The Experience – That’s What Matters

I’ve talked before the idea of gifting experiences instead of stuff. As well as talked about how the containers and tools we use for organizing need to fit our needs – their purpose is to make our life easier. Earlier this year I talked about Technology Tools and how these too need to be evaluated on how they could help us. Therefore, let’s move into media – my beloved books and music!

You might be getting sick of hearing how I hold onto books and CD’s, yet these too are about the experience. When I read, I’m learning or exploring – it’s information that I delve into and appreciate greatly. When I listen to music, whether it’s on in the background or I’m soaking it in – it’s part of my experience. These mediums are essentially about the experience of them. If they’re not used, they become either décor or clutter.

Since their purpose is to be used – are you using them as effectively as you can and want? For me, I knew I was missing much of our music. I simply forgot what we had, even with as organized as the CD’s are, and so they would stay in their drawers. And I was resisting the idea of digitizing our music. Yet as I thought about all the lovely music we have – about 800 albums of a wide variety of genres, and the ensuing guilt over owning yet not appreciating them – I agreed to move them into digital form.

We used an external hard drive to store the digitized music, purchased the Sonos system to have access to our music wirelessly, and presto we have digital access to our entire music library. Now we can listen and appreciate the music we love, which is what matters most. In addition, we used the process of digitizing our music to purge – was there any reason to keep those albums we ended up not loving?

I’ve not jumped into an e-reader yet – and am not sure if I will. I read daily and our books are organized so I can find what I want or need. Yet, as I’ve talked about with all these other things – what are your personal needs? This isn’t about following the crowd, but rather about whether an e-reader would facilitate your needs and values.

Remember, this is about the experience – and whether you hold a book in your hands or an e-reader, you can jump into the words, knowledge, and world either way. If I was traveling more I don’t think I could resist getting an e-reader – having any number of books available in one convenient place (without any additional weight). I’m impressed with the ease it can offer for people to read – in the waiting rooms, lunch breaks, wherever there’s some available time.

As with virtually everything I talk about – I am not advocating one thing or another. It’s about your life and what can help you in living it they way you want – to make the most of the experiences you want. And, I’m not saying that you need to get rid of the physical items even if they’re digital. We kept most of our CD’s, only parting with about 70 of them. Similarly, I couldn’t imagine parting with many of our books.

It’s all about experiencing the content. If you’re not accessing them, is there a better way? What’s getting in the way of using them? The digital possibilities offer us options in order for us to have the experience of them regardless of the medium. If you consider yourself a book or music lover, does your life reflect those values? If not, it might be time to consider alternatives that can help you in living your values.

Productive Spending

Just by my title you might be cringing, or rolling your eyes, or something. And if you’ve been following me a while, you hopefully will realize that I’m not here to tell you what to do – I do aim to challenge the way you think about things. It’s your life after all and no one but you is living it. Similarly with organizing principles, it’s about finding what works for you – taking the pieces and creating your own version.

Therefore, here’s one of the things I’ve learned for myself – there are times and places to spend more money. We hopefully all know that it’s wise to watch what and how we spend our money (though some statistics show few of us keep a budget). Yet, as with so much of what I talk about – I encourage you to be mindful.

Coming from parents who have tendencies toward being frugal, I can struggle to spend a couple of dollars for a treat. Once a year, chocolate oranges are available – around Christmas and I patiently wait for opening the stocking since my husband knows how much I love them. This year he wasn’t home and I walked into a store and happened to see them. I almost walked away, yet this is a treat I enjoy once a year, so why not? I bought myself two and savored every bite – those few dollars were well spent.

From an organizing perspective, I probably make my strongest suggestion during the whole process for their waiting to purchase supplies – those desirable containers and tools for helping with organization. This doesn’t come from a frugal point of view; it’s purely practical though it most often saves time and money in the long run too. If you buy a neat organizing tool before you’re ready to use it, let alone know if it’s going to meet your specific needs – it often becomes clutter. If you wait until you know what you need and can use it – you can bring it home and put it to use immediately.

