Task Scheduler Quotes

Every last minute of my life has been preordained and I'm sick and tired of it. How this feels is I'm just another task in God's daily planner: the Italian Renaissance penciled in for right after the Dark Ages. ... The Information Age is scheduled immediately after the Industrial Revolution. Then the Postmodern Era, then the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Famine. Check. Pestilence. Check. War. Check. Death. Check. And between the big events, the earthquakes and the tidal waves, God's got me squeezed in for a cameo appearance. Then maybe in thirty years, or maybe next year, God's daily planner has me finished.

It's a tough job being somebody's personal assistant. You have to anwser their phone, manage their correspondence, run their errands, pay their bills, arrange their schedule, and basically do whatever tasks, menial to major, they are too busy or self absorbed or distracted or pampered or disinterested to do themselves.

In week two, build an optimal schedule. Lock everything into place in fifteen- to thirty-minute blocks. Some tasks will take multiple blocks or entire days. Fine. When you work, only work on one thing at a time, think about the task in front of you and pursue it relentlessly. When it comes time for the next task on your schedule, place that first one aside, and apply the same focus.

Good time management is not about buying a great calendar or planner. It is not about learning tricks to move faster, or about doing everything with mechanical efficiency. It's about creating days that are meaningful and rewarding to you, and feeling a sense of satisfaction in each and every one of your tasks.

There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson's Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

Observe that for the programmer, as for the chef, the urgency of the patron may govern the scheduled completion of the task, but it cannot govern the actual completion.

Once compulsory systems of state-run schools were established, they became increasingly standardized, both in content and in method. For the sake of efficiency, children were divided into separate classrooms by age and passed along, from grade to grade, like products on an assembly line. The task of each teacher was to add bits of officially approved knowledge to the product, in accordance with a preplanned schedule, and then to test that product before passing it on to the next station.

Make sure you understand when best you are effective and then schedule your most important tasks within that time of the day.

Was there any day for her that would not involve the same schedule, the same faces, the same tasks? What was better –a constant safeness that never grew and never changed, or a life of reaching, building, striving, even though you knew you’d never be completely satisfied?

To maximize productivity, schedule 3–5 hour blocks or half-days of singularly focused attention on ONE single activity or project, rather than trying to switch tasks every 60 minutes.

It’s easy to forget that teaching is holy work. We forget that building up the intellect- teaching our children to really think- does not happen by the might of human reason, but rather by the grace of God. On an ordinary day, you and I likely have a set of tasks we've scheduled for our kids. But it's more than math. It's more than history. It's the building up of our children's minds and hearts, and we can only do that if we realize that this is how we thank Him for the graces He so lavishly pours out on us.

If I viewed a day of screen time and not doing any scheduled care tasks as a failure, it would be a lot harder to “get back into routine.” But I didn’t. Trolls and pj’s day was a day when we were being gentle with ourselves, allowing ourselves to take it easy and rest—a day of kindness. Framing it as kindness instead of failure was the key to being able to wake up and choose to get things done the next day.

if we incentivize conformance, people will insert contingency reserves to prevent their tasks from missing the schedule. The more granular the schedule, the larger the schedule reserves. And these reserves aggregate into even longer timelines. The more we increase planning detail and the harder we try to incentivize performance, the worse our problem becomes.

•Communicating: low-context vs. high-context •Evaluating: direct negative feedback vs. indirect negative feedback •Persuading: principles-first vs. applications-first •Leading: egalitarian vs. hierarchical •Deciding: consensual vs. top-down •Trusting: task-based vs. relationship-based •Disagreeing: confrontational vs. avoids confrontation •Scheduling: linear-time vs. flexible-time

A writer lives. The task of being a poet is not completed at a fixed schedule. No one is a poet from eight to twelve and from two to six. Whoever is a poet is one always, and continually assaulted by poetry.

I came across a contemporary version of the twenty-third Psalm entitled “Psalm 23 Revisited.” In it, the author captures perfectly where many of us are today: The clock is my dictator, I shall not rest. It makes me lie down only when exhausted. It leads me into deep depression, it hounds my soul. It leads me in circles of frenzy for activities’ sake. Even though I run frantically from task to task, I will never get it all done, for my “ideal” is with me. Deadlines and my need for approval, they drive me. They demand performance from me, beyond the limits of my schedule. They anoint my head with migraines, my in-basket overflows. Surely fatigue and time pressure shall follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the bonds of frustration forever.1

We know from project management that there is usually slippage, and tasks almost always take longer than what one envisions. There is also no room for fitting human well-being into task schedules. We need to instead relearn what designing a day should be in the twenty-first century digital world. It should include strategies to not exhaust yourself, and to improve your well-being. And it includes understanding your own rhythm of attentional states, and the fact that you have limited and precious cognitive resources.

Roosevelt's productivity resulted from how he chose to spend his time. He read frequently due to his belief that efficiency did not come from packing in scheduled activities down to every last minute of the day. Rather, it was through the regular feeding of his intellect. Even during the height of a presidential campaign, he packed in nearly four hours of reading a day. He enjoyed works of fiction, science, political philosophy, and history. One can imagine a nervous political aide bursting in his study, telling Roosevelt to put down his copy of Cicero because he was scheduled to begin the day's fourth speech in only two minutes. Researcher Robert Talbert notes that a second explanation for Roosevelt's productivity was his method of splitting up his schedule. His reading times were broken up into 45 minute-increments, divided between three half-hour time slots and three one-hour time slots. There is no way that Roosevelt could have known this, but such a segmented approach to reading is the best way for the brain to retain information. A 2008 study from the University of Illinois found that the brain's attentional resources drop after a long period of focusing on a single activity. Even brief diversions can significantly increase one's ability to focus on a task for a long period of time.

But what if you can’t find a colleague with a compatible schedule? When Taylor went away to speak at a conference for a week, I needed to re-create the experience of making an effort pact with another person. Thankfully, I found Focusmate. With a vision to help people around the world stay focused, they facilitate effort pacts via a one-to-one video conferencing service. While Taylor was away, I signed up at Focusmate.com and was paired with a Czech medical school student named Martin. Because I knew he would be waiting for me to co-work at our scheduled time, I didn’t want to let him down. While Martin was hard at work memorizing human anatomy, I stayed focused on my writing. To discourage people from skipping their meeting times, participants are encouraged to leave a review of their focus mate.5 Effort pacts make us less likely to abandon the task at hand. Whether we make them with friends and colleagues, or via tools like Forest, SelfControl, Focusmate, or kSafe, effort pacts are a simple yet highly effective way to keep us from getting distracted.

Don't be the person who misses out on opportunities in life because you take too long to accomplish your work tasks. Be the kind of person other people marvel at. Be the kind of person other people see and say, "I don't know how they do it." Be the kind of person who takes action and does so immediately.

Recognizing that God has called you to function as his agent defines your task as a parent. Our culture has reduced parenting to providing care. Parents often see the task in these narrow terms. The child must have food, clothes, a bed, and some quality time. In sharp contrast to such a weak view, God has called you to a more profound task than being only a care-provider. You shepherd your child in God's behalf. The task God has given you is not one that can be conveniently scheduled. It is a pervasive task. Training and shepherding are going on whenever you are with your children. Whether waking, walking, talking or resting, you must be involved in helping your child to understand life, himself, and his needs from a biblical perspective (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).

A month into the semester, I would start showing up twenty minutes late to class again. The rewards weren't enough to keep me on task, and life got in the way. My mind wandered to the future, postcollege, when I'd create my own schedule that served my need to eat a rich snack every five to fifteen minutes. As for the disappointment written across the teacher's face? I couldn't, and wouldn't, care.

