The Time Diet

The Best Technology for Time Management

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In The Time Diet, having an organized way to manage your tasks and deadlines is essential. There are two components to a good system of time management: A choose-to list for daily tasks and a calendar for long term deadlines. (If you are new to The Time Diet, I don’t like to use the word “to-do list.” I prefer to call it a “choose-to list.” Choosing to do something puts YOU in control. Read more about this concept here: The Choose-To List)

Those who have heard me speak know that even though I am far from a tech-phobe, I prefer the pen and paper method for my choose-to list and calendar rather than technology. This is because pen and paper give me more control over how I write things down than any phone app or online program. I can star things, cross things out, draw arrows, circle things etc…without being limited to the constraints of a computer screen. This is especially true for my calendar. I prefer my paper pocket calendar to the calendar on my phone because I can actually see what I have written on every day of the month without having to click through individual days.

That being said, a choose-to list is worthless if people don’t actually carry it with them. If the only way you’ll ever keep your choose-to list or calendar with you is if it integrated with technology, then you need to make sure you are using the best software out there.

Here are 5 popular time management apps or programs that allow you to keep your list and calendar for your Time Diet synced with the technology of your choice.

Time Management App and Program Review

1) Evernote This is an extremely popular app that you can use on both your computer and your phone. It does not have a calendar, so it can’t really stand alone as your only method of time management, but what makes Evernote stand out is its ability to capture pretty much anything you’d want to keep track of. Is “make dinner” on your choose-to list? Add the link to the recipe and your shopping list to that task. Evernote allows you to categorize photos, web pages, notes, voice memos…pretty much anything you can think of. Because of its flexibility, Evernote can be a great enhancement to your time management system. Check it out here: Evernote

2) Remember The Milk In addition to its adorably quirky name, Remember The Milk is a really cool application. You can access it online or on your phone. Lists are extremely easy to manage and the interface is fairly intuitive. Remember The Milk syncs easily with other applications you may already be using such as Gmail, Google Calendar and iCal so it doesn’t really need to feel like a “new” application, but rather a helpful add on to things you already know. One of my favorite features is that it can alert you of deadlines via text message, email or instant messenger- whichever works best for you. Like most time management software, you are limited with how your tasks actually look when you enter them. You can change the priority of a task, but this just adds a different color exclamation mark next to it. Overall, it is a very helpful and easy to use product and great for your Time Diet. Check it out here: Remember The Milk

3) Astrid This is a time management app for the Android platform. The interface is a little cumbersome, but adding a task is extremely easy. You just start typing! Astrid also syncs with the Android calendar so if you are already using the calendar feature, Astrid is a great app to complete your time management system. The interface has three basic screens: Summary (what the task is) Dates (when the task is due) and Alerts (when you want to be reminded of the task.) Astrid advertises that it also syncs with RTM (Remember The Milk) but in my opinion, if you’re already using RTM, Astrid is superfluous. Astrid is a great tool if you wish to keep both components of your time management system on your android phone. Check it out here: Astrid

4) Google Calendar Yes, I know it seems that Google is slowly taking over the world, but their Calendar feature is really great, especially if you want to share your calendar with others. You can use the “task” feature for your choose-to list and sync your work calendar, personal calendar and spouse’s calendar all in one place. I like that the whole calendar is visible in a “month view” and you can see what tasks fall on which day without having to click through individual days. You can also set up email reminders for upcoming deadlines. Google Calendar is free and works great on my laptop, but doesn’t show up very well on my Android Phone. Check it out here: Google Calendar

5) OmniFocus The program, available for Mac products, is usefully for everyone from business professionals managing multiple projects to college students who just want a simple way to keep track of all their homework deadlines and their book list for each semester. It is a bit expensive (40 dollars for the iPad version) but many of the people who use it swear by it. The interface is extremely sleek and easy to use and you can sort your lists by priority or deadline (or by Meats, Vegetables and Desserts if you are properly following your Time Diet!) My favorite feature is the “forecast” screen, which shows you all your deadlines for the next few days. For me, the steep price tag is not worth it, but if you’re a Mac person and the free-ware just isn’t working for you, this is the way to go. Check it out here: OmniFocus

Have any of these products worked for you? Leave a comment and let me know!

