: done in a day, but are never done at all.
Speaker 1: I have to confess that I find this bewildering. There's
Speaker 1: absolutely no point in putting something on it to do
Speaker 1: list if you don't actually intend to do it. I
Speaker 1: could see maybe one task every few days not happening
Speaker 1: because of something truly unforeseen. But it's the nature of
Speaker 1: life for stuff to come up. This is not a surprise.
Speaker 1: If of items aren't getting done, there's a mismatch between
Speaker 1: people's intentions and reality. One of the most important mismatches
Speaker 1: is a gap between how much time is available and
Speaker 1: how much time the items on a to do list
Speaker 1: will take to get done. Fifteen hours of tasks don't
Speaker 1: fit in five hours of time, and by the way,
Speaker 1: five hours of tasks is about all you can reasonably
Speaker 1: commit to ahead of time during an eight hour work day.
Speaker 1: But Listener Ginger has come up with a strategy to
Speaker 1: mitigate this common time planning fallacy. As she puts it,
Speaker 1: my productivity hack is to use to do timelines instead
Speaker 1: of to do lists. She explains the reason for this
Speaker 1: is that if I have an unstructured work day, something
Speaker 1: she says is rare but can happen, I easily get
Speaker 1: distracted and end up wasting half of the day without
Speaker 1: getting anything done. So I change up my to do
Speaker 1: list to look like this. In her email, she listed
Speaker 1: out her tasks with a time frame next to all
Speaker 1: of them. For instance, eight ten to eight thirty, she
Speaker 1: would make her to do timeline. From eight thirty to
Speaker 1: nine fifteen, she'd check email from nine fifteen to eleven o'clock.
Speaker 1: Should review training materials. From eleven to eleven thirty, she'd
Speaker 1: create a training schedule. From eleven thirty to eleven forty five,
Speaker 1: she would send an email about supplies. Eleven forty five
Speaker 1: to twelve thirty. Should work on one of her job
Speaker 1: specific projects thirteen thirty a meeting about a different project
Speaker 1: thirteen thirty to fourteen thirty, she says, on her schedule lunch. Now,
Speaker 1: if you can convert those twenty four hour clock entries
Speaker 1: to conversational time, you'll notice that Gingers to do timeline
Speaker 1: ends at two thirty PM. This does not mean her
Speaker 1: day ends then, however, this is her acknowledging reality. I
Speaker 1: never schedule out the whole day because other things come up,
Speaker 1: she says. Maybe a colleague emails that he forgot to
Speaker 1: tell her about a meeting but they really need her input,
Speaker 1: or a manager needs a quick turnaround on something. If
Speaker 1: Ginger doesn't have the whole day scheduled, she can regroup
Speaker 1: to deal with these things. Once I get to the
Speaker 1: end of my to do timeline, I review what I
Speaker 1: was able to get completed, what still needs to be done,
Speaker 1: and what else popped up, she says, and I create
Speaker 1: another timeline for the rest of the day. The brilliance
Speaker 1: of Ginger's approach is that she recognizes that all tasks
Speaker 1: take time. If you are not willing to assign a
Speaker 1: task a time, that means there's a high chance you
Speaker 1: are not going to do it. I mean, maybe a
Speaker 1: time will magically appear, but probably not so. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to create smarter to do lists, take some time
Speaker 1: the night before or in the morning to think through
Speaker 1: what you'd like to accomplish. Keep the list short right
Speaker 1: out when you will do everything. Don't fill all available
Speaker 1: time in case you're wrong on how long something takes
Speaker 1: or in case things come up. But if you do
Speaker 1: keep doing this, your to do lists are far more
Speaker 1: likely to become lists of accomplishment rather than sources of guilt.
Speaker 1: How do you structure your to do lists? You can
Speaker 1: let me know at Before Breakfast podcast at i heeart
Speaker 1: media dot com. And if you have a strategy like
Speaker 1: gingers that makes you more productive and you'd like to
Speaker 1: share it with fellow listeners, please let me know that too.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: here's to making the most of our time. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from you. You can send me
Speaker 1: your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just connect with
Speaker 1: me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod
Speaker 1: that's b E the number four than breakfast p o D.
Speaker 1: You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: podcast at i heeart Media dot com that Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: is old out with all the letters. Thanks so much,
Speaker 1: I look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is
Speaker 1: a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
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