Suzanne understood there were three options for dealing with time pressure. Option One: Perform tasks more efficiently. Move faster, triple-task, cut corners. Buy cookies instead of making them from scratch, and ignore the raised eyebrows or direct complaints from better, more efficient mothers. Drive faster and risk a speeding ticket with scheduling repercussions rippling for days afterward. Text at stoplights but not in front of the kids. Sleep less.

The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. As habits become routine, they become less interesting and less satisfying. We get bored. Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It’s the ability to keep going when work isn’t exciting that makes the difference. Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.

It doesn’t so much matter what you do with your time; rather, success is measured by whether you did what you planned to do. It’s fine to watch a video, scroll social media, daydream, or take a nap, as long as that’s what you planned to do. Alternatively, checking work email, a seemingly productive task, is a distraction if it’s done when you intended to spend time with your family or work on a presentation. Keeping a timeboxed schedule is the only way to know if you’re distracted. If you’re not spending your time doing what you’d planned, you’re off track.

It’s up to you to find ways to eviscerate your bullshit. How much time do you spend at the dinner table talking about nothing after the meal is done? How many calls and texts do you send for no reason at all? Look at your whole life, list your obligations and tasks. Put a time stamp on them. How many hours are required to shop, eat, and clean? How much sleep do you need? What’s your commute like? Can you make it there under your own power? Block everything into windows of time, and once your day is scheduled out, you’ll know how much flexibility you have to exercise on a given day and how to maximize it.

Each of the eight scales represents one key area that managers must be aware of, showing how cultures vary along a spectrum from one extreme to its opposite. The eight scales are:        •  Communicating: low-context vs. high-context        •  Evaluating: direct negative feedback vs. indirect negative feedback        •  Persuading: principles-first vs. applications-first        •  Leading: egalitarian vs. hierarchical        •  Deciding: consensual vs. top-down        •  Trusting: task-based vs. relationship-based        •  Disagreeing: confrontational vs. avoids confrontation        •  Scheduling: linear-time vs. flexible-time

Getting Things Done advocates a policy of immediately doing any task of two minutes or less as soon as it comes to mind. Rival bestseller Eat That Frog! advises beginning with the most difficult task and moving toward easier and easier things. The Now Habit suggests first scheduling one’s social engagements and leisure time and then filling the gaps with work—rather than the other way around, as we so often do. William James, the “father of American psychology,” asserts that “there’s nothing so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task,” but Frank Partnoy, in Wait, makes the case for deliberately not doing things right away.

Common, Healthy Autistic Behaviors Intense studying of a new favorite topic Not noticing sounds or social signals when focusing on an engrossing task Needing to know exactly what to expect before entering an unfamiliar situation Sticking to a very rigid schedule, and rejecting deviations to that schedule Taking a long time to think before responding to a complex question Spending hours or days alone sleeping and recharging after a socially demanding event or stressful project Needing “all the information” before coming to a decision Not knowing how they feel, or needing a few days to figure out how they feel about something Needing a rule or instruction to “make sense” before they can follow it Not putting energy toward expectations that seem unfair or arbitrary, such as wearing makeup or elaborate grooming

I had a chance to stand up for women who didn’t have a voice. If I turned it down, what values was I role modeling for my kids? Would I want them to turn down difficult tasks in the future and then tell me that they were following my example? And my own mother had a powerful influence on my choice, though she might not have known it. She always said to me as I was growing up, “If you don’t set your own agenda, somebody else will.” If I didn’t fill my schedule with things I felt were important, other people would fill my schedule with things they felt were important. Finally, I have always carried in my head images of the women I’ve met, and I keep photographs of the ones who have moved me the most. What was the point of their opening their hearts and telling me about their lives if I wasn’t going to help them when I had the chance? That clinched it for me.

So we need to make a schedule, but where do we begin? The common approach is to make a to-do list. We write down all the things we want to do and hope we’ll find the time throughout the day to do them. Unfortunately, this method has some serious flaws. Anyone who has tried keeping such a list knows many tasks tend to get pushed from one day to the next, and the next. Instead of starting with what we’re going to do, we should begin with why we’re going to do it. And to do that, we must begin with our values. According to Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap, values are “how we want to be, what we want to stand for, and how we want to relate to the world around us.” They are attributes of the person we want to be. For example, they may include being an honest person, being a loving parent, or being a valued part of a team. We never achieve our values any more than finishing a painting would let us achieve being creative. A value is like a guiding star; it’s the fixed point we use to help us navigate our life choices.

The most effective way to make time for traction is through “timeboxing.” Timeboxing uses a well-researched technique psychologists call “setting an implementation intention,” which is a fancy way of saying, “deciding what you’re going to do, and when you’re going to do it.” It’s a technique that can be used to make time for traction in each of your life domains. The goal is to eliminate all white space on your calendar so you’re left with a template for how you intend to spend your time each day. It doesn’t so much matter what you do with your time; rather, success is measured by whether you did what you planned to do. It’s fine to watch a video, scroll social media, daydream, or take a nap, as long as that’s what you planned to do. Alternatively, checking work email, a seemingly productive task, is a distraction if it’s done when you intended to spend time with your family or work on a presentation. Keeping a timeboxed schedule is the only way to know if you’re distracted. If you’re not spending your time doing what you’d planned, you’re off track.

When I started in real estate, despite high ambition, I was constrained by the same 24 hours as everyone else. My early success came from a grueling schedule, long hours, and the high price of near burn-out. In self-defense, I devised a system that featured direct marketing in place of traditional prospecting plus a highly effective team, with all the non-rainmaker tasks delegated to them. This took me to the top of the profession, twice #1 in RE/MAX worldwide in commissions earned, and 15 years as one of the top agents—working less hours than most. While an active agent, I consistently sold over 500 homes a year, even while starting and developing a second business, training and coaching more millionaire agents than any other coach. Without the inspiration of Dan Kennedy’s direct marketing methods and his extraordinary, extreme time-management philosophy, these achievements simply would not have been possible. LEVERAGING yourself, by media in place of manual labor, and with other people is very intimidating to most real estate agents and to most small businesspeople. It frankly is not easy to get right, but it is the quantum leap that uniquely and simultaneously lifts income and supports a great lifestyle. —CRAIG PROCTOR, CRAIGPROCTOR.COM

ON THE MODUS OPERANDI OF OUR CURRENT PRESIDENT, DONALD J. TRUMP "According to a new ABC/Washington Post poll, President Trump’s disapproval rating has hit a new high." The President's response to this news was "“I don’t do it for the polls. Honestly — people won’t necessarily agree with this — I do nothing for the polls,” the president told reporters on Wednesday. “I do it to do what’s right. I’m here for an extended period of time. I’m here for a period that’s a very important period of time. And we are straightening out this country.” - Both Quotes Taken From Aol News - August 31, 2018 In The United States, as in other Republics, the two main categories of Presidential motivation for their assigned tasks are #1: Self Interest in seeking to attain and to hold on to political power for their own sakes, regarding the welfare of This Republic to be of secondary importance. #2: Seeking to attain and to hold on to the power of that same office for the selfless sake of this Republic's welfare, irregardless of their personal interest, and in the best of cases going against their personal interests to do what is best for this Republic even if it means making profound and extreme personal sacrifices. Abraham Lincoln understood this last mentioned motivation and gave his life for it. The primary information any political scientist needs to ascertain regarding the diagnosis of a particular President's modus operandi is to first take an insightful and detailed look at the individual's past. The litmus test always being what would he or she be willing to sacrifice for the Nation. In the case of our current President, Donald John Trump, he abandoned a life of liberal luxury linked to self imposed limited responsibilities for an intensely grueling, veritably non stop two year nightmare of criss crossing this immense Country's varied terrain, both literally and socially when he could have easily maintained his life of liberal leisure. While my assertion that his personal choice was, in my view, sacrificially done for the sake of a great power in a state of rapid decline can be contradicted by saying it was motivated by selfish reasons, all evidence points to the contrary. For knowing the human condition, fraught with a plentitude of weaknesses, for a man in the end portion of his lifetime to sacrifice an easy life for a hard working incessant schedule of thankless tasks it is entirely doubtful that this choice was made devoid of a special and even exalted inspiration to do so. And while the right motivations are pivotal to a President's success, what is also obviously needed are generic and specific political, military and ministerial skills which must be naturally endowed by Our Creator upon the particular President elected for the purposes of advancing a Nation's general well being for one and all. If one looks at the latest National statistics since President Trump took office, (such as our rising GNP, the booming market, the dramatically shrinking unemployment rate, and the overall positive emotive strains in regards to our Nation's future, on both the left and the right) one can make definitive objective conclusions pertaining to the exceptionally noble character and efficiency of the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And if one can drown out the constant communicative assaults on our current Commander In Chief, and especially if one can honestly assess the remarkable lack of substantial mistakes made by the current President, all of these factors point to a leader who is impressively strong, morally and in other imperative ways. And at the most propitious time. For the main reason that so many people in our Republic palpably despise our current President is that his political and especially his social agenda directly threatens their licentious way of life. - John Lars Zwerenz

