Alan W. Goff
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Setting Goals for Success the ‘A’ Type Way
(Part 3)
‘Continued from part 2 (Time-management guidelines)
1. Keep a record. One useful tool is to keep a record of your daily activities. Naturally, you should already be keeping a notebook or journal of the goals you want to achieve in various time frames, but it is also helpful to keep a written record of all your daily activities. This will help you analyze how you spend your time. The first time you start writing down all the things you do (and how much time you spend doing it), you may be shocked to discover how much time you waste throughout the day.
You may also be unaware that your energy varies throughout the day and night. You probably know whether you're a morning person or a night owl--but do you know all the times of the day when your energy dips and peaks? Your productivity may vary depending on the amount of glucose in your blood, the temperature of the room, the length of time since you last took a break, routine distractions, stress, discomfort, or various other factors. Once you've identified your peak-energy periods, you can use time more wisely by reserving those hours for the things that matter most. Here's a hint: Don't use your best hours to check your e-mail, for example. When your energy dips, you can switch tasks, eat something to give you energy, take a break and get some fresh air, check your e-mail, or do something that's easy but useful.
2. Prepare a to-do list. There are people who make lists and people who don't. Perhaps you've never thought of yourself as a "list person," but to-do lists are essential when you need to carry out a number of tasks, or when you have made several commitments that need to be attended to simultaneously. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you can juggle all of this information in your head. If you find that you are caught out of time because you have forgotten to do something, then you definitely need to keep a to-do list. I keep a ‘6 Most Important Things’ list.
The solution to feeling overwhelmed is simple: Write down the tasks you need to do, and if they are large, break them down into their component tasks. If they still seem too large to handle, break them down again. Do this until you have listed everything you need to do in a given day or week. Now run through your list and allocate priorities: ‘A’ (very important) to ‘D’ (unimportant). If too many tasks have a high priority, run through the list again and demote the less important ones.
In case it isn't obvious, this list should be closely related to the prioritized list of goals and actions that you wrote down earlier. Think of your to-do list as the short-term equivalent of that longer-term list. Keeping those lists coordinated--making sure your daily activities incorporate your research priorities--is essential for your productivity.
Please refer to part 4 of this series for the conclusion.
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