A couple of people have asked me lately about how I get things done. I’m my own boss, often working out of my home, so being able to stay on task is critical. My mechanism for getting my work done is fairly high-tech, but pretty simple in practice. Here it is:
1. I capture everything. You cannot manage your time without ensuring that every last thing you expect yourself to do is captured in a single place. There is really no exception to this rule. You have to have a place where every task is captured and every appointment is captured.
To do that, you must have your capture mechanism on your person at all times. ALWAYS. So, I asked myself: what is always on me? And the answer is: my phone. How can I use my phone as a capture mechanism for all tasks? Here’s how:
First, I signed up for a task-management web application (Remember the Milk), and then I signed up for a calendar application (Google Calendar) Remember the Milk is nothing particularly special, but it’s free and it’s easy to use, and (most importantly) it has an interface with both Jott and Google Calendar (more on these coming). You could use a different to-do list application that interfaces with Jott, though: Vitalist, Toodledo, etc. Whatever you like best.
Second, I signed up for a Jott account. This has been critical. Jott is an application that is capable of transcribing your voice (over the phone, when you call Jott’s number) into text and adding what you said into a number of web applications.
Jott provides you with a telephone number to call. It answers, and asks, “Who would you like to Jott?” You can provide any of several answers (once you set it up on the Jott website), but (importantly) two of the potential answers are, “Remember the Milk,” or “Google Calendar.” It then transcribes whatever you say, and posts it online in the place you indicated.
If you were to walk up to me while I’m standing in line at the grocery store and say, “Could you email me a recommendation for a couple of good books for the summer?” I would call Jott, and tell it that I wanted to leave a message on Remember the Milk. It would beep, just like a regular voicemail system, and I’d simply speak into the phone, “Email [your name] book recommendations.” Then I’d hang up.
By the time I got to my computer, if I were to check my to-do’s on Remember the Milk, sure enough, that task would appear there. Jott has transcribed it from my voice into the computer, and sent it to Remember the Milk.
The same process would apply for appointments people make with me: if I’m at my computer, I’ll simply enter it in Google Calendar. If not, I’ll let Jott do it for me.
2. First thing every morning, I spend five to fifteen minutes establishing my priorities for the day. Basically, I separate things into four categories: Things that must happen today (Category A), things where it would be very nice if they happen today (B), things that really won’t happen today but still must be done someday (C), and things that I should really forget about (D).
Then, I take everything that is an A and prioritize those. The most important things are done first, the less important things are done later in the day. I actually then put tasks, as well as appointments, on my Google Calendar. I treat them just like appointments: I estimate how long they’ll take, and I make an appointment with myself to do them.
Category B tasks will end up very late in the day, usually, but they also make the list. The only real key here is: I do not rest if there is an open Category A task.
I pretty much ignore Category C tasks for the day, and only revisit them if I’ve somehow knocked all of the other stuff off the list. I then delete the Category D tasks from off of Remember the Milk, never to be revisited again. It just wasn’t important.
3. I manage my day by text messages to my phone. For every appointment I have, and for every one of my day’s top priorities, I receive a text message at the appropriate time. For this I use Google Calendar.
If you have a Google Calendar account, go to the “Settings” tab, and then click on “Mobile Setup.” This will allow you to enter your cell phone number and carrier. From now on, when you enter an appointment, you’ll have an option to send yourself reminders. By default, you’ll get a text message half an hour before the appointment starts. Do nothing, and you’ll get that. But you can also set it to send you the reminder at whatever interval you like (and you can even send multiple alerts). Set an appointment. Where you see “reminders,” click on SMS. Send yourself an alert for whenever you like: 5 minutes before the appointment, a half hour before, whatever.
The option for multiple reminders works great for early morning appointments (where I send myself a reminder 12 hours before, and another at about the time I want to wake up), or appointments where I need to do something (like change into a suit) beforehand (then I can send myself a text an hour or so before, just to make sure I get home, change, and get to the appointment).
As I noted above: important tasks end up as appointments, so the same process is followed.
Now, I cannot possibly forget anything. I will receive a text to remind me of every single thing I intend to do today.
It sounds more complicated than it is. It nets out to: I use Jott to capture everything, I prioritize in the morning, I use Google Calendar’s mobile reminder function to send myself text messages as reminders, and I promise myself that all Category “A” tasks will be done before the day ends. That’s pretty much it.
If you don’t have a system of your own, you might want to try this one. Every technology I described above is free, by the way.