Know Yourself: Are You a Freezer, Flyer, or Fighter? How avoidance coping manifests for you will depend on what your dominant response type is when you’re facing something you’d rather avoid. There are three possible responses: freezing, fleeing, or fighting. We’ve evolved these reactions because they’re useful for encounters with predators. Like other animals, when we encounter a predator, we’re wired to freeze to avoid provoking attention, run away, or fight. Most people are prone to one of the three responses more so than the other two. Therefore, you can think of yourself as having a “type,” like a personality type. Identify your type using the descriptions in the paragraphs that follow. Bear in mind that your type is just your most dominant pattern. Sometimes you’ll respond in one of the other two ways. Freezers virtually freeze when they don’t want to do something. They don’t move forward or backward; they just stop in their tracks. If a coworker or loved one nags a freezer to do something the freezer doesn’t want to do, the freezer will tend not to answer. Freezers may be prone to stonewalling in relationships, which is a term used to describe when people flat-out refuse to discuss certain topics that their partner wants to talk about, such as a decision to have another baby or move to a new home. Flyers are people who are prone to fleeing when they don’t want to do something. They might physically leave the house if a relationship argument gets too tense and they’d rather not continue the discussion. Flyers can be prone to serial relationships because they’d rather escape than work through tricky issues. When flyers want to avoid doing something, they tend to busy themselves with too much activity as a way to justify their avoidance. For example, instead of dealing with their own issues, flyers may overfill their children’s schedules so that they’re always on the run, taking their kids from activity to activity. Fighters tend to respond to anxiety by working harder. Fighters are the anxiety type that is least prone to avoidance coping: however, they still do it in their own way. When fighters have something that they’d rather not deal with, they will often work themselves into the ground but avoid dealing with the crux of the problem. When a strategy isn’t working, fighters don’t like to admit it and will keep hammering away. They tend to avoid getting the outside input they need to move forward. They may avoid acting on others’ advice if doing so is anxiety provoking, even when deep down they know that taking the advice is necessary. Instead, they will keep trying things their own way. A person’s dominant anxiety type—freezer, flyer, or fighter—will often be consistent for both work and personal relationships, but not always. Experiment: Once you’ve identified your type, think about a situation you’re facing currently in which you’re acting to type. What’s an alternative coping strategy you could try? For example, your spouse is nagging you to do a task involving the computer. You feel anxious about it due to your general lack of confidence with all things computer related. If you’re a freezer, you’d normally just avoid answering when asked when you’re going to do the task. How could you change your reaction?

All the many successes and extraordinary accomplishments of the Gemini still left NASA’s leadership in a quandary. The question voiced in various expressions cut to the heart of the problem: “How can we send men to the moon, no matter how well they fly their ships, if they’re pretty helpless when they get there? We’ve racked up rendezvous, docking, double-teaming the spacecraft, starting, stopping, and restarting engines; we’ve done all that. But these guys simply cannot work outside their ships without exhausting themselves and risking both their lives and their mission. We’ve got to come up with a solution, and quick!” One manned Gemini mission remained on the flight schedule. Veteran Jim Lovell would command the Gemini 12, and his space-walking pilot would be Buzz Aldrin, who built on the experience of the others to address all problems with incredible depth and finesse. He took along with him on his mission special devices like a wrist tether and a tether constructed in the same fashion as one that window washers use to keep from falling off ledges. The ruby slippers of Dorothy of Oz couldn’t compare with the “golden slippers” Aldrin wore in space—foot restraints, resembling wooden Dutch shoes, that he could bolt to a work station in the Gemini equipment bay. One of his neatest tricks was to bring along portable handholds he could slap onto either the Gemini or the Agena to keep his body under control. A variety of space tools went into his pressure suit to go along with him once he exited the cabin. On November 11, 1966, the Gemini 12, the last of its breed, left earth and captured its Agena quarry. Then Buzz Aldrin, once and for all, banished the gremlins of spacewalking. He proved so much a master at it that he seemed more to be taking a leisurely stroll through space than attacking the problems that had frustrated, endangered, and maddened three previous astronauts and brought grave doubts to NASA leadership about the possible success of the manned lunar program. Aldrin moved down the nose of the Gemini to the Agena like a weightless swimmer, working his way almost effortlessly along a six-foot rail he had locked into place once he was outside. Next came looping the end of a hundred-foot line from the Agena to the Gemini for a later experiment, the job that had left Dick Gordon in a sweatbox of exhaustion. Aldrin didn’t show even a hint of heavy breathing, perspiration, or an increased heartbeat. When he spoke, his voice was crisp, sharp, clear. What he did seemed incredibly easy, but it was the direct result of his incisive study of the problems and the equipment he’d brought from earth. He also made sure to move in carefully timed periods, resting between major tasks, and keeping his physical exertion to a minimum. When he reached the workstation in the rear of the Gemini, he mounted his feet and secured his body to the ship with the waist tether. He hooked different equipment to the ship, dismounted other equipment, shifted them about, and reattached them. He used a unique “space wrench” to loosen and tighten bolts with effortless skill. He snipped wires, reconnected wires, and connected a series of tubes. Mission Control hung on every word exchanged between the two astronauts high above earth. “Buzz, how do those slippers work?” Aldrin’s enthusiastic voice came back like music. “They’re great. Great! I don’t have any trouble positioning my body at all.” And so it went, a monumental achievement right at the end of the Gemini program. Project planners had reached all the way to the last inch with one crucial problem still unsolved, and the man named Aldrin had whipped it in spectacular fashion on the final flight. Project Gemini was

Time blocking, as it’s called, helps ensure that you don’t schedule other things on the days—or part of a day—you’ve set aside to work on this task.

Then comes the investment. Newcomers are instructed to connect the app to their calendar service, granting Any.do access to the user’s schedule. In doing so, users give the app permission to send a notification after the next scheduled meeting ends. This external trigger prompts users to return to the app to record a follow-up task from the meeting they just attended. In the Any.do scenario, the app sends an external trigger to users at the moment when they are most likely to experience the internal trigger of anxiety about forgetting to do a task after a meeting. The Any.do app has anticipated a need and sets users up for success.

Take power breaks every hour. Schedule tougher tasks for the time when you are most productive.