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Our Unhealthy Obsession with Due Dates

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One of the tenets of The Time Diet is that stressing out and worrying wastes our time. Half the stress of getting it all done comes from worrying about getting it all done. This attitude comes from our unhealthy obsession with deadlines and due dates. We are bombarded with deadlines in our lives. Bills are due! Projects are due! Paperwork is due! This is the kind of stuff that keeps us up at night and we’d be far more efficient if we spent that energy developing a plan of attack to actually complete this work. You see, every deadline you write in your calendar has a corresponding date that is much more important: your start date. While deadlines are often set by other people, the more important start date is set by you.

This past week was the first full week of the ASU spring semester. There is no better time to witness the stress of deadlines than this initial week of school (except maybe finals week, which has some pretty intense deadline stress too). You see, this first full week of classes is when all the course syllabi are handed out. As the professors carefully walk the class through their expectations for the semester, the students are frantically flipping through the syllabus looking for words like “20 page paper” or “Final Exam: worth 50% of your grade.” Those deadlines then take their place in the part of students’ brains reserved for stressful things where they will loom for the rest of the semester. When you multiply this process by the number of classes a student is taking, the resulting state of mind is the student version of deadline-stress which I like to call, “syllabus overload.”

Syllabus overload is a perfect example of the dangers of stressing out about deadlines with no regard for start dates. Rather than allowing deadlines to pile up in their brains, students should immediately get out their calendars, write down the deadline and then also write down the date they intent to start that project. Does your syllabus say you have a 15-page paper due half-way through the semester? You’ll want to allow 5 days to write it (3 pages a day as a general rule of thumb) plus a buffer of a few days to allow for unexpected things to come up. I would pick a date in my calendar no later than 10 days before this paper is due and write “start paper.”  Do this for every due date in all of your syllabi. Now, you still have a lot of work to do, but the deadlines don’t have to freak you out. All you have to do is look at your calendar and you’ll see your whole plan of attack all laid out. No more worrying about how in the world all your work will be done. You know when it will all be done. You just planned it!

The importance of start dates applies to more than just students. Anyone who has deadlines in their lives needs to also plan out their start dates. Take taxes for example. April 15th does not often invoke thoughts of happiness because it is ingrained in most people’s heads as the day taxes are due (except of course this year when they are due April 18th.) If you do your own taxes, you’ve likely stressed about this deadline many times. Instead of just writing “taxes due” in your calendar, pick a date that you will begin working on them and write “start taxes.” The simple act of designating a start date will do wonders for your stress level. Looking at a calendar of only deadlines makes us feel powerless. Looking at a calendar of self-created start dates makes us feel in control. The Time Diet is all about being in control. Good-bye deadline-stress!!

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Hitting The Wall

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This week, I was reminded of why it is so important to plan Desserts into your day. My husband was gone all this week in Italy for business (poor guy right??) so I decided I was going to get as much of my work done as possible while the house was empty so I could relax a bit when he got back. The first few days were great! I was plowing through tasks left and right! Keynote presentation? Finished! Book proposal? Edited! Garage? Organized! I was a productivity machine.

Then, by day 4, I started to hit a wall. I could feel it coming, but I ignored all the warning signs. I should have noticed my lack of focus, picked up on my growing frustration and took an evening off, but I continued to plow forward. By day 6, it was all over. Halfway through Saturday morning, somewhere between editing an article and gathering research, I hit a wall so hard I’m pretty sure even my dog picked up on it. The exhaustion became too much and I just wanted to scream. I slammed my laptop down, grabbed my Snuggie and curled up on the coach to watch 3 hours of The Food Network (in my next life, I’m pretty sure I want to be a cake decorator). In other words- it ended up being pretty much the most pathetic waste of an afternoon ever.

While sometimes it’s tempting to work until you can’t work anymore, once you’ve gone until you can go no further, you’ve gone too far! It’s why many diet experts tell you to stay on top of your hunger. If you wait until you’re starving to eat, you’ll just end up stuffing yourself at mealtime. A different approach is to have smaller snacks throughout the day to keep yourself going. The same is true for The Time Diet. Rather than keep pushing forward with my work, I should have planned a few Desserts each day to keep my stress level in check. I was so focused on the one big Dessert at the end of the week (my husband coming home) that I forgot to plan smaller enjoyable things throughout the week to keep me sane.