When my husband and I moved into our new home, our first house, we bought a stud finder. We knew nothing about our walls or what kind of stud finder would be best for us and we went with a fairly inexpensive one. It turned out to be useless. Yet, this doesn’t mean the highest end product is the answer either. It does mean that it’s worth considering what your needs are – both for yourself and future.

It’s not always easy to know what is the worth spending the money on – when I first got my iPad, I picked up a stylus to use with a handwriting program. It worked, though too often it was frustrating and inconsistent. After talking with my husband, I purchased a different model that works really well. I appreciate its quality and have begun eliminating paper clutter from phone messages by using my stylus and iPad.

As you can see, this isn’t about a suggestion that will fit all of you – it’s about your life and stuff. Yet, it is about thinking about the things that have value and use in your life – and not scrimping on spending the money that will help support you. Living on either extreme rarely serves anyone. Therefore, when and where does it make sense to spend some more money for your needs?

Review: Tickler File

Pros:

Here’s the Tickler File I made for myself

easy to create
never expires – you can use it over and over again
easy to use – little decision making involved
no categories

Cons:

challenging to find one set – up for you to jump into using
requires regular routines – probably new ones which can be challenging
with the full system, might be quite cumbersome
no categories
files could get overfilled

Review:

First, let’s get it out of the way – the name is just funny – Tickler File, or maybe it’s the idea of tickle that makes people giggle. That seems to be part of the idea – these files are meant to tickle your memory so you won’t forget all the various things you are supposed to be doing. And you can’t argue with that as a goal – to help you track what’s important and stay on top of things. If only it was that simple.

Since many people I’ve mentioned this idea to have no idea what it is, let me begin with explaining what it is. Ideally it seems to be a set of files that sits out on your desktop or some other surface for easy access. You need hanging folders for each month of the year and some empty ones for the all the file folders. Then you need file folders numbered 1-31, one for each day of the month generally. Therefore, since this is February 20^th, the front folder is February and the first file would be the one with the number 20 on it. Behind the file with 20 is 21-28. Then you’d see the March folder with 1-19 and then 29-31. Next would be the folders for April, May etc. At the end of today, you would move 20 to its spot in March.

The idea is that you put your various papers into the date that you need to deal with that specific paper. Therefore, if you have to RSVP by the 28^th, you might put the invitation into the 21^st file, and make the decision and mail it on that day. Or a bill that you need to pay on the March 5^th goes into the 5 file. Or you need to call that person on the 23rd. When something comes up that you don’t need to deal with it in the next month, you drop it just into the correlating month folder and just as that month becomes relevant, you move the papers into their appropriate day.

You can probably see that for this system to be useful for anyone, they would need to check that day’s file daily. As with any and every system, you have to use it. And remember to use it. Consistently and regularly use it. This is often easier said than done. It can be challenging anytime you try to implement a new way to handle your tasks – creating new routines – and with this system it isn’t necessarily obvious. I think this system also requires that you have enough paper coming in that can get delegated to various days.

It’s easy to create and set up, including labeling – you need 31 file folders, a minimum of 16 hanging folders (one for each month and as many extra to hold all the file folders), and a container to hold all of them. It will always work – since you simply move the old to the back. The only decision that you need to make is when you will handle that thing you are putting into the system. Of course, then when that day arrives, you do need to make decisions. This system works for any papers – regardless of what action you might need to eventually take.

I got a lot of amusement out of the expressions I encountered when I would ask clerks if they happened to carry a tickler file system. So, it’s not something that is readily available in local stores, even the national chains. There appears to be a number that you can purchase online though I would be wary of any accordion styles (though I’m not a personal fan of accordion files in general).

For me, I simply don’t have enough paper to warrant files for each day of the month. Though it occurred to me that it could be simplified by eliminating the daily and instead doing a weekly file folder – either 1-7, 8-14, 15-21, etc. or week 1, week 2, etc.

