#DAY TASK PLANNER HOW TO#
#DAY TASK PLANNER SOFTWARE#
#DAY TASK PLANNER TRIAL#

Once you know what you’re doing, any sort of action on it is easier. Proper planning is vital for effective use of your days, weeks and months. If you use two paper based daily planners, put it on your work one. Well, if you use one planner, or an electronic one, it’s not a problem. Where should you put that to remember it? The only downside is the lack of flexibility.įor instance, you may be at work but need to remember to pick up something on the way home. Separate daily planners for work and personal life can help draw a clear line between them, forcing you to keep work at work.

Should you use two daily planners? There’s a good argument for doing so.

#DAY TASK PLANNER TRIAL#

Trial and error your system until you work out what suits you. You may want to use just one for everything, or keep two to separate work tasks from your personal life. It depends on the number of scheduled activities you typically commit to.Įither separate actions and appointments, or combine the two in one planner. Should you have a separate planner for appointments? That way, you’ll keep on top of your daily commitments and avoid being overwhelmed by all the work when you return from your lay-off. Meanwhile, keep processing your daily tasks and managing your daily events.

#DAY TASK PLANNER HOW TO#

When this happens, put everything that has built up into a physical (or digital) file and call it ‘Backlog’.īlock off some time each day to chip away at it, in order of urgency (see How to Prioritize Work). Daily planners with tasks not crossed off aren’t a pretty sight. Things don’t get done and backlogs build up. But what happens when you’re ill or you go away for a few days? You’ll know what to do and when to do it.ĭon’t forget that you still have to actually do your tasks! How to Deal with BacklogsĪs long as you keep ‘deferring and doing’, this way of working is very effective. So, your planner is made up of a finite list of daily tasks to do. The only way to manage them is to work later or dismiss them from your list. Your common sense should overrule systems and habits. The consequence, of course, is that everything else gets left undone. But doing so has to be weighed up with the cost of NOT doing the other things on your list.Ĭlearly, if something does have a genuinely urgent and important deadline it will need to be met. If you're able to, it's better to start and finish tasks in one go. Simple - think in terms of time spent on the task rather than completion of it.Īllocate as much time as you can realistically manage to it, then re-schedule in your planner for the following working day or at a later date. What if you won’t get the report all done on one day?

You don’t add anything to it on Thursday because it goes on your Friday list. You go home on Thursday evening knowing exactly what to do tomorrow because you have a limited list of things to do. Whatever it is, unless it’s a ‘must-do-today’ task, put it off. You also have the chance to prepare for it, mentally or otherwise. Unless it’s genuinely same-day urgent (and, honestly, most things aren’t), schedule it in on tomorrow’s date page.īuilding in this buffer means you know the limit of what you will do each day. Put it off until tomorrow, or until another day that you feel is most appropriate for it. Whenever you are given a task, or think of one to do, defer doing it. The basis of this idea comes from Do It Tomorrow by Mark Forster. A request here, an invitation there you just don’t know what to expect.ĭaily planners can impose a degree of order on things so you know what to do and when to do it. That being the case, set up buffers between the getting of the task or scheduled activity and the time you actually do it. Time is finite you can only do so much in one day. It’s all about three things: limits, buffers and habits.

Used properly, it will allow you to manage your time far more effectively than most people ever do.īecause you start each day knowing exactly what you have to do and how much time you have to do it - no more, no less. In other words, yours is simply a list of what’s important to you and what you will do about it. It boils down to a list of two types of things we decide to do:

#DAY TASK PLANNER SOFTWARE#

Whether you use a fancy piece of software or plain old pen and paper, I'll show you how to really make it work for you so you decide what’s worth doing and actually get it done.īut first, let's consider. This article outlines a simple method you can use to do more than just list what is happening and when.Īdopting this habit can really help you organize your life, improve your productivity, and feel far more in control of things. How effectively do you think are you using yours? Many people use daily planners to organize their events, appointments and tasks.

Day task planner