An old friend of mine had earned his identity among our high school friends as an expert procrastinator. He had to withstand several of our snarky remarks and antics. And on his birthday one year, one of his friends gave him a small disc that looked something like this:
After a moment of blank stares, an explanation from the gift giver made it all too clear: A typical response you might expect from someone who puts things off until later is, “I didn’t get around to it.” Well, now my friend was a proud owner of one round tuit. He was left with no further excuses for not getting things done, for not getting a round tuit.
Okay, so it’s not as easy as that to cure procrastination.
We all struggle, to some degree, with leaving things until the last minute. And these days, there are countless apps and services out there that promise increased productivity, organization, and efficiency. In particular, to-do-list apps allow you to categorize, tag, sort, filter, prioritize, share, assign, and even decorate your lists. You can spend hours manipulating them and looking at them from different angles. But ultimately, your lists won’t get any shorter unless you get around to doing the necessary work.
From my experience, I’ve found that lists on their own don’t help to make sure I get things done. At their best, they merely keep a record of items in case I forget about them. At their worst, they’re an irritating exhibit of all the things I haven’t completed. They can become sources of anxiety and add to the administrative overhead that I need to manage. Lists also tend to expand with no limit. And if treated like an attic used as storage space, your lists will be nothing more than a vast graveyard of aging tasks that you effectively decided do not deserve your focus.
I made a simple change in how I work that cost me nothing, yet had a dramatic effect on increasing productivity by making better use of a tool that I already had: Rather than adding items to my to-do list, I started scheduling tasks as events in my calendar instead.
Creating an event ensures that you’ll be realistic with your time by constraining you to fit the task into an available space in your calendar. Not only are you committing yourself to when and for how long you’ll work on the task, but you’re also ensuring that this block of time will be reserved for this particular task. Another advantage of this method is that you’re forced to make a prioritization decision. The time slot in which you decide to schedule the task will be the result of a prioritization decision you make with other events already in your calendar.
So in one step, by scheduling something into your calendar instead of adding it to your to-do list, you’ll have accomplished the following:
- Imposed a deadline by defining a date and time by which the task needs to be completed
- Made a rough estimate of how long you expect the task to take
- Reserved time for yourself for that particular task so that you’re free to work without having to think about other things you need to do
- Prioritized the task against your existing tasks
When creating a calendar event, pick a time that you’ll commit to working on the activity. You may find that the extra step of blocking out a duration of time will make the need to get the job done more real. You may feel a greater sense of responsibility to yourself and the integrity of your calendar. A scheduled event may feel like something closer to a promise rather than just a simple reminder.
I still do maintain lists, though. I use them as time-insensitive reminders and notes to myself for high-level, low-priority items, such as “Learn more about Japanese geography.” I look at these reminders occasionally, and as they become more relevant, I create events in my calendar.
The next time you’re considering adding something to your to-do list, try scheduling it in your calendar instead. Your calendar may start to look busy, but really, it’s just showing you something closer to reality.
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