Time management

For those of you with busy lives, how do you properly manage your time? I'm trying to buckle down and knock out stuff on my ever growing to-do list, and admittedly probably don't (I don't) manage my time as properly as I should.

Between sitting down at a desk and working 9 hours a day at a real job, trying to spend a couple hours doing anything but sitting down at a desk, finding motivation to sit back down and bust out more work (Damn you netflix and reddit), social life (whats that?), maintaining a cluttered house (embarrassingly messy), and just general 'me time'... I find myself drifting off track with a to-do list that is growing.

Any successful pointers in time management? Anyone want to have an unpaid internship as my personal remotely located assistant? (Kidding about that last one.. sort of).

What do all of you with busy lifestyles do to get everything done?

:blink:

I have my own Zimbra installation to manage my e-mail on one of my account.
 
On it contains a calendar function.
 
I have each week's schedule drafted out on there.  In addition the Task Management is organized in terms of priority of the task and the due date.  
 
For my "open" times (with no strict set meeting time and whatnot), I pre-allocated time to complete each task.  It's not a numbers game of "how many of the things on my to-do list can I get done", but a game of "I have to accomplish this in this amount of time".  Music helps out a ton to staying focused, and a paid membership to Spotify just makes it easier.  
 
Most of the time, I set aside time to organize everything at the beginning of every day to figure out what I need to do, but most of the time I just add and organize as things come up and as I remember it.  
 
Here's an example.
 

 
Note, this isn't followed 100% strictly...
 
This basically came to be when the work I was responsible for became way more than I could keep track of.  This helps out a ton making sure I maintain the proper timeline and get it done.  
 
Weekends are usually left blank so that it's mostly a "whatever" moment.  

I was feeling the same way a few years ago.  I figured out that my problem wasn't time management, but discipline to just knock out what I had to to meet my goals.  Then I figured out I didn't have clear goals and paths set up.  I found this book to be worth a read....

http://www.amazon.com/No-Excuses-The-Power-Self-Discipline/dp/1593156324 

I can sometimes go off in a tangent

@raj - Which book were you referring to? The link is dead!

Ashton

@fuseweb It's called "No Excuses! : The Power of Self-Discipline" by Brian Tracy.  ISBN 978-1593156329

fuseweb said:

I can sometimes go off in a tangent

@raj - Which book were you referring to? The link is dead!

Ashton

Click to expand...

Here's the Amazon shortlink!!

http://amzn.com/1593156324

That book is an excellent compendium of other's ideas  However, I mean every word of that sentence - there's not much new, but it does go over the ideas well and presents them in an economical format, so if you've never read a book in that realm, it's as good as any others.  I listened to it on audio a few months ago.

Getting Things Done is the usual recommendation in this category.  I found the actual book to be "fluffed out" as so many books on self-motivation, self-discipline, time management, etc. are, but the core system is good...if it works for you.  It's worth a read/listen.  This is a high level view of the system, which is actually pretty simple (this chart makes it look more complicated than it is in practice):

http://universalprinciples.se/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/getting-things-done-diagram1.jpg

O'Reilly published a time management book about 10 years ago (I think it was Time Management for System Administrators or something like that).  It was a very calendar-oriented system - map out your time, put things on a calendar, etc.  It didn't work well for me.

A friend told me about his system: he makes a list of things and simply marks contexts on each (he uses Toodledo, but very differently than how I use it).  Contexts are "phone calls", "at a computer with internet", "at work", "at the store", etc.  They're all "at-oriented" so that when he finds himself in that situation he can see what he can do.  Works for him - didn't appeal to me.

And that's really the thing - start with some system and then you will inevitably adapt it.

My "to do" system is entirely based on Toodledo, which is a web site I highly recommend.  I love the flexibility of it (it supports every possible paradigm) and I constantly use it on the web (when sitting at a computer), on my phone, via email (email myself a todo), etc.  Freemium.  However, there are certainly other sites that offer similar functionality and you may like another one better.

Here is my system, more or less:

(1) The Inbox, an idea from GTD.  Everything goes there.  Every todo, every assignment, every project.  Even if I don't have time to tag it with a priority, I put it in the inbox because then it's "in system" - and that's been a big key for me.  I don't have to try to remember things, which frees stress.

