The other day, I was chatting with a client. She’s extremely busy, with many responsibilities at work and at home. She values her time very highly. Because she has so much going on, it’s tricky for her to find time to focus on her most important projects. She said: “I’d love to have regular blocks of focused work on my calendar.” “And then, from my master task list, I want to drag tasks into those focus blocks.” Her first question: what’s the right tool for this? I immediately thought of Akiflow. It excels at time blocking and has a “time slots” feature that does this dragging-and-dropping of tasks exquisitely well. Akiflow is also a combined to-do and calendar app, which means you don’t have to figure out how to make two apps work together. That said, another strong option would be combining Todoist and Fantastical. Todoist has been developing incredibly rapidly. In fact, I’ve been testing its “deadline” feature, which is being implemented really intuitively. Can you spot the deadline feature in this screenshot? Of course, talking about apps only gets us so far. Choosing the right app helps. Learning how to use it helps even more. But as I’ll be telling my client, while apps can be a good place to start, they are always only part of the solution. Apps illuminate the choices available to us. Take on this commitment or that one? Spend time on this part of our life—or dive into that other project? The real work is in choosing. The real work is prioritizing, based on our values. Only then, after we’ve prioritized, can we get into the nitty gritty, like where in our week we’ll slot in this particular task. Are you clear on your priorities? |
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Have you heard this saying before? Apparently it comes from the Navy SEALs: “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” It’s easy to imagine SEALs working this way. They don’t rush their preparation. They don’t cut corners when cleaning their rifle. And they don’t jump out of their helicopter a second before they’re supposed to. It’s harder to remember this for ourselves. We don’t need to imagine we’re special operatives as we go about our days. (Yikes, way too stressful.) But, as much as we might...
In the comments on my latest YouTube video, someone asked: Do you have videos on prioritisation? I have an awesome system I’ve set up in Apple Reminders, but I just can never seem to prioritise the list perfectly and always feel behind. This person is already doing a great job, having all of their to-dos captured to Apple Reminders and organized into lists. But it’s a good question: How do you actually decide what to work on first? Is there a formula? I’ll get back to that in a second. But...
One of my favorite things to do is to say, “no”. No, I won’t embark on that new project right now. (I have too many unfinished projects already.) No, I’d rather not help out with that volunteer initiative you’ve started. (I’ve overcommitted myself and don’t want to make it worse.) No, this week is not great for meeting for lunch. (I need as much focus time as I can get to ship this new product.) That last one can be tricky. Because people like to feel special. When you say, “this week isn’t...