Instead, I pushed myself too hard and hit a wall at the worst possible time- Saturday. Here I have the whole day free and I can’t even capitalize on it because I’m so worn out and frustrated that the thought of looking at my work again makes me want to say things that my Grandmother would not approve of.  I vow to never again forget the cardinal rule of The Time Diet- everything in moderation. It’s not about doing less work, it’s about interspersing your Meats and Vegetables with those fun Desserts that make life enjoyable. Now excuse me while I go chow down on a hot fudge sundae.

Did you miss last week’s video blog? Check it out here!

A Change of Scenery for 25 Dollars

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One of the tricks in your Time Diet is to know when you’re unfocused during work and immediately take steps to become more focused so you can complete your work faster. Recently, my work at home had become increasingly unfocused for two reasons: 1) My workspace was cluttered and 2) it was filled with distractions. Because my husband and I both have laptops, we end up doing most of our work at the kitchen table. I’ve found that I like this better than being at a desk because I don’t have to face into a wall and I feel far less claustrophobic when I’m doing work. This had been working fine for several years, but recently I found myself getting distracted. I have a perfect view of the television from my seat at the table, which becomes all too tempting to turn on (and even more tempting to watch when my husband already has it on!) Also, it was becoming increasingly annoying to have to move aside kitchen clutter to have a space to work. I knew my work was taking longer than it should because of these distractions, so I needed a change.

Last weekend, I bought a used conference table for 25 dollars at a second hand store. It’s 8 feet long, solid wood and aside from a small knick in the side, looks brand new. Actually getting it into our office (which we barely used up until now) was quite an experience, but now I have the perfect workspace and the past week I have felt a renewed vigor with my work I haven’t felt in a while. It has all the things I liked about the kitchen table –it doesn’t face a wall, it’s a large surface and big enough for my husband and me to both work there — without any of the downfalls. I now can no longer see a TV from my work place and I don’t have to worry about clutter from other rooms of the house getting in my way.

A simple “change of scenery” can go a long way for improving your focus. Want to know a teaching secret? In college, teachers learn that if they want to have a really productive and attentive day to flip the students’ desks to face a different direction. Why does this work? Because the students now have a change of scenery! Their routine has been altered. Now, you don’t have to go buy a giant piece of furniture like I did to make this work for you. Any small change in your work environment can help shake up your routine and give you a more focused work session. Do not become so entrenched in a work routine that you let yourself become less productive without realizing it. Frequently re-evaluate how and where you’re working to make sure you’re getting the most out of your work time. Or just come over to our office. I’m pretty sure we have room for you down at the end of our enormous table.

Silencing Your Inner Time Waster

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In our Time Diets, we all have to learn to combat that little voice in our heads that is just a bit too unrealistically optimistic. It’s that voice that creeps out when you’re just about to start some work that says, “Why work now? Look at that big wonderful television! You know you want to watch that new reality show. Just watch it! When you’re done you’re bound to feel much more like getting your work done!”  In a regular diet you might recognize this as the same voice who tells you it’s ok to grab that second piece of chocolate cake because you’ve “earned” it, or to grab a Big Mac for lunch instead of making a sandwich because it’s easier.

This voice is your Inner Time-Waster and it is your goal to make it as soft as possible. Your Inner Time-Waster can be very convincing. It is very good at finding any possible reason to put off doing your work. Sometimes it’ll try to tell you that you’ll feel more like doing work later, or that you work all the time and deserve a break. It’s particularly good at convincing you to put off easy tasks that should only take a few minutes until the infamous “later.” Do not be fooled. Do you really think you’ll feel more like working later? No. This rarely happens. Get started so you have less to do when “later” gets here. For short tasks, remember the 5-minutes rule. If it takes less than 5 minutes, do it now or else you’re likely to forget about.

