Thanks for an excellent comment. Great tips too! I think the simplicity of the technique is its best strength. I’ll have to try it myself.

Thanks for dropping by.

Best wishes,
dave

Very well-made points, and even more so your processes, especially 2 and 3 that align closely with my own.

My system relies on 3 Word documents, with clear formatting (font-sizes, indentation and white-space) which prioritise tasks into This Week, Next Week, and Whenever

Document 1: This Week
I do exactly as you do and time-box tasks days, then hours. I never put too much on one day – rather put less on then if you achieve everything, start doing one of tomorrow’s tasks!

More realistic though is that you probably won’t always get stuff done, then you simply stop the task when you’re out of time, and start the next one.

The unfinished items can then either be moved to the end of the week, to an empty time box on another day, or onto:

Document 2: Next Week
Anything that won’t fit into this week (and you need to be honest with yourself!) goes into a separate document, with no time boxing. This is like an “overflow” pen, and somewhere to add the tasks such as “getting a trainer and an exercise program”.

These tasks are tasks I know I should be paying attention to at some point soon, but I don’t have to fully break down at this point. I know that in the next week or so, these tasks will make their way onto the This Week document, and that’s when they will get my full analytical attention.

But what about tasks that don’t fit here? The really big ones, dreams, or those that are perhaps waiting for something else to materialise first?

Document 3: Whenever

In this document I put anything else that isn’t ready to be thought about yet, doesn’t matter that much, or perhaps I know I will need to start thinking about in 6 months. At some point, when documents 1 and 2 start to look empty I can pilfer some tasks from here. But until then, I don’t (and won’t) think about them.

I find that with this system, nothing is forgotten, I stay disciplined regarding my immediate tasks, and most importantly I give myself enough mental space to breathe.

By keeping it simple and doing it in Word, tasks can be reordered, amended or deleted in a flash, and you can easily copy and paste multiple tasks to and from documents. No mucking around with calendars, dialogs or checkboxes.

Keep up the great blog, and it’s great to hear your entrepreneurship is going so well – I am about to step into the same boat!

Cheers,
Dave

I recommand a goal tracking and to do list management web site GoalsOnTrack.

You will see the instant progress update after completing a task on your goal. It’s free and worth a try. http://www.goalsontrack.com

I think goal – setting or goal – tracking requires some form of discipline. In fact there is a convergence of “Will” of a person to ensure that what is desired is achieved. Albeit it is in smaller steps that you can come back to do your task. This way your article provides very practical and useful way of goal achieving. You cannot eat your meal at once. You go bite by bite. And in no time you are finished. This is the best way.

Our brains find it difficult to finish a task if the task is too bit. But just saying “Only so much .. not more” will help.

Say for instance, you want to exercise. Don’t say I will exercise for next five years to come. It is better to say ‘I will exercise today’. Morning – simply get up and say “Only Today”. Go and exercise. Next day again say “Only Today”. Well, that’s a small task to do. Exercise just for an hour and no more. But doing this say for two weeks, eventually will build a good habit that we may not like to leave.

Your posts are indeed great, keep writing.

It’s true. I have so much to change in my life.

Phil