How do others manage and prioritise their tasks?

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It’s the start of a new week. Your inbox is flooded with new issues of your favourite newsletters. You read about a new tool that everyone is using and you want to give it a try. You get an idea for an article or a blog post that you want to write.

Basically, you’ve got a load of new tasks that you want to take on. How do you manage to balance and prioritise these tasks without feeling too overwhelmed?

Are there are any tools you use to manage these tasks?

I’d be really keen to hear people’s perspectives as I find myself always wanting to do loads of things but end up feeling overwhelmed.

(Just to clarify, these tasks I’m referring to are things like personal projects and not strictly to do with company or client work)

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You’re also restricting it to professional things outside of work?
Or include the larger life organization/priorities?

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Well, my thinking was personal projects that could be around anything (try a new tool, make a video/podcast, write a blog post) but all these things have to be balanced around life in general.

I’d still be interested in how people balance these things around their work life but what I’m not asking about is things like prioritising Jira tickets, for example.

I hope that makes sense?

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To me, I don’t get drawn into tools, techniques unless there is a specific problem I’m trying to solve. I read articles that relate to problems or opportunities I’m looking to resolve right now. If the article is about a popular tool or technique that I can’t see the benefit in, I leave it.

So what I’m saying is, before you invest your time, you really need to have a direction of travel. Before investing your time, take a step back and ask yourself “What benefit is this tool going to give me?”, “What is the outcome I’m looking for in my blog post?”, “What value am I trying to add to myself?”

You could start I suppose by using Coveys 4 quadrants of prioritising tasks i.e. Importance vs Urgency. For me to establish something as “Important” I’ve already decided there should be a measurable benefit.

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Thanks for your perspective Gary! I think my problem is that I want to invest my time into so many ideas and they all seem to come at once and I end up overwhelmed and not fully following through with any of them.

I was thinking of using a tool like Notion to keep track of these ideas; applying priorities and such so I can keep track of things and hold myself accountable

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Personally I use todoist for tasks. It’s great for capturing ideas and planning things to do when inspiration strikes. I must have many hundreds of tasks organised in to projects and categories accumulated over the years. The aim isn’t really to ever do everything… It’ll never get down to zero… but moreover it’s there to help me do the right things at the right time.

I use notesnook for note taking. So I’d migrate to notesnook to start drafting the blog.

Notesnook can do tasks too, but it’s not it’s primary purpose and it’s not set up in quite the same way to handle them as todoist.

Hope that helps!

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This is great Chris!

I like how you mention that you’ll never get things down to zero. I think creating a list can lead to pressure to tick everything off but really, it can be a good way to keep track of ideas you have in the moment that you might not be quite ready to tackle.

I’ll have a look into Todoist and Notesnook to see if I can make use of them.

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It’s the start of a new week. Your inbox is flooded with new issues of your favourite newsletters.

  • I keep the ones I want to read marked as unread and delete the rest (being honest here :sweat_smile:) I read those when during my “learning hour” I take each Thursday

You read about a new tool that everyone is using and you want to give it a try.

  • I send this as a message to myself in Slack and circle back to it when I have down time in between projects
  • Or, I decide I want to try it on my off hours and make a calendar event for it on my personal schedule

You get an idea for an article or a blog post that you want to write.

  • Typically I write it down on a post-it first and then transfer it to Notion where I keep my writing ideas. Then, when I write on Wednesday evening (again, this is a scheduled event on the calendar), I look through the list of my ideas and pick the one I want to tackle

How do you manage to balance and prioritise these tasks without feeling too overwhelmed?

  • Wow. Writing this out, I feel like there are three categories for me when it comes to projects I want to take on:
  1. Need to do/Want to do/Must make time for
  2. Don’t have to do/Want to do/Want to make time for
  3. Don’t have to do/Want to do/Can’t take time for

I can’t do it all so I really need to be truthful about what I can take on and what I can’t. All of the above is intertwined with family life/pets/living in general

Are there are any tools you use to manage these tasks?

  • My biggest tools are my calendar, my post-its, Slack, and Notion
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Balance? Between what? :stuck_out_tongue:
I’m just kidding since I love picking up new things and I also dedicated most of my free time towards learning new things so Good question!

For me if it feels overwhelming, then it’s actually just not that interesting or a struggle or not worth it. It’s just not the right time to pick something up.

It will NOT be overwhelming when you see something you are hyped about, when something is shiny and you just want that “new toy”. If you are passionate about learning it, you’ll really do it. Else, it’s not that big of a deal and you can live without it.

I use Trello for my ToDo list but you can use anything you want, even a word doc will do. I just use Trello so I can drag things to done and give myself a compliment for doing so! :smiley:

Most of the time only “bigger” things that I cannot do right now are on it.
Small things that would take me under 2 minutes to do, I instantly do them (requires a bit of discipline but you’ll get the hang of it). It’s going to be very painful to do this, especially with the boring stuff but after a while, you are so used to it and proud of doing it, you’ll start harrashing other people with your “just do it” mentality and they’ll compliment you saying " you’re right".

So back to my Trello board!

I have a column with Backlog, ToDo’s, In Progress & Done.
Everytime I find a new course, or long video to watch that I cannot watch right now or do right now, I’ll add it to my ToDo’s.

