How do you manage your time? What tools do you use and what philosophies do you follow?

ADwS
Tue, 11 Jul 2023 13:42:33 +0000

Apologies for the vague title, but the topic itself is really open, and I was having trouble cutting down on its scope.

Here’s some background: Recently, I’ve been going through several transitions in life: moving and switching jobs somehow were not the most stressful among them. During this period I’ve been trying to keep all of the various tasks, events, reminders, alarms, etc. organized for myself. This process of organizing my time has been extremely overwhelming for me. I’ve been trying to take it one step at a time, only adding tasks as they come up. This still has lead to my problem of figuring out whether or not an event should be added to my calendar, or a task added to my todo list, or even an alarm added to my phone. If I add everything, then it becomes tough to see what is important, and if I don’t then I risk not remembering one of them.

My question is kind of two fold: what tools do you use to keep track of your day/tasks/events, and what philosophy do you have regarding adding or omitting items?

For me right now, I am using google calendar to keep track of major events and birthdays, and for everything else I use a physical notepad. In my calendar, I have birthdays and any event that has a time set in stone. This lets me see whether or not I am actually free when I’m invited to things or asked if I can help someone out.

For everything else, I use my notepad and attempt to keep track of anything that could be considered a task. At the end of each day I try to organize my list of tasks based on how immediately they need to be completed or how important they are to complete.

My system has two pitfalls: occasionally I over extend myself, because an event (stored on my calendar) will coincide with a day where many of my tasks (stored in my notepad) are due. For example, I had a day where I worked in the office (9 hours plus commute), had another event (4 hours plus commute), 1 task that took me two hours, 3 different tasks (each one ending up taking over an hour), and several other tasks that I didn’t even get to before falling asleep.

What tools/systems/philosophies do you use? And semi-related, how does one keep from falling into the trap of spending more time planning than actually living?

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