When you streamline your schedule by making deliberate decisions about tasks and activities that are crucially important you and identify your most important priorities, you give yourself permission to make choices that excite and interest you. You also grant yourself permission to exercise your right to say, “No, thank you.

This presents a very curious phenomenon. There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines. If you haven’t identified the mission-critical tasks and set aggressive start and end times for their completion, the unimportant becomes the important. Even if you know what’s critical, without deadlines that create focus, the minor tasks forced upon you (or invented, in the case of the entrepreneur) will swell to consume time until another bit of minutiae jumps in to replace

When you adopt a productivity mindset, however, deliberate practice-inducing tasks are often sidestepped, as the ambiguous path toward their completion, when combined with the discomfort of the mental strain they require, makes them an unpopular choice in scheduling decisions.

The same thing happens with emails. Most people open their inbox and see ten new unread messages. Almost everyone will click each message open, read it, and then move on to the next message. If an email requires some action, they’ll get back to it later—in which case they’ll have to re-read the message! Remember, touching something once doesn’t mean you have to-do everything yourself. Delegating an item is almost always the most time efficient thing to-do, so if you touch it once and delegate to somebody, do it. Also, not every task should be touched immediately. A large project or something that is going to run into a previously scheduled time block should be scheduled for later. Most people will have a rule of thumb about when to action something immediately. Most people I know will take immediate action on something if it takes less than five or ten minutes.

Increase Your Productivity We live in a demanding and distracting world. Being productive can sometimes feel like an impossible feat. Here are three ways to get more done without burning out: Keep one to-do list. Include everything you want or need to do in one place. Writing it down helps get it off your mind and leaves you free to focus on the task at hand. Do the most important thing first. Before you leave work in the evening, decide what one thing you need to accomplish the next day. Do it first thing in the morning, when you’re likely to have the most energy and fewest distractions. Schedule time for non-urgent things. It’s easy to get caught up in the pressing issues of the day. Block off time in your calendar to do things that would otherwise get squeezed out, like writing, thinking creatively, or building relationships.

Removing one task can free up a couple of minutes of free time, every day... which turns into hours or days every year. Time

~Z L/ti ~0"I/~ Z t4 k Lt(n. I/ ~ Z L When I awake, I am still with You. -PSALM 139:18 Isn't it great to know that even though we sleep eight to ten hours, when we awake God is still with us? He hasn't dozed off during the early hours of the morning. I know that when I am the closest to Jesus, my prayers come more easily and more often. During dry seasons of life I have to consciously set a time for prayer-and often it's more out of duty than desire. As I abide with my Savior, I don't have to say, "It is time for me to get to my task and pray." No, I pray when there is a need, regardless of the time of day or night. These last few years have brought me to God's throne because I want to go there, not because I have fallen back to the law. If you aren't there yet, just wait. The sufferings of life will cause you to drop to your knees in earnest prayer. Earlier in my Christian walk it was hard to understand the meaning behind I Thessalonians 5:17, where it says, "Pray without ceasing." Now I have experienced that in real, living color. I pray literally without ceasing. I pray when I wake, pray at mealtime, pray throughout the day-and I end my day with a prayer of thanksgiving for getting me through the day. When a friend calls to tell you of a prayer need, you don't say, "I'm sorry, but I don't pray again until I go to bed tonight." Of course you wouldn't say that! In fact, I recommend that you pray with the person who's making the request. That way you are sure to pray for their particulars rather than getting distracted with a busy schedule. No longer is prayer a burden. It's a privilege to be able to pray, not because of the law, but because of the grace of the cross. Embrace this privilege and make it a regular, important part of each day. Be faithful in prayer so you can know of God's faithfulness. PRAYER Father God, what a privilege it is to pray without ceasing. You have given me the

That’s what care for the sick ultimately reveals — our deep love for souls, specifically the souls of those with whom we have made a covenant in our local church. As we fellowship, love, care, and encourage one another, let us not lose sight of those who can all too easily be forgotten. Those who are sick don’t have the energy or the ability to fight for our attention, like so many other things in our lives do. Instead, we must take the initiative. Visiting the sick will not slide easily into our schedules. It will interrupt our plans. But we must not grow discouraged or frustrated. We must take heart. As we are intentional in our calling to visit the sick, we can trust that we are engaged in a divine task — souls are being loved and nurtured; we ourselves are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ; the gospel is being revealed through this ministry; and God is being glorified.

Systems Test No parts of the schedule are so thoroughly affected by sequential constraints as component debugging and system test. Furthermore, the time required depends on the number and subtlety of the errors encountered. Theoretically this number should be zero. Because of optimism, we usually expect the number of bugs to be smaller than it turns out to be. Therefore testing is usually the most mis-scheduled part of programming. For some years I have been successfully using the following rule of thumb for scheduling a software task: l /3 planning l/6 coding l/4 component test and early system test l/4 system test, all components in hand.

WHILE I THINK the reasons for postmortems are compelling, I know that most people still resist them. So I want to share some techniques that can help managers get the most out of them. First of all, vary the way you conduct them. By definition, postmortems are supposed to be about lessons learned, so if you repeat the same format, you tend to uncover the same lessons, which isn’t much help to anyone. Even if you come up with a format that works well in one instance, people will know what to expect the next time, and they will game the process. I’ve noticed what might be called a “law of subverting successful approaches,” by which I mean once you’ve hit on something that works, don’t expect it to work again, because attendees will know how to manipulate it the second time around. So try “mid-mortems” or narrow the focus of your postmortem to special topics. At Pixar, we have had groups give courses to others on their approaches. We have occasionally formed task forces to address problems that span several films. Our first task force dramatically altered the way we thought about scheduling. The second one was an utter fiasco. The third one led to a profound change at Pixar, which I’ll discuss in the final chapter. Next, remain aware that, no matter how much you urge them otherwise, your people will be afraid to be critical in such an overt manner. One technique I’ve used to soften the process is to ask everyone in the room to make two lists: the top five things that they would do again and the top five things that they wouldn’t do again. People find it easier to be candid if they balance the negative with the positive, and a good facilitator can make it easier for that balance to be struck. Finally, make use of data. Because we’re a creative organization, people tend to assume that much of what we do can’t be measured or analyzed. That’s wrong. Many of our processes involve activities and deliverables that can be quantified. We keep track of the rates at which things happen, how often something has to be reworked, how long something actually took versus how long we estimated it would take, whether a piece of work was completely finished or not when it was sent to another department, and so on. I like data because it is neutral—there are no value judgments, only facts. That allows people to discuss the issues raised by data less emotionally than they might an anecdotal experience.

Delete it. The message isn’t important or it requires no response. The simplest action is to get rid of it. If you think it might be important, then you will put the message into an archive folder. Defer it. If a message requires a task that takes 5 or more minutes to complete, then defer it and schedule a date and time when you will do it. One of the main reasons people get bogged down is that they try to take action on emails that require you to complete a lengthy task. For emails like this, it makes sense to estimate the time required, write down the specific action into your calendar, respond back to the recipient with a date when they should expect it and then filter the email into your “Follow-Up” folder. You can use the items on your calendar to schedule the rest of your week. Another option for deferring an item is to use the Boomerang extension, which creates reminders for specific tasks. Delegate it. You may not be the best person to handle the task. If you have a team or subordinates, then delegate the task to the appropriate person. After that, create a reminder in your calendar to follow up and make sure it has been handled. Do it. If it takes less than 5 minutes to respond to an email or complete the required task, then take care of it immediately.

the simple act of scheduling tasks on your calendar—instead of writing them on a to-do list—will free your mind, reduce stress, and increase cognitive performance.

