Let’s start with a bang: don’t keep a schedule. He’s crazy, you say!
I’m totally serious. If you pull it off—and in many structured jobs, you simply can’t—this simple tip alone can make a huge difference in productivity.
By not keeping a schedule, I mean: refuse to commit to meetings, appointments, or activities at any set time in any future day.
As a result, you can always work on whatever is most important or most interesting, at any time.
There is a risk of doing “urgent, but not important” tasks, and never getting to the “important, but not urgent” tasks.
An example of an “important, but not urgent” task would be putting your money into an index fund to save for retirement. There is never a pressing reason to do it today instead of tomorrow. On the other hand, debates on social networks always give you something to do right now, and replying a few days later when everybody has already moved on is not the same thing.
This risk is also present when putting items into one’s calendar, if you only plan a short time ahead. It could be reduced by a hierarchical approach where you would first list the things you want to achieve this year, and then continue planning this month, and the individual days. So you would notice that you e.g. wanted to learn Spanish in 2016, it is April now, and you still haven’t started the first lesson.
You might be interested in Marc Andreessen’s approach which includes things like
There is a risk of doing “urgent, but not important” tasks, and never getting to the “important, but not urgent” tasks.
An example of an “important, but not urgent” task would be putting your money into an index fund to save for retirement. There is never a pressing reason to do it today instead of tomorrow. On the other hand, debates on social networks always give you something to do right now, and replying a few days later when everybody has already moved on is not the same thing.
This risk is also present when putting items into one’s calendar, if you only plan a short time ahead. It could be reduced by a hierarchical approach where you would first list the things you want to achieve this year, and then continue planning this month, and the individual days. So you would notice that you e.g. wanted to learn Spanish in 2016, it is April now, and you still haven’t started the first lesson.