One of the most common struggles people face is trying to do too much on a given day (or even week). It would be easy to drop papers into this system and not realize until the day of that there’s too much to realistically accomplish.

It also doesn’t break things down in any other way which means that I might end up working more that day when I had actually thought I would be home to make phone calls and check things on the computer. It’s not often, although sometimes I want to get through all of one type of task – non-time sensitive phone calls is my prime example – and with this system they’d likely be divided up among various days since I limit the number of tasks for a given day.

Obviously this system has some great features and can be a good solution for some people. Yet, it also would fail miserably for other people. This might be an ideal example of how we each need to find what works for our situation and personality. As well as an example of how you might need to tweak it to make it work better for you. Nothing else really matters if it works for you!

Tasks – Big Picture View

I suspect that Stephen Covey is right when he commented that the “urgent” things in our life rather than the “important” things drive many of us. The distinction between these two things comes down to whether those “things” further our goals, the long-term ones that give our life meaning. If we’re repeatedly running from one urgent task to another urgent task then we’re not focusing or working on the big picture view of our lives.

Of course, Stephen Covey isn’t the only one telling us how important it is to plan, to be mindful of our goals – both short and long term ones – since most (if not all) time management experts address this concept. When we avoid planning, it’s that much easier to focus our time and energy on working on those urgent tasks. The urgent tasks tend to be in our face – virtually demanding our attention or something bad will happen, often the crises.

Yet if we only think about the immediate things that need our attention, when do work on the things that actually have value for our lives? And don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t mean that it’s easy to shift our focus.

One of the most helpful ways to tackle this, for me anyway, was to think about the roles in my life. Each role that I fill has meaning – whether it’s required or voluntary – and deserves my time and energy. Not necessarily equal time and energy mind you. So I made a list (and yes I do like lists) of what different areas of my life I wanted to spend time and energy on.

We’re not all going to have identical lists – though many of us have jobs and families – both of which need our attention. The idea is to keep it relatively short since ideally you’ll set aside at least a little time each week for these areas of your life. This could relate to Your Needs and Values – as some people might put Spirituality on their list – for me, that’s contained in my Personal category. My list has evolved over time but I’m currently working with 5 areas that I want to attend to each week: Business, Household, Volunteering, Relationship, and Personal.

This means when I look at both my calendar and to-do list, I am actively thinking about when I will focus on the various areas. It doesn’t mean that it always works as I planned; yet it’s not supposed to. “Urgent” tasks do come up and it’s not about ignoring or avoiding those. It’s about making sure your life isn’t driven by those urgent tasks.

It means that we’ll have less regret at the end of the week, month, and year. We’ll know that we’ve directed our energy toward things that matter to us – personally. It doesn’t matter if you make a list of your categories; it doesn’t matter if you create a mission statement for yourself; it doesn’t matter how you go about it. What does matter is finding a way that works for you to make the most out of your life in the big picture view. How else does your life have a greater meaning?

Technology Tools – To Get or Not to Get

With the proliferation of technology tools, we need to think about both how we work and what could benefit us. Just because the tools exist doesn’t mean that it’s something that will help us. If you think about how many different ways there are for organizing papers, you can make a comparison – you can’t use all the different tools for dealing with paper; you need to figure out what you need as well as what will help you. Then that is what you use and appreciate. Tools of technology are no different. As with all tools, the most important consideration is your own needs.

Some people feel that they need to get the tech tools; they need to be up with the trends or not get lost with all the technology changes bombarding us. I can relate to that – I was debating about getting a smart phone. I wasn’t sure that it mattered to me – I have my iPad which serves me so well, yet I couldn’t help but consider adding that skill set to my knowledge base. I’ve known more than one person who felt that they “should” use the technology.