Your Inner Time-Waster is right about one thing though- you do work all the time and you do need a break, but if you’re following your Time Diet correctly, you’re already scheduling in those Desserts for yourself.  So, when you catch your Inner Time-Waster trying to convince you to do anything but work, tell it to shut up and get lost! You have complete control of your workday and are planning to get your work done first so you can enjoy your Desserts worry-free. Take that Inner Time-Waster. I’m done with you.

An Easy Resolution for 2011

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New Year’s Day is rapidly approaching, which means millions of people will be making resolutions for how they can better themselves in 2011. One of the most common resolutions seems to revolve around dieting to shed those holiday pounds acquired by indulging in a bit too much eggnog and Christmas cookies. I propose that your diet be of a different kind. What better excuse to finally hone your time management skills and start taking back control of your day? If you haven’t already, make January 1st the day you start your Time Diet.

Here are 3 simple things you can do on January 1st that will get your Time Diet off to a great start for the year:

1) Pick a time that you will sit down and make your choose-to list every day. Remember, having a daily list of things you are choosing to do for the day helps keep you focused and organized. Setting aside a few minutes at the same time each day to write down your choose-to list will help make it a habit and ensure you never start a day without a plan. Tell someone, whether it is your spouse, roommate, boyfriend, girlfriend, family member or other person close to you, when you plan to make your list so you are accountable to someone other than yourself. Telling someone about your resolutions makes you more likely to follow through with them.

2) Pick your worst Time Killer and eliminate it. Time Killers are those little things that waste our time without our permission. They distract us from our work and cause tasks to take longer than they really need to. Conquering all of your Time Killers at once can be overwhelming, so pick the one you feel is the biggest distraction and modify your routine so it no longer interferes. For example, if you just can’t resist texting with a friend or checking Facebook for updates while you are attempting to work, vow to silence your phone or put it in the other room while you do your work from now on.

3) An important part of the Time Diet is spreading out big “meat” tasks that require a lot of work over a longer period of time so they are more manageable. Pick one big task you already have planned in 2011 and write in your calendar when you plan to start it so that it will be done in time. For example, I already know I have a huge paper due for my PhD program in May. I am writing down a date in March that I want to have all of my research completed by, and I’m writing down a date in April that I want to have a finished rough draft. This way, I’m not tempted to save all of my work for the end and I will have successfully spread it out over a more manageable time frame.

Good luck as your start your Time Diet! Feel free to leave a comment either here or on Facebook letting me know how your diet is going. Happy New Year!

Don’t Leave Your Meats Underdone

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This past week was the last week leading up to my winter break off from teaching.  I finished up my last two school performances, turned in my last two papers and was finally able to see the light at the end of the tunnel from this long and hectic semester! As much as I wanted to just shut down early, I knew that if I did I’d have an even bigger pile of work awaiting me when I came back in January. Even though my motivation was waning, I had a lot of meat tasks to get through like planning out my teaching time-line for the next quarter, designing worksheets for my students to help them with their new music and making further progress on an ongoing research project for grad school. Boy, I did not feel like doing any of this!

When we finally force ourselves to begin meat tasks we don’t want to do, we tend to start one, work on it until it gets difficult and then stop and move on to another task. Then we work on that one until it also gets to a difficult point and move on to another one. In the short term, we feel good about ourselves because we have mustered up the motivation to start all these tasks we really didn’t want to do, but in the long term we’ve made it much harder on ourselves. Now, all the easy parts of the meat tasks are done and we’ve got nothing but difficult parts left! If we thought it was difficult to motivate ourselves before, now it’s going to be doubly difficult because we know the easy parts are done and we’re left with the tough things to chew through.

It was very tempting to just do all the easy parts of my meat tasks before winter break and save the tough parts for January, but I knew that would just make me spend my two weeks off dreading going back to work. Instead, when I hit my first speed bump in a task, I forced myself to push past it and keep going. We all know what that’s like when we are beginning a big task and we hit that first major stumbling block. There is a pivotal moment where we can either stop, or push past it. When you catch yourself getting to that point, and you know you just want to stop and save the tough stuff for later remind yourself that it’s not going to be any easier to finish later. You don’t have to finish the whole task now, but if you don’t at least start on the tough part, it’s going to be so much harder to force yourself into “work mode” again.  Spreading out your meat tasks over time is important, but deciding how to break up the chunks is even more vital to managing your motivation.

