When you're working with a never-ending to-do list of trivial tasks and big projects, it can be hard to know how to organize and prioritize your time. This is something I struggle with a lot.
Throughout this first year of my post-doc, I've invested a lot of energy into figuring out the best way to organize my time. I used to just show up to my office, start something (anything) and hope for the best. It can't be that way anymore. There's too much at stake. The timeliness of my publications matter--not only for my job prospects, but because my mentors feel more like "bosses" than they did in graduate school. I need to produce and deliver.
After a lot of soul-searching and a handful of professional development seminars, I've come up with 5 steps for managing my to-do list. This technique has helped me a lot (though I'm still a work in progress) and I hope it's helpful to some of you, too.
1. WRITE DOWN ALL OF YOUR TO-DOS.
Literally everything you can think of. Write it down. In no order. Brain dump.
2. LABEL TASKS IN TERMS OF BEING (NON) URGENT AND (NON) IMPORTANT.
Take each item and place it into one of the four boxes shown in the task prioritization table below. Judge importance and urgency based on your big-picture goals. You want to make time each week for the important tasks. And it's helpful if you can delegate some of the non-important tasks.
3. NOTE WHICH TASKS HAVE FIRM DEADLINES.
Write the dates next to the tasks on your list and in your calendar.
4. ASSIGN DEADLINES TO AS MANY REMAINING TASKS AS POSSIBLE.
Don't get obsessive about this. This is an exercise in goal-setting. Pick your most urgent tasks and set some realistic deadlines for them. I don't mean "Research Paper 1 Due August 25." That's too big. I mean something like, "Outline intro to Research Paper 1 by next Friday."
5. DESIGNATE TIME SLOTS IN YOUR WEEKLY CALENDAR FOR TACKLING THE MOST URGENT AND IMPORTANT TASKS.
Fill in your calendar with all your hard deadlines, meetings, and other time commitments. Then, take your most urgent and important tasks (again, broken into smaller, achievable tasks) and commit time to them throughout the week. Actually block off chunks of time in your calendar for these tasks. Then honor the commitment.
I'm always looking for new ways to manage my time. If you have your own tips to share, I'd love to hear them! And in case you're interested in how others manage their time, consider this simple yet effective approach offered up by drofwhat (you can find her @dr.ofwhat on Instagram).
I create a document with a big table as my planner and to-do list. It's split by day and by PhD/work activity, events, and important reminders. This way, I can easily see what each month looks like. I put one or two PhD tasks in each of the days to ensure I'm on track for my deadlines. At the end of each day, I check my progress and update the plan accordingly. I've found that it's the best way for me to not feel overwhelmed as all my big tasks are split into manageable smaller tasks and I can focus on each day.
No matter which approach you take, I'm learning that the key to effectively managing your to-do list lies in consistency, commitment, and breaking down your bigger projects into small, achievable goals. Now bust out that planner and get after it!
Good luck out there!
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