Why is it that we make sure to schedule meetings, appointments, and deadlines for commitments we make to others, but we don’t schedule our regular tasks and commitments to ourselves?

A little while ago, I dropped the ball at work: It was my responsibility to notify someone in another office that my boss would be in his region, and I forgot. No excuse, I just forgot. This person phoned three people in my office and reamed them out. Oh crap. I’m tough on myself when I overlook things that aren’t a big deal, so this time I felt just AWFUL!

To make sure it didn’t happen again, I pulled out an old trick I’d used at a previous job and got to work. This is something I started using because I was getting bogged down in the day-to-day nitty gritty and running out of time for key tasks that needed to be pushed along every week.
There are just three simple steps:

Make a list

Include everything you need to get done each week. Get it all out of your head. At my old job this included data entry, invoicing, managing the contracts database (including renewals as the expiration approached), and stock management (monitoring levels, ordering, reconciling, etc).

Give it a time block

Figure out how much time each task needs, and how often you need to do it in a week. Keep it realistic but don’t be overly generous – after all, tasks expand to fill the time you give them. Keep it tight to keep you motivated.

Schedule it

Everything! Start with any regular meetings or appointments you have, then add in all of the tasks you identified in step 1. Think about how you work best and accommodate that (so I did data entry on Mondays, using a fairly mindless activity to ease me into the week, and contracts in the morning when I was sharper on details). Also keep plenty of free time – you don’t want your schedule to be so packed you have no flexibility for when urgent things or a new project pops up. If your schedule gets more than about 80% filled, you need to consider dropping some things or at least moving them down the priority list until you have more available time.

Make sure you put your completed schedule somewhere visible – mine lives taped to the bottom of my monitor so I can’t help but see it every day.

For bonus points:

• keep a list of all of your regular tasks somewhere visible to use as a prompt.
• use your diary/planner as a back up: for the first month or so I would also add each task to my diary so I had two places to remind me, until it became a habit to always check contracts on Thursday mornings, for example.
• review the schedule regularly to make sure it’s still working for you. I look at mine every 3 months and adjust if needed.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment I have a bunch of extra-curricular projects on the go, too. This method has been super-useful in helping me make steady progress on each of them (compared with my old method of going hell-for-leather on project A for two weeks, followed by the ‘Oh crap, project B!’ moment).

Making a habit of scheduling all your tasks means you won’t forget to do something important. Plus it’s great for those moments when you’re flailing about wondering what to do next.

What are your top tips for keeping on top of everything? Let me know in the comments!