Dump tasks to your calendar and forget about them

Stephen Covey said,

The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

I had been making lists and setting priorities, without ever knowing that’s what I was doing, since my college days. But the first time I heard about scheduling was when I attended a workshop, aptly named Mission Control, organised by my company.

That was the first time I realised I could park my tasks in a calendar and literally forget about it till the reminder tinged on the desktop. The year was 2004 and 19 years later I am still scheduling my days on calendar.

Because it feels so liberating to know that I do not need to remember everything. I can outsource to my calendar and free up my mind space for more important things.

I have used Outlook, Google and smartphone calendar at different points of time. Use whatever you are using currently; the tool is not important initially, how you use it is.

If this is your first time trying to schedule your tasks, your smartphone calendar is good enough. And simple too.

Whatever calendar you use, here is what to do:

1. Estimate the time needed to do a task.
2. Block that time in the calendar on the day you would.
3. Add details like links, files and other resources needed so that when you sit down to work you can focus on it completely.

Don’t worry about estimating the time required. Initially you might go wrong — allocating more time or less than required — with practice you’ll be fine.

A word of caution is in order here. Or rather two.

• All tasks cannot or need not be scheduled in your calendar.
• You should never schedule every minute of your day. More on that in upcoming editions but please remember this for now.

Action Step

Schedule tasks into your calendar for the next three days. Or if you are feeling good about it, why not the whole week!

Next, observe if you could get more things done compared to when you were not scheduling the tasks.

Useful Links

Be More Realistic About the Time you Have: HBR

Curating Your Schedule for Optimal Productivity: Forbes

The Wrap Up

If you are facing any difficulty in scheduling your tasks or realise at the end of the week that there was no marked improvement in completing them, comment here or write to me.

I promise to help.

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