Let’s eliminate all “shoulds” for getting and using technology. Many people continue to function perfectly well without using any smart devices – I’m working with someone who doesn’t even own a computer, let alone a basic cell phone or anything else. If on the other hand, you have a need for one (or more) of these tech tools, that’s not a “should.” There’s a foundation for getting it – to fill a need you have. This isn’t about comparing yourself to your kids or your parents, or neighbors or coworkers, etc. nor is about following the trends of the latest thing (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc). It’s about examining your personal needs and identifying a gap that these tools could meet.

I absolutely adore my iPad and I don’t think there will be a time that I will not find it extremely useful. I use it for quite a number of things, having adapted to using it, and now both appreciate its benefits for me and how things have been simplified. Yet, just because it’s a fabulous tool for me, doesn’t mean that it is a good tool for anyone else. It seems that some people think that if the technology exists, everyone should use it. That’s silly and potential wasteful – of your money, time, and energy.

One of the potential challenges with all this technology is that there is a learning curve – the time it takes to both learn and adapt to how it works – and it continues to change. That isn’t even addressing the huge number of apps available to help meet your needs – which also require learning and adapting to. And it might mean that you could use additional tools – I decided to add a stylus to my tool bag for a handwriting app. I’d encourage you to make the most of the tools you choose to incorporate into your life – remember they are there to benefit your life.

When technology is used to fulfill a need, it can make our lives easier and help us become more effective in life. I was recently talking to someone about options for using technology and the potential for eliminating the amount of papers. There is a way that she could only use technology; it would require learning a number of new programs and adding steps to her process. I commented that it sounded both too complicated for her and went against her inclinations. From there we moved into talking about some simple ways to use technology that could be relatively easy to implement and would additionally simplify parts of her process.

I’ve found that thinking about these technology options specifically as “tools” it encourages me to think about their usefulness for me – just as I wouldn’t buy a compound miter saw since I couldn’t and wouldn’t use it. Despite that this technology surrounds us, it doesn’t change the fact that they are tools – something that’s supposed to make our lives simpler. Yet only for those people who have a need for that tool.

Is there a need that one of the technology tools would fulfill? This is the most important consideration before you jump in and get anything. Identifying your specific needs can then lead you to which particular tool will be most beneficial for you – since there are so many.

Productivity

With the never-ending to-do lists many of us face, it can be challenging to balance productivity with reality. None of us can go, go, go and never stop – we have to stop at the very least for sleep. Yet, we need to stop for more than sleep. The challenge in this busy world is to find the pace that makes sense for you.

First, let’s talk about productivity – the definition that fits this context best is “yielding results, benefits, or profits.” If you view this definition narrowly, you might only apply it to those tasks that give you hard, clear results – things that you can see and measure immediately.

I’d imagine that many of you view time with family valuable. Would you consider it “productive”? I would, as there are many benefits and even results. It’s hard to measure. You can’t really know what would be if you didn’t spend your time with family – for you or for them.

One of the ways I think about the idea of productivity is whether I’m making the most of my time. This shifts the idea from trying to accomplish tons of things to being effective and working on those things that are important. In this case, the word important refers to the big picture view – those values and needs that provide meaning and purpose to our life.

The amount of time – “free” time – we all have varies – from person to person and depending on various circumstances – activities, obligations, support and assistance, health, family, etc. If your “free” time is minimal, it’s all that more important to maximize that time. The idea of “free” time seems an oxymoron to me – as who has free time or at least feels like they have free time?

Something that you need to consider is what is reasonable for you personally. The amount of what we can each accomplish in a given day – the degree of productivity – will vary from person to person. What factors are you dealing with that could limit your productivity? How can you maximize your effectiveness?

Inc. Magazine had a blurb about the 3 secrets of most productive people a while back – these illustrate that productivity is about more than accomplishing things.

they take breaks
they are great collaborators
they have lives outside work

All three of these focus on the benefits of stepping away from being in the midst of “working” or being productive in the strict definition. There’s an additional comment about having lives outside of work also reveals these highly productive people have interests that don’t relate to their work.

