Half an hour a day

In my continuing effort to figure out a better way to manage 'to-do'-like tasks,¹ I've started an experiment.

At the end of every day, I commit to spending 30 minutes 'managing' my to-do system. If there's stuff to-do, I do it. In order of importance and date.

If there isn't, I go through old items and tidy them up. Or I look at what remains and make sure it's good and neat and in the right bucket and has the right dates etc.

Obviously this is an end of the day task, not a start of the day. Use your fresh brain for real work. Use your tired brain for this.

My realisation was that I tend to knock off at, say, 17:00. During the day, this stuff never gets a look-in. I'm busy! With real work! And then you work right up to your knock-off time because you're sure the thing you're doing is urgent or that you'll get it finished.

Well it isn't, and you won't. So just take half an hour, 'finish' early, and pay attention to this stuff. Because your overall quality of life will improve. You'll be less stressed because you didn't do any of that stuff that you never get to.

That's it. That's the tip: spend half an hour doing a thing that you don't want to do. I'm about a week in and I tell you what, it's life changing.

But how are you managing those tasks?

Right now, using the venerable Things. It's so nice.

I'm not in a position to share the details yet, but I'm working on it.