(2) Folders for specific projects.  These come and go.  I'm going to a conference in October - everything related to that is in a folder.  Work stuff is only of interest to me at work.  There's a a folder of things I need at the store and I check it if I go to the store.  There's a folder of books I'd like to read.  Etc.  By "folder" I really mean list.

(3) Prioritization and Views.  I try to be disciplined about marking priority - so that I can view what should be done next (most urgent) either globally (out of everything) or on a specific list (e.g., at work).

(4) Regular review.  The reason the inbox works is that I clean it out daily - either do the task if it's quick or move it if it's not.  And I try to scan everything once a week, except some things like "books to read" or shopping lists.

I honestly don't use a calendar at all (other than for meetings, birthday reminders, etc.) - Toodledo has all sorts of advanced functionality about reminders, deadlines, etc. but I don't use it.  I use a default low priority and if there's a date, I raise the priority so I see it on my daily scan.  I do use recurring tasks, though I hide them until they're X days before due.

Just looked and I have 434 tasks    But that's everything from "razors" on a shopping list to movies I want to see to a document I need for finish for work by tomorrow.

I haven't settled on a good reference library, which I really need to do - my stuff is scattered among Evernote, OneNote, Dropbox, personal wikis, etc. - it's not for lack of products  :lol:   

My advice would be to check out GTD and adapt it to your needs.

There's no replacement for willpower.. Yet.

raindog308 said:

That book is an excellent compendium of other's ideas  However, I mean every word of that sentence - there's not much new, but it does go over the ideas well and presents them in an economical format, so if you've never read a book in that realm, it's as good as any others.  I listened to it on audio a few months ago.

Getting Things Done is the usual recommendation in this category.  I found the actual book to be "fluffed out" as so many books on self-motivation, self-discipline, time management, etc. are, but the core system is good...if it works for you.  It's worth a read/listen.  This is a high level view of the system, which is actually pretty simple (this chart makes it look more complicated than it is in practice):

http://universalprinciples.se/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/getting-things-done-diagram1.jpg

O'Reilly published a time management book about 10 years ago (I think it was Time Management for System Administrators or something like that).  It was a very calendar-oriented system - map out your time, put things on a calendar, etc.  It didn't work well for me.

A friend told me about his system: he makes a list of things and simply marks contexts on each (he uses Toodledo, but very differently than how I use it).  Contexts are "phone calls", "at a computer with internet", "at work", "at the store", etc.  They're all "at-oriented" so that when he finds himself in that situation he can see what he can do.  Works for him - didn't appeal to me.

And that's really the thing - start with some system and then you will inevitably adapt it.

My "to do" system is entirely based on Toodledo, which is a web site I highly recommend.  I love the flexibility of it (it supports every possible paradigm) and I constantly use it on the web (when sitting at a computer), on my phone, via email (email myself a todo), etc.  Freemium.  However, there are certainly other sites that offer similar functionality and you may like another one better.

Here is my system, more or less:

(1) The Inbox, an idea from GTD.  Everything goes there.  Every todo, every assignment, every project.  Even if I don't have time to tag it with a priority, I put it in the inbox because then it's "in system" - and that's been a big key for me.  I don't have to try to remember things, which frees stress.

(2) Folders for specific projects.  These come and go.  I'm going to a conference in October - everything related to that is in a folder.  Work stuff is only of interest to me at work.  There's a a folder of things I need at the store and I check it if I go to the store.  There's a folder of books I'd like to read.  Etc.  By "folder" I really mean list.

(3) Prioritization and Views.  I try to be disciplined about marking priority - so that I can view what should be done next (most urgent) either globally (out of everything) or on a specific list (e.g., at work).

(4) Regular review.  The reason the inbox works is that I clean it out daily - either do the task if it's quick or move it if it's not.  And I try to scan everything once a week, except some things like "books to read" or shopping lists.

I honestly don't use a calendar at all (other than for meetings, birthday reminders, etc.) - Toodledo has all sorts of advanced functionality about reminders, deadlines, etc. but I don't use it.  I use a default low priority and if there's a date, I raise the priority so I see it on my daily scan.  I do use recurring tasks, though I hide them until they're X days before due.

