Life bombards us with so many new challenges and tasks every day that it’s easy to be fully absorbed by them. They definitely require our attention, but they should not dictate how day passes. Unless this is real emergency, best time of the day should go to strategic projects.
The time we spend on projects moving us towards our goals should be the best productive time in the day. For some people this would be early morning, for some late evening, for some middle of the day. Whatever is your peak time, you should reserve it to strategic projects. These are the ones making difference to your life.
In general I use four buckets of tasks to define what kind of time they deserve:
- Strategic projects. These are the projects moving forward my goals. Since my goals are bringing me to my dream life, strategic projects deserve best possible time I can have in a day: time when I’m most productive, have no interruptions (which is hard with kids at home), thus I can focus. This time I reserve purely for strategic projects.
- Operational projects. These are projects needed to run ongoing things in life (like having annual checkup, organising weekend trip, purchasing appliances or furniture, etc.). There could be very different kind of tasks involved. Some can be done on the go, others require long time slots. Most important is that they don’t interfere with time reserved for strategic projects. For example, making an appointment for annual checkup takes just five minutes and can happen on the go. At the same time checkup itself requires a couple of hours and must be scheduled outside of my time slots for strategic projects.
- Emergencies. These are the ones when someone gets injured or something important gets broken. If I’m in my slot for strategic projects in the middle of my work and one of my daughters got hurt or injured, I immediately drop current work. If fridge gets broken, I have to get onto this problem the same day. On the other hand if dishwasher gets broken I can easily wash dishes by hands for weeks. So it’s not an emergency.
- Errands/chores/misc. These tasks usually can be done on autopilot. They don’t require any focus. So it’s best to handle them between important tasks or at low energy times.
When I allocate my time according to these categories then I see steady move forward both in my goals and general tasks. I feel fulfilled as eventually my goals come true and I keep general tasks under control.