What To Do When There's Too Much To Do Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t determine what you need to accomplish and schedule the time to do it, other people are going to be perfectly happy to fill up your day for you.
    Establish daily routines for common work tasks, such as checking e-mail or organizing your day. This allows you to make fewer decisions, reducing your energy expenditure.
    Apply the idea of routines to all areas of your life, for anything you do on an ongoing basis. Routines help in so many ways:
    â€¢ They reduce energy expenditure. You won’t have to make so many decisions.
    â€¢ They reduce anxiety. You’ll have a plan in place for how to fulfill each activity.
    â€¢ They build anticipation. Just as setting up a vacation in advance helps build excitement, defined routines can build anticipation … and sometimes motivate you when you’re slogging through a dull task, if the fun time is already scheduled!
    Here are a few helpful ways I’ve introduced routines into my life:
    â€¢ Every weekend I’m in town, I have a scheduled date night every Saturday night with my husband.
    â€¢ Every morning I’m in town, my husband and I go to the recreation center to work out at 7:00 A.M. Period. No excuses.
    â€¢ I have a monthly “fun day” for a pedicure, manicure, and a massage.
    â€¢ At the end of each day, I plan the next day.
    â€¢ Our morning and evening routines with the children create structure and predictability, while minimizing hassle.
    â€¢ From 10:00 to 11:30 A.M. —when I’m at my highest level of energy—I work on my most creative, difficult tasks.
    Routines allow you to build time for reality into your schedule. Block out the time for the report you have to write. If someone tells you a meeting is going to take two hours, block out at least that long. If part of your job is to supervise the work of others in your team, make sure you give yourself time to do so. Make a reasonable estimate of the required time to complete routine tasks and block out the time to do them.
Structure Your Workday Properly
    I’m the 2011–2012 president of the National Speakers Association (NSA), and often meet fascinating people at our meetings. One such person was Rick Searfoss, a former astronaut, who brings the lessons of teamwork, leadership, innovation, and peak performance he learned in human spaceflight down to earth for all to enjoy. I asked him what he’d learned about time management by being an astronaut, and if there was such a thing as productivity in outer space.
    Rick told me there are certain activities when blasting off that are timed literally down to the second, such as the precise time to ignite the engines. But not all activities are timed, such as housekeeping, eating, restroom breaks, and so on. The astronauts struck a balance between having structure and having flexibility. They planned for the important things, allowing some movement on the lower-priority tasks.
    So how does that apply to the real-life work situations we non-astronauts face? Basically, the lesson here is to make sure you block out time to get all the important things done first, and then allow some leeway with your secondary priorities. With that in mind, grab your calendar and start plugging tasks into time blocks. You should plug every top-priority task fromyour HIT lists into your schedule if possible. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big task or a small one; estimate how long it will take to do, then block out the time. Yes, actually put an appointment on your calendar and mark it as “busy.” No one needs to know you’re the only one invited to the meeting.
Basic Scheduling Categories
    You can break down the process of scheduling into three steps. Fill in the:
    1. Non-negotiable items.
    2. Regular daily tasks.
    3. Work from your HIT list.
    Non-negotiable items are integral to your organization’s operations. Let’s say your boss schedules a staff meeting every Wednesday morning at 9:00.