When creating a project list, use specific, actionable goals. Think of this action like you’re trying to explain it to someone who has a limited understanding of your language. Be precise and describe exactly what needs to be done. In addition, chunk everything down into short-term achievable goals. The more you can turn a project into a daily process, the more consistent action you’ll take on it. If you’re having trouble figuring out all the steps in the process, use a creative tool such as a mind map to diagram every task. Keep asking “What’s the next step?” and writing things down. Do this exercise for an hour to fully flesh out a project. Finally, once you have a list of tasks, prioritize them in order of importance and immediacy. You’ll use this information when scheduling weekly tasks.

I’ve found a few helpful strategies for addressing difficulties with planning and problem solving: •Mindfulness. In this case, mindfulness isn’t some complex life practice. It’s just a matter of realizing, “Oh, wait, I’m doing that thing again, which means I need to go get the vacuum/sponge/scissors and take care of this little annoyance that will only take a minute to fix and, oh, think how good I’ll feel afterward.” •Routines. In the same way that routines can be helpful for getting everyday tasks done, they can work for problem solving too. For example, if I’m waiting for Sang to get ready to go out, I’ll walk around our home, intentionally looking for little problems to take care of. Inevitably there will be a pile of clean laundry that needs folding or dishes that need to be picked up. This same routine works in the kitchen while waiting for something to boil or in the bathroom while waiting for the shower water to warm up. •Reminder software or apps. There are many apps that will send you an email or phone alert for recurring household tasks. I have one that reminds me to wash the sheets every two weeks, trim the dog’s toenails once a week and clean my car every three months. If there are some problems that occur regularly, try preempting them with scheduled reminders. •Strategic reminders. Like the reminder apps, strategically placing visual reminders around the house can nudge you into acting on common problems. Leaving the vacuum in a high-traffic area not only reminds you to vacuum more often, but it makes it easier to get the job done because the tool you need is handy. •Use chunking. If a problem gets to the point where you recognize that something needs to be done but the size of the task is now overwhelming, try breaking it into smaller parts. For example, instead of “cleaning your bedroom” start with a goal of getting everything off the floor or collecting the dirty laundry and washing it. As you tackle these smaller tasks, it will become more obvious what else is left to be done.

In the database world, outside of clouds, it is necessary to automate tasks such as a daily backup, but it does seem that Trove misses such ability due to heavy decisions on which technology to pick or creating from scratch. Implementing a scheduler is in the roadmap, but it is not clear when it will happen

The more he thought about space, the more important its exploration seemed to him. He felt as if the public had lost some of its ambition and hope for the future. The average person might see space exploration as a waste of time and effort and rib him for talking about the subject, but Musk thought about interplanetary travel in a very earnest way. He wanted to inspire the masses and reinvigorate their passion for science, conquest, and the promise of technology. His fears that mankind had lost much of its will to push the boundaries were reinforced one day when Musk went to the NASA website. He’d expected to find a detailed plan for exploring Mars and instead found bupkis. “At first I thought, jeez, maybe I’m just looking in the wrong place,” Musk once told Wired. “Why was there no plan, no schedule? There was nothing. It seemed crazy.” Musk believed that the very idea of America was intertwined with humanity’s desire to explore. He found it sad that the American agency tasked with doing audacious things in space and exploring new frontiers as its mission seemed to have no serious interest in investigating Mars at all. The spirit of Manifest Destiny had been deflated or maybe even come to a depressing end, and hardly anyone seemed to care. Like

The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

The Pomodoro Technique helps with procrastination because it breaks down every task in a 25-minute block. After 25 minutes, you get a 5-minute break. Scheduling such breaks helps you get to work – the promise of a break produces a burst of dopamine and reduces distractions.

your blank schedule will fill up first with the big rocks, the nonnegotiable events, projects, and tasks that have specific timeframes.

most of us fill our schedules with unnecessary tasks or misjudge how limited our time actually is.

Is there a small habit that can support a major habit?” (For example, packing your exercise clothes in the morning so they’ll be ready for the gym in the evening.) “Do I often end the day frustrated because I didn’t complete the most important tasks?” (Identify the most important tasks for the next day and then schedule them into your calendar.) “What quick activities make me feel inspired or happy?” (For example, watching a short motivational video each morning.) “What five goals are the most important to me right now?” (What can you do daily to support all five of these goals?) “What are the activities that I love to do?” (Think of tasks that can support hobbies, like running, knitting, traveling, or reading.) “What areas of my financial life do I need to improve?” (If you’re in debt, then address this first. But if you have money in the bank, then you should build a habit that focuses on building up your investment portfolio.) “Can I improve the quality of my interpersonal relationships?” (Think about your interactions with your parents, children, significant other, and closest friends. Is there anything you can do daily to make these interactions better?) “What makes me feel great about myself?” (If something brings you enjoyment, then you should either do it every day or schedule time for it each week.) “How can I become more spiritual in my daily life?” (For example, read from a book of prayers, practice a bit of yoga, or recite positive affirmations.) “What is a new skill I’ve always wanted to master?” (For example, make a habit of researching and learning about talents like home brewing, playing a musical instrument, learning a new language, or anything that sounds fun.) “Is there anything I can do to support my local community or an important cause?” (We all believe in something. So if you schedule time daily for this activity, then it’s not hard to consistently help others.) “Is there something that I can do to improve my job performance and get a raise?” (For example, build a skill that will become valuable to the company.)

If you were told, at point of gun, that within one year you would have to complete a difficult task, such as running a mile in four minutes and thirty seconds, or performing a perfect jackknife dive from the high board, and failure to do so would result in your execution, you would set out on a regimented schedule in which you would practice each and every day until your time came to deliver. You would be training your mind as well as your body because your mind tells your body what to do. You would practice, practice, practice, never yielding to the temptation to quit or slack off. And you would deliver, and consequently save your life.

I take time blocking seriously, dedicating ten to twenty minutes every evening to building my schedule for the next day. During this planning process I consult my task lists and calendars, as well as my weekly and quarterly planning notes. My goal is to make sure progress is being made on the right things at the right pace for the relevant deadlines.

would you expect an auto mechanic with a full schedule to stay on task with each new vehicle and at the same time help each client get directions home, coordinate vehicle pickup and child care, and schedule follow-up appointments? Of course not. Yes, these details fall under the category of “it’s not my job,” but that’s what doctors are often called to do, and it’s what makes it impossible for us to excel at what is actually our job.

Step Four: Ideal-Week Planning Now you need to take your “only I can do” list and actually plot out how you will get all these things done. I hope your to-do list is shorter than when you picked up this book. If so, that reduction is a massive win in itself. The goal is to schedule all these things out. Literally, go through the list, plot each item into your calendar, and create an automated repeating appointment so it shows up in your calendar on a weekly basis. For example, if only you can write a weekly blog post and you know you need about three hours to write and publish a post, create a three-hour appointment in your calendar from ten to one o’clock on Mondays, for example, and then make it a recurring appointment. The same process can be followed for child-related activities. If you are the person who primarily picks up your kids from school, put an appointment in your calendar for the amount of time it takes to drive or walk to the school, pick them up, and return home. Repeat this task for all the activities you have on the only-you list. Once you’ve entered these activities, you may be thinking, Okay, Lisa, that’s great, but I have now run out of time. So what happens if you actually block everything in and you run out of hours in the week? If I were sitting across from you in a private coaching session, this is what I would ask: •Are all the activities in your calendar truly things only you can do? Is there anything that could be delegated to someone else? •Can any of these activities be batched with something else? For example, could you do research for a blog post on your phone while you run on the treadmill? Can you do phone calls on your commute home or while grocery shopping for your family? •Is everything in your calendar actually aligned with your ideal life plan? Is there anything on the list that is no longer supporting this plan? Be honest with yourself about things that need to go—even if you are having a hard time letting go. •Can you reduce the amount of time it takes to do an activity? This might seem like an incredibly overwhelming exercise, but trust me, it is an incredibly worthwhile exercise. It might seem rigid to schedule everything in your life, but scheduling brings the freedom not to worry about how you are spending your time. You have thought it through, and you know that every worthwhile activity has been accounted for. This system, my friend, is the cure to mom guilt. When you know you have appropriately scheduled dedicated time for your children, your spouse, yourself, and your work, what do you have to feel guilty about?