Just looked and I have 434 tasks    But that's everything from "razors" on a shopping list to movies I want to see to a document I need for finish for work by tomorrow.

I haven't settled on a good reference library, which I really need to do - my stuff is scattered among Evernote, OneNote, Dropbox, personal wikis, etc. - it's not for lack of products  :lol:   

My advice would be to check out GTD and adapt it to your needs.

Click to expand...

Oh man.  Any detail on your personal wiki?  Are you using the standard MediaWiki?  Or one of those different branches?

jhadley said:

There's no replacement for willpower.. Yet.

Click to expand...

Haha no obviously not, but doesn't mean you can't stay organized by using the tools available  

Thanks Guys, gonna order it now and give it a read. 

Ashton

I think I live a very busy life.

Currently I am completing my final year of University (part time) as well as working (part time) in the industry, and working on my own business of course.

I also travel alot, I have family in the country (3+ hours) and had to visit remote sites for work alot last year. I don't get much time to waste.

I suppose I am lucky however that my job is fairly flexible in that I don't have strict hours, providing that I complete 6-9 hours daily (and complete the contract within the time-frame). 

Usually however I don't turn up later than 10:00 when I can help it, and if everything is smooth in the morning Ill be there at 8:30.

However if I was to give tips (or at-least what works for me):

• Try and plan your day to be fairly flexible, I wake up early enough to handle any situation that might arise over night. Even if that means that sometimes its as much as waking up, checking the emails and then going back to sleep.
• Use alot of automation to get common and repetitive things done, for servers / hosting companies this includes using smart alerts to ensure that you are aware of any problems.

Probably the most disruptive thing in my life is the Social life. Not much that you can do about that though

My biggest tip, which describes the difference between now and 2 years ago would be to automate where possible. That is to take your biggest time consumers, and automate them (or at-least optimize the process).

e.g.

• Spending time checking the status of servers? Improve your monitoring and alerting. Invest time in Tasker & Zabbix/Nagios and build a system you are confident in. I am pretty sure my neighbours can hear the air raid siren that goes off when things go wrong.
• Spending time fixing broken customer provisioned services? Work out why and fix it, or automate the fix.

Hell I will probably the automate my alarm for work mornings soon:


if(count(unanswered support ticket) || count(assigned ticket) || count(any PROBLEM triggers)){
alarm(0);
}else{
//Hell Yeah! Sleep in!
alarm(+30m);
}

Tasker is great. I need to invest a few hours to improve my alarm.... All to get a few more minutes of precious sleep

Oh this conversation

Let's start with the obvious.... Sleep and nutrition.

Usually we all get to this frazzled stage when sleep time is lacking [or quality of sleep] and often at same time our nutrition is out of bounds for a healthy being.  These are the foundations of life.  So I'd address those first.

Man, especially a working man needs on average 8 hours of sleep every night.  Some of us are old, or tuned a little different, so maybe 6 hours is the bottom line.  High side, I know people doing upwards of 12 hour sleep sessions nightly [which may be accompanied by an hour or more of reading].

Throw in the diet / sleep group, personal hygiene.  If home bound working too much bathing, teeth brushing, other common things in this group tend to go down the toilet on regular frequency.  Things slip into you literally via this and can bring you down in multiple ways.

Next, lists are good/bad.  Depends on your personality, your tolerances, preferences.   Lists annoy me, but necessary.  I keep various lists in a straight up notepad like solution on a phone since that device is most often with me.  I have a list for shopping [grocery, online, etc.],  I have a fire list of tasks for work and related that need done ASAP.  I don't live in my task lists, I just eyeball them now and then, mainly when I am focusing on that group of related. [like when I am about to head out to shopping or when I am researching something to buy].

Then you have the whole know your strength / value issue to weigh.  I am good at certain things and more rapid in some types of work.  Other things are NOT my core comptency, I don't them frequently enough or I just don't like them.  For the non-core competency matters, one must develop good delegation skills and people to delegate to [at times].  Man is not an island or man starves in the wilderness too often.

