I have, within the context of my job, things to do that will take various lengths of time and are of various priorities. If I get blocked on one it’d be useful to know what to switch to, and on.
I have, within the context of my personal life, things that I want to do that will take undetermined amounts of time and are of various priorities.
It’d also be nice to have a record to go back and reflect on when I did what. And it’d be nice to plan a little ahead so that I can decide what I hope to do next.
So… how do you do it? I am so bad at time management. Is there a useful software I can use (if so, is it foss)? Is there a way to keep consistent with my planner so that I don’t fall behind on managing my time management, without falling into the trap of spending much effort on creating a time management system that all my time is spent managing my time.
Send help :(
I found Kanboard to be useful for managing my projects tasks. There is also a Gantt plugin that can be used to schedule tasks with an ergonomic UI.
I designed my own weekly planner, updated and printed once weekly, that lets me visualize my time, list unstructured tasks, and journal a bit, all on one page a day:
Upper box are tasks I must finish today and the lower box is for tasks I’d ideally get to, but don’t have to, or just random notes. Tasks and dates beyond the one-week span just get thrown in a mostly-unstructured notebook, which I reference after printing a new weekly planner.
It hasn’t solved everything, but it at least frees my working memory from having to keep a to-do list.
What does Varia mean (“other”?) and how do you use the boxes in the time column? Care to share the files?
Correct, could mean other, various, “etc.”. Inherited heading from my previous journals, I’m not sure where it came from either.
For the time column, I highlight, shade, or “whisker plot” the cells of the relevant hours and minutes, then write in the task. Stole the idea from a Kokuyo planner, you can see it in action here.
And the file: https://codeberg.org/monovergent/my-planner-odt
NOICE! Thank you!
At work I use outlook tasks with some custom integer fields to prioritise work. Everything is basically numbered to get higher priority things up the list and more visible but I also use the due date and reminder time to organise what needs to be done when (some high priority things need to wait on external input so while they are still my focus I won’t look back at them til the reminder day). I don’t really need to plan time on my work tasks but if I did I’d probably add another column that added a scale estimate, I probably wouldn’t use a specific time period but more use the old scrum method of scaling tasks. Sadly I think outlook tasks is going to be discontinued soon and migrated to the inferior Microsoft planner. When that happens I guess Ill either move to excel or my home method.
For home stuff I build ToDo lists in Obsidian and share that across devices using mega. I’ll generally have a few ToDos depending on context. That is I’ll have a long term one for big things I want to do but then will also build ones focused on more specific things like housework that needs to be done that day or things I need to do for my ongoing house renovation. If the list is for something complex I might build it at high level and then expand our a given section when it gets closer to working on that task. I also use Obsidian for weekly meal planning and shopping lists.
I have the same problem. Got a teaching job while in the middle of my phd and now i just end up doing preparations for the following classes, grading exams and so on, and never get around to working on my phd. Ive found no good solution though. If I work on my phd I leave my students waiting and with more improvised classes, if i work on material for the students I forget about my phd subject.
Ive tried using an app called superproductivity, which is on fdroid and works fine, but it didnt help me as much as i hoped…
Send help :( Also got long term personal stuff id like to work on, like at least an hour a week, but theres always something urgent from work that shows up and takes my time or leaves me too tired.
I keep a text file formatted as a hierarchy. It’s basically just an indented list.
One of the items is called “workstreams”. It’s the 4-5 things that I’m responsible for at the moment. I have subentries for the current task I’m blocked on and the next few things I need to do.
Every morning, I start at first workstream item and try to do as many of the items in there that I can. When I get blocked, I move to the next workstream item and repeat. When I get to the last workstream item, I either do other stuff or go back to the top.
If there’s a time-sensitive task, I do the same thing as @eezeebee@lemmy.ca and create a reminder in my calendar software.
I use Outlook at work, and a former co-worker showed me her trick which is to create calendar reminders for time-sensitize things because there is always too much to remember. And you get the benefit of appearing busy (red) in Teams so people are less likely to interrupt. It’s like a meeting but you are the only one invited.
That technique is called timeboxing!
It’s very effective, but keep in mind that you need at least 10min of pauses every hour. If you have a task which takes 1.5h you might want to plan a 15min buffer and 15min pause time at the end to recover. Else you’ll feel very overwhelmed at some point.
I’m happy it works for you 😊
If I took a 10 minute pause every hour I would fall behind in my work and that would be overwhelming. Most of the reminders I’m setting are for super short tasks to check if something is complete because it’s urgent for whatever reason.
I agree that having a calendar jam-packed all the time would be a recipe for burnout, but in my case it makes it easier to stay on track with certain things, and just work normally the other 95% of the time.
If I took a 10 minute pause every hour I would fall behind in my work and that would be overwhelming
Then either your boss or yourself are shit at managing workloads properly. If you can’t take 10min it’s too much work for you.
I agree that having a calendar jam-packed all the time would be a recipe for burnout, but in my case it makes it easier to stay on track with certain things
You think you’re special and can’t get burnt out? May I ask if you’re over 30 yet?
Then either your boss or yourself are shit at managing workloads properly. If you can’t take 10min it’s too much work for you.
I mean the whole point is for them to extract value from me which I understand. Where I’m from we have designated break time in the work day. It’s not that I don’t get any breaks, but an additional 10 minutes per hour would certainly have a noticeable impact. Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean by a “pause” - I’m not firing on all cylinders the entire time, that’s for sure.
You think you’re special and can’t get burnt out? May I ask if you’re over 30 yet?
I didn’t say I was special. I meant that my calendar is not jam-packed, thankfully. It’s maybe 1 or 2 reminders per day at most, for short tasks that I need remember to do at certain times. In fact these tasks tend to be even easier and less taxing than regular work, and using the calendar as a reminder means that I’m not committing any brain power to remember them which helps too. I have experienced burnout at a previous job and this is nowhere close. I do appreciate your concern though.