A total of 779 prisoners have been held at Guantánamo since the facility was opened on January 11, 2002. Of those, 8 have died and 637 have been released or transferred. This left 134 inmates at Guantánamo at the end of 2014, however the number is constantly changing and as of January 2015 the official number of inmates remaining at the Guantánamo detention center was 127. Of these 127 detainees, 55 have been cleared for repatriation and are listed as being eligible to be transferred out. Some of the restrictions regarding the transferring of these prisoners have now been lifted, so they may be sent back to their home countries, provided those countries agree and are able to keep an eye on them. There are still problems regarding some of the more aggressive prisoners from countries that do not want them back. However, recently five of them were sent to the countries of Georgia and Slovakia. Another six detainees were flown to Uruguay over the weekend of December 6, 2014. There still remains a hard core of prisoners left incarcerated at the prison, for whom no release date or destination is scheduled. It is speculated that eventually some of them will come to the United States to face a federal court. Clifford Sloan, the U.S. State Department’s special envoy was tasked with closing the prison, said, “We are very grateful to Uruguay for this important humanitarian action, and to President José “Pepe” Mujica, for his strong leadership in providing a home for individuals who cannot return to their own countries.” Sloan added, “This transfer is a major milestone in our efforts to close the facility.” The question now is what will happen next under the Trump Administration? Presently there are still 41 men left, 15 of which are considered high value detainees. Five were to be moved out to cooperating countries during the Obama Administration but things happened too slowly and unfortunately they remained at Guantánamo. As of now the Trump plans are unclear, other than him saying that he wants to keep the detention center open and “load it up with some bad dudes.” Assuming that this happens, it is certain to bring on international protests!

Distraction: The Productivity Killer Why you are distracted isn’t the issue. The real issue is you are avoiding work that you need to finish. Here’s a few ways to improve your focus and increase your productivity. 1) Turn off your phone. On average, people check their phones at least 10 times an hour. That’s crazy and a huge distraction. So turn off your phone! 2) Stop surfing the web; same idea as with your phone. Try one of these apps if your self-control is lacking. 3) Schedule time for distractions. Reward yourself when you finish a task and take a break. Just limit the break

I’m having a hard time concentrating at work. Why in the world did I give the task force members offices on my floor? It seemed like a good idea at the time . . . to evict the old guard and move in the staff that represented the company’s one hope for the future. I regret it now, though, because I can’t go an hour without seeing Kathleen Burke. I can’t remember when I’ve felt this frustrated, and that’s saying a lot because I have two preschoolers at home. I noticed Kathleen’s attractiveness the day we met. I noticed it the same way that I might notice that a woman’s hair is gray. It was just a fact. It didn’t matter to me or affect me. A month and a half has passed since then. A month and a half of me sitting in the board room during task force meetings, watching Kathleen give presentations on newfound information she feels passionately about. She always feels passionately about the information she presents. A month and a half of looking up from my desk and seeing her slender body pass by my office in tailored skirts and silky shirts. A month and a half of disagreeing with her over new computer software. When she thinks I’m being pig-headed, her nose scrunches and her brown eyes blaze. My mom told me that her family is Irish. It’s obviously true. Kathleen has the fiery will and the red glint in her hair to prove it. She can’t seem to understand that I’m not being pig-headed about new computer software. I’m just being right. A month and a half of running into her in the break room. She tilts her head when she refills her coffee mug, which causes her long hair to slide over her shoulder and upper arm. A month and a half of hearing her laughter from a distance. A month and a half of receiving correspondence from her signed “Respectfully, Kathleen E. Burke.” Why the E? There are no Kathleen R. or B. or K. Burkes who work at Bradford Shipping. The E is pretentious. A month and a half of looking back every evening when I leave and seeing her office light on. Kathleen’s attractiveness is more than a fact to me now. She’s annoyingly pretty, she’s persistent, and she’s impossible to ignore. For more than two years, I’ve been loyal to Robin’s memory. That’s how I want things to continue. That’s how I like it. Willow and Nora are my life. I spend every hour outside of work with them, and I’m exhausted at the end of each day. There’s no room in my schedule or in my emotions for a relationship. I’m even more certain that I’m not meant to be a boyfriend or a husband now than I was when Robin died. So the distraction of Kathleen makes me feel like I’m betraying a commitment I made to myself. Which, in turn, makes me angry. I’ve been asking God to take away this stupid pull I feel toward Kathleen. Or better yet, to give her a new job in another city or state. My

The insights of Rule #2 fundamentally changed the way I approach my work. If I had to describe my previous way of thinking, I would probably use the phrase “productivity-centric.” Getting things done was my priority. When you adopt a productivity mindset, however, deliberate practice-inducing tasks are often sidestepped, as the ambiguous path toward their completion, when combined with the discomfort of the mental strain they require, makes them an unpopular choice in scheduling decisions. It’s much easier to redesign your graduate-student Web page than it is to grapple with a mind-melting proof. The result for me was that my career capital stores, initially built up during the forced strain of my early years as a graduate student, were dwindling as time went on. Researching Rule #2, however, changed this state of affairs by making me much more “craft-centric.” Getting better and better at what I did became what mattered most, and getting better required the strain of deliberate practice. This is a different way of thinking about work, but once you embrace it, the changes to your career trajectory can be profound. How

To help you remember the triviality of your daily tasks, interrupt your schedule with refreshers. These refreshers should cut to your core and strip the fat off the moment. Consider your own death. Behold an image of the most enlightened being you know. Contemplate the mystery of existence. Relax into the deepest and most profound loving of which you are capable. In your own way, remember the infinite, and then return to the task at hand. This way, you will never lose perspective and begin to think that life is a matter of tasks. You are not a drone. You are the unbounded mystery of love. Be so, without forgetting your tasks.

instructions to one or two points, not three, four, or five. You can also help your teenagers better manage time and organize tasks by giving them calendars and suggesting they write down their daily schedules. By doing so on a regular basis, they train their own brains. Perhaps most important of all, set limits—with everything. This is what their overexuberant brains can’t do for themselves. So be clear about the amount of time you will allow your teenager to socialize “virtually,” either on the Internet or through texting. Best-case scenario: limit the digital socializing to just one to two hours a day. And if your teenager fails to comply, take away the phone or the iPod, or limit computer use to homework. Also, insist on knowing the user names and passwords for all their accounts.

Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction. Much in the same way that athletes must take care of their bodies outside of their training sessions, you’ll struggle to achieve the deepest levels of concentration if you spend the rest of your time fleeing the slightest hint of boredom. We can find evidence for this claim in the research of Clifford Nass, the late Stanford communications professor who was well known for his study of behavior in the digital age. Among other insights, Nass’s research revealed that constant attention switching online has a lasting negative effect on your brain. Here’s Nass summarizing these findings in a 2010 interview with NPR’s Ira Flatow: So we have scales that allow us to divide up people into people who multitask all the time and people who rarely do, and the differences are remarkable. People who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy. They can’t manage a working memory. They’re chronically distracted. They initiate much larger parts of their brain that are irrelevant to the task at hand … they’re pretty much mental wrecks. At this point Flatow asks Nass whether the chronically distracted recognize this rewiring of their brain: The people we talk with continually said, “look, when I really have to concentrate, I turn off everything and I am laser-focused.” And unfortunately, they’ve developed habits of mind that make it impossible for them to be laser-focused. They’re suckers for irrelevancy. They just can’t keep on task. [emphasis mine] Once your brain has become accustomed to on-demand distraction, Nass discovered, it’s hard to shake the addiction even when you want to concentrate. To put this more concretely: If every moment of potential boredom in your life—say, having to wait five minutes in line or sit alone in a restaurant until a friend arrives—is relieved with a quick glance at your smartphone, then your brain has likely been rewired to a point where, like the “mental wrecks” in Nass’s research, it’s not ready for deep work—even if you regularly schedule time to practice this concentration.