TV, media, online distractions, etc.  I am militant about these.  I haven't watched TV in literally decades.  I have no idea what is on in prime time.  I catch a random episode of something here and there [think DIY, FYI, PBS programming, etc.].  Limit your wasted time on these to something that is 1 hour a day tops.

Similarly kill all the online noise.  When I am working and need to focus, I shut off IM, I close email [unless work necessitates I am in there], the phone gets put on silent, the headphones go on with zoning style music.

I recommend analyzing your day/time for a few weeks.  I do this probably quarterly when I get sad about work output or general productivity.    Try out Timesheet for Android [free, small, simple and exports data to CSV].   Throw your major time consuming tasks in there [sleep, day job, side projects, cooking, bathing, house cleaning].  Keep on clicking the app as you task switch anything larger than 15 minutes at a time.   It gets annoying, yeah, but will discover all sorts of hidden data about yourself.

For instance with time tracking, I discovered people around me claim I should spend more time, but I am tasked for instance with cooking for them which consumes collectively several hours each day [one must prep, cook and then clean up].  So now I can accurately say, "This week cooking for instance took 14 hours of my time".  If you want more of my time, then order food in or pick up food [given the time to do such isn't too much and the cost is reasonable]. 

That also lends to establishing a weekly schedule for food and doing batch cooking sessions notably on the weekend to lessen the daily load.

House work / chores uggh!  Constant issue in my world.  Decades ago when I was your age, I limited those to almost never and spent heavily to buy new clothing and tons of eating in restaurants [multiple times daily]....  That was a poor approach financially.  I would today go about such way differently.  Towards the end I hired help.

It's well worth it to find a housecleaner nearby, someone your mothers age that understands lads your age and intricacies of assisting you.  Paying said cleaner for a few hours every month is good for you and them.  Similarly, you can likely outsource some of your laundry and some of your other tasks [think errands that need ran around town, groceries, etc.].

Big picture we all share:

24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week.

Every day 8 hours blocked off for sleep and related unwinding.

16 hours a day remaining.

9 hours Monday-Friday for real work.

7 hours of flex time remains Monday-Friday.

Of the 7 hours remaining M-F,  1 hour+ for eating.  30 minutes for bathing, brushing, etc.

5 1/2 hours of slack time remaining.

30 minutes of house related chores daily [dishes, taking trash out, small repairs, etc.]

Optimistically, 3-4 hours usually of "flex" time M-F.

If you are working purely at home, then you need to take at least 1 hour M-F to get outside and some sunlight before your die [mornings please].

Leave 2-3 hours for screwing  off / wasting - M-F.

Weekends are:

16 hours of whatever flex - the above deductions and then minus inevitable running around, shopping, etc. that has to be done for the next week.

So 12 hours - shopping time and related.

Should be looking at strong 8+ hours on Saturday and Sunday. 16 hours combined of whatever slack time.

Total slack time per week: 16 + [2-3  x 5] = 26-31 hours a week.

What you decide to in that 26-31 hours a week will weigh heavily on your quality of life, bitterness [or lack thereof], and general outlook.

Other thing I'll throw in here is to weigh your work arrangement(s).   Full time work is nice on cash, but by the time you get done with the self thrapy of buying this and that, spending on things you wouldn't sanely otherwise, etc.  you will find a massive hit to working fulltime at your pocketbook.

When I worked in stiff arse office environment between the cost of dry cleaning, time to deliver and fetch such and the time I often spent buying more in lieu of laundering things, I realized a pretty big annual bonus/recoup by opting out of such starched environments.     With that alone, I could and did work for less in less formal environments.

Similarly, recouping your time/life is a financial calculation.   Perhaps it might be prudent to consider part time employment or the alternative scheule I am fond of with 3-4 longer days.  Turning every week into a 3 day weekend is the goal, but only where you live the life you want to and make the most of the newfound time.

I'd go to audting all of your cash outflow.  Reducing regular costs reduces the need to be on the treadmill and to produce more income. Last year I did just this and determined internet related costs (internet acces, VPS, related hosting services, smartphone, etc.) were unnecessay.  I probably slashed such my 2/3rds.   That's money better spent elsewhere like on allocating towards better groceries, nutrition supplementation or just in reserve for the buy a cabin fund.