True productivity can be as much about following your passions that give your life meaning as it is about completing your to-do list and earning money. What your success at being productive will look like is something you need to figure out. I can tell you that it will not mean working on your to-do list every waking moment. And it might mean reevaluating what being productive means to you – considering those activities you engage in that don’t provide those measurable results. I encourage you to discover your own version of what productivity means for you personally.

Hoarder? More Likely Challenging Disorganization.

With the proliferation of television shows about hoarding, many people see hoarders around them. Or think they do. It’s a pet peeve of mine that every person who has “too much stuff” is now deemed a hoarder. Never mind that “too much stuff” is extremely subjective, hoarding is quite a bit more complex than to be simply about too much stuff. Therefore, let’s explore different aspects about stuff and see if we can clear up these misconceptions about hoarding. (If you want the more technical information about hoarding, see my post, “Defining Hoarding.”)

As I already stated, it’s about more than stuff. I’ll admit it; I have a lot of stuff. Even “too much stuff.” As my husband and I have gone through various rooms, I’m amazed by the amount of excess we find hidden away, forgotten about. And the large piles that I set out to be donated have shocked me and we have more to go. The people I work with have varying amount of stuff; some quite a bit and some hidden away in closets and drawers where it doesn’t “look” cluttered. Yet, we each want something different from our spaces – from the desire to be surrounded to the desire to have the open space (see my entry, “Envisioning Your Space”). Believe it or not, there’s no one right way for a space to look and that means someone somewhere will think that there’s “too much stuff” there.

What is your relationship to your stuff? This is one of the features that help to distinguish what is happening with the stuff around you. I laughing cringe at the idea of getting rid of my media – those books, CDs, and movies and yet, that is exactly what I have been slowly doing. My movie collection has been cut by more than half and it feels good. Removing all outside obstacles, what happens to you when you decide to get rid of things? Those obstacles can be:

minimizing the sense of being overwhelmed
the absence of someone judging or trying to tell you what to do
the freedom to take your time and think through your choices

Finding the space where these pieces come together can be challenging, yet what happens then?

It breaks my heart to hear about people being told they are “hoarders” and I know from my knowledge and experience that they aren’t even close to being hoarders. From what I can tell, it’s more about someone in their life thinking that they know better than the client. They believe that they “should” get rid of this or that; that they “should” not struggle with making decisions; that they “should” be able to easily change long time habits after a “clean sweep”; etcetera. This is probably a large reason that having your family help you with your stuff often backfires.

There’s a different term than hoarder, for people who have struggled with stuff for a long time, that may or may not have clutter around them and that’s chronically disorganized. Since this has a rather clinical sound to it, the Institute of Challenging Disorganization prefers to refer to it as challenging disorganization that can also be applied to the situational disorganization some people can struggle with after major life events. They define chronic disorganization as:

Chronic disorganization is having a past history of disorganization in which self-help efforts to change have failed, an undermining of current quality of life due to disorganization, and the expectation of future disorganization.

http://www.challengingdisorganization.org/content/frequently-asked-questions-public

Hoarding is about much more than the stuff – however subjective – and relates to how we deal with that stuff. The chance is that your grandmother/uncle/brother-in-law is not a true hoarder. That doesn’t mean that organization isn’t a tremendous challenge for them. When there’s lots of stuff around, however hidden it may or may not be, it requires a lot of work and effort. Simply modifying the behaviors is an extreme challenge and takes time. Try to keep in mind your own biases – your own view of what makes up “too much stuff.”

Consider Setting Resolutions – or Not

There’s a certain amount of dread I find as the New Year approaches. I feel an obligation to talk about resolutions and goals, as this is the expectation for this event each year. Part of me wonders how many of you actually set New Year’s resolutions. Or how seriously you take them. As time passes, I have a sense that people sitting down to make their list has dissipated over the years. It seemed like everyone did it when I was kid and you needed to be prepared since someone (more likely several people) were bound to ask you what your goals were for the coming year. I’m not sure how many of us view this event the same now.