Every 1st of the month I review my ToDo’s list and most of the time, when it’s on their for more then 2-3 weeks I reflect on myself and think “Do I really want to do this?” and most of the time I’ll just drag it to backlog or archive it. Because if I really wanted to, I would already have done it/started it.

I prioritise these by work & personal goals. If it’s relevant for my current work, I’ll mostly just pick it up asap. For personal projects or workshop ideas, I’ll give it priority 2. Anything else goes to the backlog or archived again.

You should ask yourself, why are you overwhelmed? Because it’s so much or because it’s hard? That means you are not setting the bar LOW enough for YOURSELF.

Yes Low enough and I’ll give you a video link to watch, with what I mean with this. This is something I’ve been using for 10years when I coach people. Set the bar LOW enough.

You probably want to do it ALL right NOW. But that bar is to high, so set it lower.
#IncrementalSteps #AgileOfLife

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My partner does the exact same thing! It seems to help her manage all the different newsletters by leaving them unread and sorting through them at a specific time.

I’ve taken a similar approach on Todoist which Chris kindly recommended above. As seen here:
image

I like this approach. Especially using your calendar. It helps keep you accountable as when the scheduled time comes, you have to tackle the tasks you’ve set for yourself.

Thanks for this answer Judy! Loads of useful tips and tricks.

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I guess I should clarify what I mean by overwhelming. It’s more of a good overwhelming, if that makes sense? I get excited about loads of ideas and such and maybe, I end up so excited that I don’t end up doing anything. That’s why I like the list approach that others have mentioned.

I think it will be good to write these things down and tackle them when I’m in the right place to do that.

"Just do it":sweat_smile:

I get what you mean though. I’m quite good at doing the small tasks in the moment. It’s the bigger tasks that tend to be the more exciting projects and that’s where I need to utilise apps like Trello (Todoist is the one I’ve gone with for now but I’ll see how I get on with it).

Thanks for your perspective Kristof!

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I use TickTick for task and project management. (Not an ad, there are other similar tools, like Todoist, To-Do, Notion Calendar, etc.) It allows to sync your personal and work calendars.

I have a daily, weekly and monthly reviews. At the reviews, I set the priority for each task. If a task can be done in less than 10 mins - I am doing it straight away.

At the beginning of the day, I go through the tasks for a day to check the priority.
Do not plan to do too much - do less, but do it properly and with dedication.

For a personal projects: break them down into manageable tasks and use time blocking in calendar to concentrate at one task at a time. Better to do one simple tasks every day, than trying to accomplish something big in a day.

At Sunday, I review the tasks for a week. Some projects may gone or “parked”. Some projects can rise in priority.

Task management is all about finding the balance between family, work, health and personal development areas. It’s not possible to progress in all at once.

If you don’t feel any energy to do personal tasks - track time you spent on scrolling social media / watch TV series / etc. Then put this time into more useful tasks. (But do not forget to rest, of course).

You can check PARA for organizing life as well. It helps me a lot.

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Here are a couple of things I consider:

  • Urgency
    • Is there a deadline on this task?
    • Will the topic become “stale” / less relevant if I delay it?
  • Duration
    • Can I do this between meetings?
    • Can I do this in parts?
  • Interest
    • What do I want to do first?
    • What’s the availability of anyone else who might be involved?

As for keeping track of these things, I have my own Kanban-type system that I keep on my fridge, with moveable cards. I generally have it on a per-week basis, and if it’s not “relevant” enough to put on the fridge, then either it’s not the right time for it yet, or it’s not that important.

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It’s really great to read about all the different techniques and tools you all use to manage your tasks!

I started using Todoist and it seems quite intuitive and useful so far :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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It is good to start with the Getting Things Done methodology for managing tasks.

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Totally got this! There are always so many things to try, but it can get overwhelming lost. What works for me is a mix of prioritization and time-blocking.

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I’ve been in the same boat for a while and still struggle so I’m with you. What’s been working for me is adding things to a to do list no matter what and then bumping things. I have everything from taking my morning meds to work things; the goal is to build the habit of thinking of things I want to do as “things to do”.

Eventually I started trying to do a budget approach to my time and blocking things off during my day. I fail miserably every week but I’m failing a bit less every week as some of those blocks actually get used successfully.

Be mindful of whats happening, how many blogs have you wanted to write and started? How many have you started and finished? Maybe the format isn’t right or writing doesn’t speak to you. Define your goals, its ok if you pick different tasks, or stop half way through because you discover less passion than you wanted.

This is an agile process really: Set some requirements, design a plan of action, develop and act on the plan, test how well it works, and review and re-assess. Keep what works until you discover higher level trends that might guide you better towards specific tooling as you learn more about how YOU work.

Just don’t be afraid to try something, let yourself discover things that DON’T work for you, thats been my biggest hurdle.

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Personally, I use the Pomodoro technique which breaks things down into 4 stages all of which are 25 minutes each - Allocate a stage to a certain task and focus on that without distraction before moving onto the next stages - At times, the thing you are looking at may cover multiple stage of the Pomodoro but that is fine - Sometimes, simple notifications or emails may cover 1 or 2 stages of the Pomodoro

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