I have, within the context of my job, things to do that will take various lengths of time and are of various priorities. If I get blocked on one it’d be useful to know what to switch to, and on.
I have, within the context of my personal life, things that I want to do that will take undetermined amounts of time and are of various priorities.
It’d also be nice to have a record to go back and reflect on when I did what. And it’d be nice to plan a little ahead so that I can decide what I hope to do next.
So… how do you do it? I am so bad at time management. Is there a useful software I can use (if so, is it foss)? Is there a way to keep consistent with my planner so that I don’t fall behind on managing my time management, without falling into the trap of spending much effort on creating a time management system that all my time is spent managing my time.
Send help :(
Tbh I find strict scheduling and the like to be too much of a time drain to be effective. I just plan my day in my head, e.g. before lunch I will work on X then between lunch and dinner I will work on Y then after dinner I will work on Z is a common “schedule” on an off day. Occasionally I write down a todo list just to keep track of tasks but that’s about it.
Agreed. Making a list is fine to not get overwhelmed if there are too many things to remember to do. But beyond that, its starts to become too cumbersome.
I have the same problem. Got a teaching job while in the middle of my phd and now i just end up doing preparations for the following classes, grading exams and so on, and never get around to working on my phd. Ive found no good solution though. If I work on my phd I leave my students waiting and with more improvised classes, if i work on material for the students I forget about my phd subject.
Ive tried using an app called superproductivity, which is on fdroid and works fine, but it didnt help me as much as i hoped…
Send help :( Also got long term personal stuff id like to work on, like at least an hour a week, but theres always something urgent from work that shows up and takes my time or leaves me too tired.
For both our sakes, I hope we can find something that works for us. I don’t need to be on my productivity grind 24/7. I don’t desire that at all. But I really don’t like the feeling of completely misspent time. I want the balance of doing what I want to do AND totally relaxing (physically+mentally) when I feel it’s time to relax
I have a notion setup organized around tasks, calls to organize, and clients.
I have several view and attributes to fit the tasks to my workflow.
I have a daily routine and a weekly routine template that gets added to the task list regularly with custom views for each action. This includes reviewing the email inbox, the calendar, the long-term backlog, and many other things. I then end the daily routine by estimating among the open tasks, the most important and setting a workload for the day.
I designed my own weekly planner, updated and printed once weekly, that lets me visualize my time, list unstructured tasks, and journal a bit, all on one page a day:
Upper box are tasks I must finish today and the lower box is for tasks I’d ideally get to, but don’t have to, or just random notes. Tasks and dates beyond the one-week span just get thrown in a mostly-unstructured notebook, which I reference after printing a new weekly planner.
It hasn’t solved everything, but it at least frees my working memory from having to keep a to-do list.
That’s slick in how straightforward it is. I like the offline element you get from printing it, too.
I use Outlook at work, and a former co-worker showed me her trick which is to create calendar reminders for time-sensitize things because there is always too much to remember. And you get the benefit of appearing busy (red) in Teams so people are less likely to interrupt. It’s like a meeting but you are the only one invited.
Asana at work; it’s great, and you can easily go back and check what you did and when. And in my personal life, pen and paper. I don’t see this changing anytime soon.
I use Trello for a lot of stuff. Shopping lists, to-do lists, keeping track of tasks needed for whatever home project I’m working on, and lately I’ve been doing it for work tasks since I’m juggling a lot of things with dependencies that come and go. Most of it relies on kanban boards, which basically means different columns and stuff in each. Work to-do list has a column for stuff I can/should be doing, stuff I’m blocked on, stuff that may need a little polishing but it’s nearly complete, and stuff that’s actually done (gives a little motivation). Shopping lists are separated by store. Stuff like that.
Unfortunately it’s one of the subscription cloud apps… But their free version is very usable and hasn’t been overly enshittified… Yet.
I don’t. I give up on anything that’s for self instead of survival. If I don’t have to do it, I won’t.