And let me be perfectly clear, I am all for setting goals. I’ve mentioned before that I just personally resist this once a year on January 1^st list making. I strive to incorporate it into my life, throughout the year. I do dislike how we have the potential for undermining our confidence by setting goals and not meeting them. This feels extremely contrary to the intention. What I want for all of us is positive self-regard, the feeling of being successful in all our life. Anything that challenges that needs to be reevaluated in my book!

So, let’s talk about goals here. You probably know all the guidelines – start small, set concrete and specific goals that you can measure, and keep the list short. I’ve even written about these things before in Goals, Already?

Yet I can’t help but wonder, maybe we half-heartedly set some New Year’s resolutions simply expecting that they probably won’t happen. Most people I’ve talked to know about the above guidelines for being successful in setting goals and yet when they’ve set goals, they’ve neglected to develop their goals far enough to apply those guidelines. That’s part of why it occurred to me that New Year’s resolutions might have become almost an almost rote task for some of us.

Probably the biggest thing for me is that taking steps to reach our goals can’t be so easily proscribed. I remember years ago I desperately wanted to lose weight. I went through phases of wanting a quick and easy fix since I blamed some medication for my weight predicament. Then I accepted that there wasn’t going to be any quick fixes and made some beginning efforts at exercising. Those often faltered with the realization of how far I had to go – even 5 minutes on a stationary bike was exhausting. Then finally I was able to commit to the process, starting small with specific goals at 5 minutes each time 3 days a week. That progressed to 1 hour 5 days a week and guess what – the weight came off.

Except that this goal had to move through various stages before it was truly prepared to be my goal. It took me a long time from the “I want to…” until I was ready to set small and specific goals. That didn’t correspond to any set date on a calendar.

And this really is the crux of why part of me dreads writing about setting New Year’s resolutions, I don’t want to propagate that you need to set goals at this time of year. You don’t need to be ready to make changes this moment. Changes take time and you really need to be prepared in all ways to begin to make those happen.

Therefore, if you are ready to make a New Year’s resolution, go for it. If you’re not, then cheers to you too. And remember the other part of New Year’s is to review your successes over the past year – I hope there were many. Happy New Year and I hope it’s a fabulous one.

Reorganizing and Remembering

Have you ever had a time when you’ve been looking for something and can’t find it? Of course, this is part of being human. Let’s add another piece – you can’t find something that you know you “organized”? This too is quite common. Many times over the years I’ve had clients call me after an organizing appointment wondering where we put this or that. Frequently I’m able to tell them – within one or two possibilities.

Nevertheless this can be supremely frustrating. “Oh my, I went to all this trouble to make things logical and get organized and now I feel even more lost.” Believe it or not, I’ve been there and done just that. It can happen to anyone – from the most organized (which isn’t me by the way, I’m only mostly organized) to those who struggle more chronically with stuff. The reason no one is exempt from dealing with this has to do with several factors – and these factors can give us insight into steps we can take to minimize this happening.

First, when do you work on an organizing project? This is something to plan – design things with a clear intention. And to be completely clear, that doesn’t mean you can’t sort and purge in the meantime. It does mean to make intentional decisions, ones that you have thought out and considered for a while. There are times when our mindset can hinder our efforts – so if you’ve suddenly decided to reorganize those shelves, you might forget where you moved that one thing to that you didn’t want on the shelf after all those years.

Have you heard how it takes a minimum 30 days of doing something consistently before it becomes a routine? Consider the impact of moving one thing somewhere else after all the years you’ve lived in your home. You’re likely to automatically go to the shelf (or wherever) and be surprised that it’s not there. Then you run the risk of not quite remembering where its new home is.

Choosing to change things is something to do only when you’ve had time and energy to consider your options. If you’re tired, this probably isn’t when you are your best nor is it when you are making the best decisions for yourself.