Hemingway studied, as models, the novels of Knut Hamsun and Ivan Turgenev. Isaac Bashevis Singer, as it happened, also chose Hamsun and Turgenev as models. Ralph Ellison studied Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Thoreau loved Homer; Eudora Welty loved Chekhov. Faulkner described his debt to Sherwood Anderson and Joyce; E. M. Forster, his debt to Jane Austen and Proust. By contrast, if you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, “Nobody’s.” In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat. Rembrandt and Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Gauguin, possessed, I believe, powerful hearts, not powerful wills. They loved the range of material they used, the work’s possibilities excited them; the field’s complexities fired their imaginations. The caring suggested the tasks; the tasks suggested the schedules. They learned their fields and then loved them. They worked, respectfully, out of their love and knowledge, and they produced complex bodies of work that endure. Then, and only then, the world maybe flapped at them some sort of hat, which, if they were still living, they ignored as well as they could, to keep at their tasks.

Counselees need to structure hard tasks by scheduling them.

WHAT WORKS WELL Mornings: I tend to get a lot done in the mornings. Scheduling/ batching: I spend time each month creating and scheduling social media posts all in one go. Project management: I use Asana to manage all my projects. (I moved to it recently after finding Basecamp a truly painful experience.) And I have ready-made projects set up, which means I can ‘set and forget’ and then wait for the alerts telling me what to do each day. Psst: By ‘ready-made projects’ I mean templates that are set up with standard tasks for each type of job I do. Documentation: I have documents for everything. I also have templates for all kinds of project emails, as well as ad hoc things such as interview requests, favour requests and tech issues. Toggl: I use Toggl to track my time (when I remember to switch it on). Typing: I type super fast (one of my superpowers). Bravery: I’m willing to give stuff a go without fear of failure, which means I don’t procrastinate much.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK SO WELL Psst: Check out all the contradictions, which are all part of the entrepreneurial life. Afternoons: Once it hits 2pm my brain doesn’t work so well. I use this fuzzy time to do monotonous tasks such as social media scheduling, WordPress fixes, editing, etc. Scheduling/ batching: I’d also like to batch things like writing blog posts and creating videos. But I tend to do them randomly when the urge takes me, which isn’t productive at all. Social media: It’s a huge time suck that I wrestle with all day, every day. Boundaries: I try to switch off each evening around 3pm (school days) or 6pm (work days). But I often find myself logging in again. (It doesn’t help that Netflix is on my laptop, which makes it all too easy to flick over to my work email or business Facebook groups every two seconds.) Bravery: Because I’m willing to give things a go, I sometimes launch them without thinking things through!

As for employees working at organizations who treat all people the same way, it will be up to you to push for the things you value: the balance of vacation time versus pay, a flexible schedule, the way your role within the company works. If you’re a manager, make a list of the cognitive strengths of your team. Some of your employees may be great at memorizing things. Others may be better at quantitative tasks. Some have good people skills. Some don’t. Assigning work projects based on an employee’s strengths may be critical to your group’s productivity. You may discover you had a Michael Jordan on your team but couldn’t see it because you were only asking him to play baseball.

The sub-sector needed a person, preferably an officer, civilian or military, to handle logistics. We had information that a certain Lieutenant Enamul Haque, a native of Chapai Nawabganj had crossed over to India and was now living with relatives in Malda. Jahangir contacted him and invited him to the Sub-sector HQ through some of his relatives who were in our Sub-sector. After much persuasion, he agreed to come. Jahangir scheduled the meeting when the Sector Commander would be present. A couple of days later, Enam came to Mohidipur. Jahangir and I were also present in the meeting. Enam was a tall individual with a good physique but he seemed nervous. Colonel Zaman opened the conversation with the usual inquiries: when did he cross the border, where was he staying in Malda, what was he doing, et cetera. Enam was not doing anything; he was simply hiding in Malda. Colonel Zaman told him that to the Pakistan Army he was a deserter and a rebel, irrespective of whether he joined the Mukti Bahini or not. He implored him to join; we needed all the help we could get. Enam responded that he was from the EME; he was not a fighter. Colonel Zaman assured him he would not be given any combat assignments; he would have an administrative job. He was going to BDF HQ soon and could have Enam assigned to Mohidipur Sub-sector as logistics officer and Enam could even stay with relatives in Malda if he liked. No amount of persuasion could convince Enam. It surprised me a great deal that a Bengali military officer, who deserted the Pakistan Army and crossed over to India, was unwilling to make any contribution to the liberation war, even in a non-combat capacity[33]. This was true of many young and able university and college students especially from middle class families. I had met some of them in Calcutta. On one occasion. Sultana Zaman, Colonel Zaman’s wife, had asked a female MPA why her two university going sons had not joined the Mukti Bahini? The MPA replied that her boys were intellectual types not suited for fighting, implying that combat was the task for lesser beings. [33] In 1973, I met Enamul Haque in the Bangabhaban where he was ADC to the President. He was claiming to be a freedom fighter! He retired as a brigadier. After retirement, he became a state minister in Sheikh Hasina's government in 2009.

The idea that schedules can be shortened in order to reduce cost or speed up delivery is a very common misconception. You‘ll commonly see attempts to require overtime or sacrifice ―less important scheduled tasks (like unit-testing) as a way to reduce delivery dates or increase functionality while keeping the delivery dates as is. Avoid this scenario at all costs. Remind those requesting the changes of the following facts: - A rushed design schedule leads to poor design, bad documentation and probable Quality Assurance or User Acceptance problems. - A rushed coding or delivery schedule has a direct relationship to the number of bugs delivered to the users. - A rushed test schedule leads to poorly tested code and has a direct relationship to the number of testing issues encountered. - All of the above lead to Production issues which are much more expensive to fix.

Taylor created a planning office, at the heart of which was a bulletin board displaying the shop's schedule for all to see. The board depicted every machine in the shop. showing the task currently being carried out by that machine and all the task waiting for it. This practice would be built upon by Taylor's colleague Henry Gantt, who in the 1910s developed the Gantt charts that would help organize many of the twentieth century's most ambitious construction projects, from the Hoover Dam to the Interstate Highway System.

when we schedule time for something, what we’re actually doing is simply deciding when we will invest our attention and energy into the task.

Fletcher was aware that the Japanese invasion force headed for Tulagi had been sighted as it approached the Solomon Islands, but he didn’t know that Task Force 11, which had completed refueling ahead of schedule, was only 69 miles east of Task Force 17.