Also look at non essential purchasing - is what you've bought in past year actually worth it?   Are your hobbies (you have some right?) eating up too much of your income?

When you don't have debt on rotation and live in nice tidy bounds, giving a shit about work and the demands in a frying pan go down to about zero.   Life is to be lived, not bound to a desk like a slave.

The rest of folks are busting themselves into bits squirreling for retirement.  Yeah I want to pretend enjoy myself when I am 67, sure.  Short sighted and backwards the taught approach is.

Mind you, all this stress is imaginary and cultural, even if you have lots of it.  Just like the work day, lack of vacation, lack of proper downtime.  It's employment hell shit of the USA. Slave.

And, don't go start playing house and involving others in the muck until you solve your own puzzle, because it's damn near unbearable to group stress

Get married to a wonderful woman. Seriously, my wife is so organized I almost don't have to be for our day to day stuff. That being said, we've got 2 busy active kids, a growing list of house renovations and both of us work, so a lot of the times it's less about time management and more about what's the one thing I can get done in the 20 minutes I have free this evening.

iann_lfcvps said:

Get married to a wonderful woman. Seriously, my wife is so organized I almost don't have to be for our day to day stuff. That being said, we've got 2 busy active kids, a growing list of house renovations and both of us work, so a lot of the times it's less about time management and more about what's the one thing I can get done in the 20 minutes I have free this evening.

Click to expand...

Count yourself as very fortunate in multiple ways.

Mates can be good like this where said mate tends to the home rather than toiling in the workforce.  That's you provide the financials and she rules the nest.   It has its limits though and when things break down, those relationships get ugly too.  Like that mere 20 minutes you have,  that's kind of having no time.   Do you get time for yourself or is that supposed to be while you are at work?

I've always been busy.  Multiple jobs typically, hobbies [that often are related to profession], other projects, reading, etc.   Plus I like proper downtime to soak in the tub, read books, listen to music and just create from quiet mind. 

With house + mate + kids ++++ I don't see that quiet time for soaking, reading, music, creating.  Unsure how folks get any of said time.  It barely exists in my own life these days and is a sore spot and on the short list of to bed improved.

We are slaves of the system. No time... No life.

iann_lfcvps said:

Get married to a wonderful woman. Seriously, my wife is so organized I almost don't have to be for our day to day stuff. That being said, we've got 2 busy active kids, a growing list of house renovations and both of us work, so a lot of the times it's less about time management and more about what's the one thing I can get done in the 20 minutes I have free this evening.

Click to expand...

You're married to a wonderful woman, so what to do with 20 minutes should be obvious...

HalfEatenPie said:

Oh man.  Any detail on your personal wiki?  Are you using the standard MediaWiki?  Or one of those different branches?

Click to expand...

MediaWiki atm, though I also have a DokuWiki  :lol:  And I was going to try FosWiki but its installer (or lack thereof sucked).  Twiki and TikiWiki are other options...it's not lack of tools, man...

And Evernote.  Evernote's strength is click-to-save-web-page.  The lack of significant hierarchical organization ("dude, just use tags, they're so cool") is a real turn off with EN, though I know some people love it.

I keep meaning to make more use of OneNote but never have.  I'm afraid I'm going to be somewhere and be unable to access it, which is why I favor web-based solutions, though with the new Office 2013 office-as-web-apps that's an option.

Oh, I have tons of google docs, too 

I have this grand vision of one Jarvis to rule them all and seamlessly integrate things...

Going from Uni to full time work has basically killed my productivity outside work. All personal projects have ground to a halt, I play games rarely any more and I find it hard to find the motivation to actually do thing.


More just of a rut I'm in at the moment and I'm really trying to get out of it.


I have a Todoist notification that comes up on my phone every morning however all the things on it are now 200 days overdue of being done...


I really enjoy seeing how you guys manage everything, it make me feel more confident I can fit everything I want to do into my days, I just need to stop wasting my time.

TikiWiki are other options.

Click to expand...

Slow, heavy, PHP-driven bloatware.