A good example of this can be when dealing with papers. How many names can you think of for your car? Car, Auto, Make, Model, His/Her Car, Old Junker, etc. This can be applied to most papers, and the title needs to make sense to you or the person doing the filing. It’s amazing how one title can seem logical in one moment and completely illogical the next – it becomes hard to locate the correct piece of paper. This can be avoided by taking time to think about what makes sense to you and let it marinate – see if something better comes to mind.

Second, if you cannot wait to organize and don’t have time to make a plan, make a map. You can create essentially a cheat sheet of where things are; it can be as simple as a list, i.e. 3 ring binders – lower right shelf in bookshelf in spare bedroom (behind doors). This can be helpful too when your memory isn’t as good as you’d like. I have a list of our files – the category, the file name, which drawer – and it’s in order so I can always find it even when it’s slipped down and looks like it walked off! The map can even be more literal – a sketch that lays out what your space looks like and what lives in each space.

Another option is to label everything. My husband and I joke that it could be so easy for me to take labeling to an extreme – where the cat would walk around with a label – “cat”. Nevertheless, creating labels can be a good solution to help track where things have been moved.

Here’s a potentially disturbing truth – there’s no absolute answer for escaping our forgetfulness. There are many factors that affect our functioning and therefore our effectiveness when we reorganize. Keep these points in mind when you decide to tackle your next organizing project and minimize the chances you will need to send out a search party for that moved item.

Checking Tasks Off Your To-Do List

One of the questions I ask people when we’re talking about to-do lists is “do you write in tasks so that you can check them off?” There are a fair number of people who admit with some embarrassment that yes, in fact they do that. And I smile and say, “yup I’ve been known to do that too.” I want those check marks – that symbol of having used my day productively. Yet, it’s simply one-way to have the validation that the day was productive.

We all want to feel like we are accomplishing things – both those that are necessary and those that help us feel like we are moving forward. The way that we feel about our to-do lists can vary. It also varies over time – there are times I love my to-do list and times when it simply fills me with dread. As with everything, there are many variables that affect our behaviors and feelings.

My biggest struggle is to feel productive – how many tasks are reasonable to accomplish? There’s this nagging feeling like I could have done more, “if only…” With all the variables of life, what is realistic for a person to do in a given day?

I’ve looked into this, from extensive reading to polling my friends and family. The answers vary dramatically as well as the response that it’s hard to quantify – “it depends.” There was a flaw in my polling – often we each view our tasks differently. Does doing the dishes count as a to-do? Does taking a shower? You can see how defining a reasonable number of to-dos can be challenging.

Tasks take a different amount of time to complete. In a to-do list each item takes a line and can appear equal, even when they’re not. Ideally everything on your active to-do list needs to be able to be completed in one step. This means that projects are kept somewhat separate – like the brain dump to-do list, and only the next step goes onto the smaller daily or weekly to-do list (see my discussion of this in: Decide on the Next Action).

When it feels like I’ve been struggling with accomplishing my tasks, often I will write an estimate of the time I think each task will take. This allows me to see how much I have set to do and gives me the chance to move things to another week (I currently make weekly to-do lists from the brain dump list). Sometimes I will even take a list of tasks completed and note the time spent on each – this provides me with a realistic view of what I accomplished.

Too often I see people discounting the things they did do, as they view those things as minor or mandatory. Nevertheless, everything we do takes time and energy – it counts. During the times when I wasn’t really keeping a to-do list, at the end of the day I would sometimes write down everything I had done that day – another way for me to see what was accomplished.

Unfortunately there is no easy answer about how much you can realistically accomplish on a given day. One thing to consider is how long the things on your to-do list will take – do you have time on this or that day? Based on Harold Taylor’s planner, I recommend limiting your daily to-do list to no more than 3 tasks, above and beyond all those things you do each day anyway. Those 3 tasks can be whatever you choose and of any length as long as they are able to be completed within a reasonable amount of time. Test this and see how it works – when does it work for you and when does it break down?