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Take out a piece of blank paper. Draw four columns on your page, titled “Spend,” “Save,” “Invest,” and “Give.” Follow the steps below to come up with a 24-hour time budget tailored just for you. Spend Write down the amount of hours you spend in a day on “non-negotiable” commitments such as school, sleep, and getting ready each morning. Tally up the total. Save List some of your favorite ways to spend “me time” and how long each idea takes. For example, reading a novel for one hour, going for a 30-minute run, or winding down before bed (go to 60-Minute Wind-Down). Invest Tally up how long you need each day to reach your goals and accomplish tasks. Taking a drawing class for one hour or spending two hours on homework are great examples. Give Consider how much time you’d like to spend each day on others: whether it’s volunteering, spending quality time with your family, or hanging out with your friends. Complete Your Schedule Now comes the challenging part: trying to fit all your ideas into 24 hours! On a new sheet of paper, create an hour-by-hour schedule for one day. Once you’ve completed it, you’ll become more aware of how you are spending your time. When you have a good idea of how you’re spending 24 hours, you can move up to creating a weeklong time budget.

Managers handle parallel projects all the time. They juggle with people, work tasks, and goals to ensure the success of every project process. However, managing projects, by design, is not an easy task. Since there are plenty of moving parts, it can easily become disorganized and chaotic. It is vital to use an efficient project management system to stay organized at work while designing and executing projects. Project Management Online Master's Programs From XLRI offers unique insights into project management software tools and make teams more efficient in meeting deadlines. How can project management software help you? Project management tools are equipped with core features that streamline different processes including managing available resources, responding to problems, and keeping all the stakeholders involved. Having the best project management software can make a significant influence on the operational and strategic aspects of the company. Here is a list of 5 key benefits to project professionals and organizations in using project management software: 1. Enhanced planning and scheduling Project planning and scheduling is an important component of project management. With project management systems, the previous performance of the team relevant to the present project can be accessed easily. Project managers can enroll in an online project management course to develop a consistent management plan and prioritize tasks. Critical tasks like resource allocation, identification of dependencies, and project deliverables can be completed comfortably using project management software. 2. Better collaboration Project teams sometimes have to handle cross-functional projects along with their day to day responsibilities. Communication between different team members is critical to avoid expensive delays and precludes the waste of precious resources. A key upside of project management software is that it makes effectual collaboration extremely simple. All project communication is stored in a universally accessible place. The project management online master's program offers unique insights to project managers on timeline and status updates which leads to a synergy between the team’s functions and project outcomes. 3. Effective task delegation Assigning tasks to team members in a fair way is a challenging proposition for most project managers. With a project management program, the delegation of project tasks can be easily done. In most instances, these programs send out automatic reminders when deadlines are approaching to ensure a smooth and efficient project workflow. 4. Easier File access and sharing Important documents should be safely accessed and shared among team members. Project management tools provide cloud-based storage which enables users to make changes, leave feedback and annotate easily. PM software logs any user changes to ensure project transparency within the team. 5. Easier integration of new members Project managers are responsible to get new members up to speed on the important project parameters within a short time. Project management online master's programs from XLRI Jamshedpuroffer vital learning to management professionals in maintaining a project log and in simplistically visualizing the complete project. Takeaway Choosing the perfect PM software for your organization helps you to effectively collaborate to achieve project success. Simple and intuitive PM tools are useful to enhance productivity in remote-working employees.

Eisenhower Matrix, a method of ordering tasks by importance and urgency. The idea is that you file every task into one of four quadrants: important and urgent; not important but urgent; important but not urgent; and neither important nor urgent. Depending on which of those four a task is in, you do it, delegate it, schedule it or ignore it.

So far we have considered only factors that make scheduling harder. But there is one twist that can make it easier: being able to stop one task partway through and switch to another. This property, “preemption,” turns out to change the game dramatically.

But in 1968, Lawler proved that this is no trouble as long as you build the schedule back to front: look only at the tasks that no other tasks depend on, and put the one with the latest due date at the end of the schedule. Then simply repeat this process, again considering at each step only those tasks that no other (as-yet unscheduled) tasks depend upon as a prerequisite.

the weighted version of Shortest Processing Time is a pretty good candidate for best general-purpose scheduling strategy in the face of uncertainty. It offers a simple prescription for time management: each time a new piece of work comes in, divide its importance by the amount of time it will take to complete. If that figure is higher than for the task you’re currently doing, switch to the new one;

Think Motion. The perfect project timeline is only slightly less elusive than the Holy Grail. It takes some effort to figure it out, but once you do, you’ll have created a template that promotes success. You may not be the person tasked with creating timelines, but you can try to influence those who are. This is the kind of thing that most people just accept, but they shouldn’t. The right timing is as important as the right people. Always be wary of the “comfortable” timeline—it’s just a fact of life that a degree of pressure keeps things moving ahead with purpose. With too much time in the schedule, you’re just inviting more opinions, and more opportunities to have your ideas nibbled to death. Keep things in motion at all times.

Organize and prioritize your tasks in advance. Create a daily task schedule first thing in the morning, or last thing in the evening before you leave the office the day before.

A word of explanation is necessary to those who fear setting up a schedule because it feels rigid and stifling. Scheduling is not an inflexible list that is written in stone. It is a statement of what regular tasks are important to accomplish each day and when you plan to do them during the day. As you become experienced in using and tweaking your schedule, you will find it meets your needs more and more successfully and will become your friend. (pp. 163-164).

Good time management means you are capable of scheduling tasks, exercising good judgment, and developing the insight to recognize when to do them.

Time on Hubble is a precious commodity. Astronomers across the world regularly ask for much more time than is available. Keeping Hubble working 24/7 is no small task. Not a single second must be lost and all tasks — either observations or so-called ‘housekeeping’ tasks, such as repositioning of the telescope, or uploading new observing schedules — are meticulously planned.

To hack back, schedule time in your day to catch up on group chats, just as you would for any other task in your timeboxed calendar. It’s important to set colleagues’ expectations by letting them know when you plan to be unavailable. You can put them at ease by assuring them that you will contribute to the conversation during an allocated time later in the day, but until then you shouldn’t feel guilty for turning on the Do Not Disturb feature while doing focused work.

Chapter Summary The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. As habits become routine, they become less interesting and less satisfying. We get bored. Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It’s the ability to keep going when work isn’t exciting that makes the difference. Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.

The following are some of the most common mistakes made by project managers: Not clearly understanding how or ensuring that the project is aligned with organizational objectives. Not properly managing stakeholder expectations throughout the project. Not gaining agreement and buy-in on project goals and success criteria from key stakeholders. Not developing a realistic schedule that includes all work efforts, task dependencies, bottom-up estimates, and assigned leveled resources. Not getting buy-in and acceptance on the project schedule. Not clearly deciding and communicating who is responsible for what. Not utilizing change control procedures to manage the scope of the project. Not communicating consistently and effectively with all key stakeholders. Not executing the project plan. Not tackling key risks early in the project. Not proactively identifying risks and developing contingency plans (responses) for those risks. Not obtaining the right resources with the right skills at the right time. Not aggressively pursuing issue resolution. Inadequately defining and managing requirements. Insufficiently managing and leading the project team.

Schedule one major task to work on each morning While there are thousands of books on productivity, only a few principles matter. I believe the most important one is to identify your key task and tackle it first thing in the morning—and do this consistently.

The pomodoro technique’s snappy, rigorous structure lends itself to another purpose as well: you can assign a specific task to each and every pomodoro. Or, put differently, you can use the pomodoro technique as a way to schedule everything you need to get done.

People who are constantly “busy” are running from themselves. Nobody is “busy” unless they want to be busy, and you will know that because so many people with extremely hectic schedules would never describe themselves that way. This is because being “busy” is not a virtue; it only signals to others that you do not know how to manage your time or your tasks.

when you’re trying to Master Your Time, few things are more infuriating than a task or delay that’s foisted upon you against your will, with no regard for the schedule you’ve painstakingly drawn up in your overpriced notebook. But when you turn your attention instead to the fact that you’re in a position to have an irritating experience in the first place, matters are liable to look very different indeed.