1d ago

How do you time manage and prioritize your work and projects?

I have, within the context of my job, things to do that will take various lengths of time and are of various priorities. If I get blocked on one it'd be useful to know what to switch to, and on.

I have, within the context of my personal life, things that I want to do that will take undetermined amounts of time and are of various priorities.

It'd also be nice to have a record to go back and reflect on when I did what. And it'd be nice to plan a little ahead so that I can decide what I hope to do next.

So... how do you do it? I am so bad at time management. Is there a useful software I can use (if so, is it foss)? Is there a way to keep consistent with my planner so that I don't fall behind on managing my time management, without falling into the trap of spending much effort on creating a time management system that all my time is spent managing my time.

Send help :(

21 comments

after testing a bunch of different apps, I settled on a notebook and a pen. There's nothing more convenient than writing down your tasks and plans in two columns and then simply recording the results the next day.
- +1 for this.
  If I write it, I usually remember it. I have project specific trackers which I'm forced to use for work (an ERP), and occasionally I'll use some spreadsheets for "complex" note taking, but at the end of every day I write what I need to do tomorrow (top tasks, at least), and add to it as I go.
  I do that most days and most days I have a pretty good idea of what I need to do to keep things moving.
- Same but with a dry erase board for the family. Everyone can see what, when it was added, under who's name, etc
I use Outlook at work, and a former co-worker showed me her trick which is to create calendar reminders for time-sensitize things because there is always too much to remember. And you get the benefit of appearing busy (red) in Teams so people are less likely to interrupt. It's like a meeting but you are the only one invited.
- Reminders as meetings are 🔥
- Ive started using Microsoft todo so it combines with this approach
I keep a text file formatted as a hierarchy. It's basically just an indented list.
One of the items is called "workstreams". It's the 4-5 things that I'm responsible for at the moment. I have subentries for the current task I'm blocked on and the next few things I need to do.
Every morning, I start at first workstream item and try to do as many of the items in there that I can. When I get blocked, I move to the next workstream item and repeat. When I get to the last workstream item, I either do other stuff or go back to the top.
If there's a time-sensitive task, I do the same thing as @eezeebee@lemmy.ca and create a reminder in my calendar software.
My life is incredibly complex. My work has 4 subroles that I do that are all scheduled adhoc to a max of 6 weeks in advance. My wife has a changing work rota too. 2 young kids have things we need to keep track of all the time. The tools I use are:
Shared calendar with the wife - kids, work schedules, annual leave, social commitments go here.
Work calendar - need to be very strict with putting everything on this calendar immediately.
To-do list (for me this is pen and paper) - I make a list of everything that needs doing that I can think of. And a seperate list of the things I want to do this week. Realistically, when you are planning outtasks like this, take your best estimated time for a taskand at least double it.
I found I was terrible at it, so I quit work, problem solved ! that was 25 years ago, I am now 60.
- Thats the dream! haha Glad you could do it
I have the same problem. Got a teaching job while in the middle of my phd and now i just end up doing preparations for the following classes, grading exams and so on, and never get around to working on my phd. Ive found no good solution though. If I work on my phd I leave my students waiting and with more improvised classes, if i work on material for the students I forget about my phd subject.
Ive tried using an app called superproductivity, which is on fdroid and works fine, but it didnt help me as much as i hoped...
Send help :( Also got long term personal stuff id like to work on, like at least an hour a week, but theres always something urgent from work that shows up and takes my time or leaves me too tired.
- For both our sakes, I hope we can find something that works for us. I don’t need to be on my productivity grind 24/7. I don’t desire that at all. But I really don’t like the feeling of completely misspent time. I want the balance of doing what I want to do AND totally relaxing (physically+mentally) when I feel it’s time to relax
Asana at work; it's great, and you can easily go back and check what you did and when. And in my personal life, pen and paper. I don't see this changing anytime soon.
I designed my own weekly planner, updated and printed once weekly, that lets me visualize my time, list unstructured tasks, and journal a bit, all on one page a day:
Upper box are tasks I must finish today and the lower box is for tasks I'd ideally get to, but don't have to, or just random notes. Tasks and dates beyond the one-week span just get thrown in a mostly-unstructured notebook, which I reference after printing a new weekly planner.
It hasn't solved everything, but it at least frees my working memory from having to keep a to-do list.
- That’s slick in how straightforward it is. I like the offline element you get from printing it, too.
At work I use outlook tasks with some custom integer fields to prioritise work. Everything is basically numbered to get higher priority things up the list and more visible but I also use the due date and reminder time to organise what needs to be done when (some high priority things need to wait on external input so while they are still my focus I won't look back at them til the reminder day). I don't really need to plan time on my work tasks but if I did I'd probably add another column that added a scale estimate, I probably wouldn't use a specific time period but more use the old scrum method of scaling tasks. Sadly I think outlook tasks is going to be discontinued soon and migrated to the inferior Microsoft planner. When that happens I guess Ill either move to excel or my home method.
For home stuff I build ToDo lists in Obsidian and share that across devices using mega. I'll generally have a few ToDos depending on context. That is I'll have a long term one for big things I want to do but then will also build ones focused on more specific things like housework that needs to be done that day or things I need to do for my ongoing house renovation. If the list is for something complex I might build it at high level and then expand our a given section when it gets closer to working on that task. I also use Obsidian for weekly meal planning and shopping lists.
One of my tools is a never- ending to-do list (pen&paper). It's a substitute for having a memory, it's always on me and I have to write things down as soon as I realise it's a task I need to complete. Ticking items off helps me stay motivated, so if it's a longer process I'll break it down to get more ticks (eg think about x, outline plan for x, spend 1 hr on x).
Then on a given day I can make a separate list of things I need to get done that day and stretch goals, with the must- haves split into hard and easy columns (based on how they feel to me, psychologically). Ideally I try to start with the hardest thing first, then reward myself with an easy one, and repeat.
0 projects when I'm working full time. sorry but it just feels like work to me.
I use Trello for a lot of stuff. Shopping lists, to-do lists, keeping track of tasks needed for whatever home project I'm working on, and lately I've been doing it for work tasks since I'm juggling a lot of things with dependencies that come and go. Most of it relies on kanban boards, which basically means different columns and stuff in each. Work to-do list has a column for stuff I can/should be doing, stuff I'm blocked on, stuff that may need a little polishing but it's nearly complete, and stuff that's actually done (gives a little motivation). Shopping lists are separated by store. Stuff like that.
Unfortunately it's one of the subscription cloud apps... But their free version is very usable and hasn't been overly enshittified... Yet.
I don't. I give up on anything that's for self instead of survival. If I don't have to do it, I won't.
I found Kanboard to be useful for managing my projects tasks. There is also a Gantt plugin that can be used to schedule tasks with an ergonomic UI.

21 comments