Visualizing Your Success

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I’ve talked recently about using visualization as a tool to find the motivation to finish something, and that technique really saved me this week! This was one of those “crunch time” weeks with both work and school. Concerts to direct, grades to fill out, papers to write, etc… Now, unfortunately, this is also December- my absolute favorite time of year- and I wasn’t going to give up some of my favorite holiday traditions to sit and write a paper all day. Last Sunday, I had a marathon Christmas cookie baking session with a few friends. We had so much fun and ended up baking about 12-dozen cookies. What a blast! But, I had a 15-page paper due the next week and as soon as they left, I knew I had to get to work. The problem was, after a whole afternoon of baking, I wanted to curl up on the couch with a cup of hot chocolate, not my laptop.

It was very tempting to tell myself that I could just finish the paper later. I started to think through my week and figured that if I worked through all of my lunches and skipped out on my husband’s work party I could still get the paper done and not have to work on it right then. When we don’t want to do something, we do a pretty job convincing ourselves that we’ll somehow feel more inspired to do our work later. I knew there was no way I was going to feel any more like writing the paper on my lunch breaks than I did right now. I visualized how great it would feel to climb into bed that night knowing my paper was done- to be able to go to work in the morning and not worry about finding any spare moment I could to keep writing. Armed with that delightful vision of a completed paper, I sat down and got to work.

After about 5 pages though, the urge to flop down on the couch and watch TV was creeping up again. I could hear my inner voice say, “Good for you! You got 5 pages done! You’ll do the rest later.” No. I didn’t want a partially done paper. I wanted a finished paper. How often have you started something, decided you’d do the rest later, and then wished so badly you had just finished it while you were on a roll? Every time I wanted to stop, I visualized starting my workweek completely free from the pressures of this paper, and kept going.

I got it done. All of it. It took about 5 hours, but crawling into bed that night knowing it was done and that I wouldn’t have to worry about it was even better than I’d imagined.

The 5-Minute Rule

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So we all know that a day rarely goes by when we don’t have to add something to our choose-to list by mid-afternoon. That is all part of being flexible. However, in some cases adding something to the list is a bad idea. When a new task pops up during the day, if it takes less than 5-minutes, don’t add it to the list. Just do it now. You’re not going to feel any more like doing it later and it’s better to just do it right now before it sits on your list forever. These little few-minutes tasks are usually vegetable tasks, and as any 7 year old can tell you, putting off eating your vegetables doesn’t make them disappear! It just makes them that much more disgusting to eat.

This happens to me with paperwork at school all the time. I’ll check my mailbox and there will be some new tax form the district needs me to fill out, or a quality survey or some other sort of paperwork. It is really tempting to just grab it, put it on my desk, and add it to my choose-to list for another time. I know if this happens, it will just get covered up with other things and I’ll completely forget about it until the school secretary has to call me and ask why I haven’t done this simple thing yet. Since I couldn’t say I’ve been too busy, (because- let’s face it- everyone has at least 2 spare minutes in their lives to fill out a form) I’ll have to tell the truth and just say I didn’t feel like it. This makes me look really flakey and wastes the secretary’s time. Instead, I never let paperwork like this touch my desk. I fill it out as soon as I get it and it’s done. It never takes more than a few minutes, and I don’t have to worry about it.

The 5-Minute Rule is especially important if the task you need to do directly affects someone else’s ability to move forward on a project. For example, the other day I was working on some homework when I noticed a professor had emailed me asking if I could write a 2-3 sentence quote for a grant proposal he was writing. My first thought was to email him back and say that I’d have it to him by tomorrow. I’d finish my homework, have lunch and then sit down and figure out what I wanted to say. But then I realized that he was probably working on the proposal right now. It would only take me a minute or two to figure out something to say and send it back. Grant proposals can be lengthy and have firm deadlines and I didn’t want to hold anything up. So, I took a few moments away from my paper, wrote out a quote for him to use, and sent it off. Done. Now I can get back to my work and he can send off his proposal. Nothing is worse than having to delay a deadline because you’re waiting on things from other people. Especially when you know that the thing you’re waiting for doesn’t take very long at all.