An effective time-management system isn’t really a single system, but a complex and interwoven set of skills and behaviors. There are lots of different things that come into play with how well we manage our time, including how efficiently we work and resist distractions; how well we estimate and judge the passage of time; how well we manage our; and how well we manage our tasks and the things we need to. And all of those aspects of our lives, and the underlying skill sets involved, are intertwined in how well we manage the 24 hours we have in each day. As you’ve read from the previous posts in this series, what it takes for an individual to be good at “Time Management” can be more like a tangled mess of spaghetti than any self-help book might imply. Especially if you have ADHD or ADDish tendencies!
How well we manage the things we have to do in our lives is an integral part of the bigger picture of time-management. Even if we work hard and improve our sense of time, our calendar management, and our thinking about our own abilities, this “Task Management” piece can be a big disconnect for many of us, and the weak link in the proverbial chain of time-management.
Without an effective system in place for task management, we are constantly playing catch-up, squeezing in what we can to dig ourselves out from under the mountain of things we need to take care of, and feeling constant stress of those “forgotten” items that won’t come back into our awareness until they become another crisis to manage, and another fire to put out.
There are two essential components to managing tasks effectively: a trusted means of capture, and creating routines (which I will explore in another post).
Establishing a trusted means to document or capture the things you need to do is essential to alleviating stress, and making sure that things don’t fall off your radar. Recording the things you need to do in some reliable form that you can retrieve is the cornerstone to a good task management system. It is this reliable capture and retrieval system that gets the barrage of things you have to do out of your mind, out of your unreliable working memory, and alleviates stress. And all I’m talking about is creating an effective “to-do list.”
“Lists never work for me”
We’ve all made lists before, with varying degrees of success. If you’re in the habit of writing things down (or recording them electronically), but it isn’t working for you, I don’t want you to lose that habit. It’s a good one! But there are a few, small things you can do differently that can make a list work for you:
Next week, I’ll explore how you can tame your to-do list, creating priorities, and how to make sure you’re actually tacking the tasks on the list so that you can keep it from growing exponentially! Surprisingly, how you record the tasks on your list really does make a difference in your ability to execute those tasks!
Until then, grab a notebook or notepad, and start a new habit!
Take care,
Lynne
2 Comments
Kenneth Gebhardt
Some days you just want to through in the towel because things seem to overwhelming and you do not have a clue where to begin or what your next move will be. Today is one of those days. It would not take much to convince me to act upon it.
Lynne Edris
I’m sorry you’ve had a rough day today, Kenneth! Some days are like that for everyone. I had a client who once said, “Some days aren’t worth a pill!”, meaning that some days it doesn’t matter what you do (medication or not), ADHD just seems to win. Tomorrow can be better. Be nice to yourself, try to recharge, and kick some @$$ tomorrow!