Fellow Forumites, Well look at that! I never bothered to check my last post (coz I got distracted by somebody wanting something and forgot) and look at all those little typos and spellos. That actually raises a salient point - distractions. When you are busting to get something done you can always expect the phone to ring or somebody to knock on your door (often several times - Murphy's Law). Here's a good idea... take your phone off the hook, click your cell off and don't answer the door. The world will still be revolving (hopefully) an hour later when you have finished your work. Cheri, the other thing I wanted to address was: ============== "Here's the dilemma. Some of the business tasks are multi-day or multi-week projects even if I chunk them down. How to get to important tasks in other sections, while staying true to the concept?" ============== OK. For EACH multi-day or multi-week task write out a procedure list. Get it precise then photocopy it however many times you need for future reference. Attach a copy of that behind your prioritised "to do" list. In other words, these tasks are simply too big to do all at once so you have a list of procedures all in order. For example, in Australia we have to do our tax returns every 3 months. It is a real chore and takes ages. I have a "Master List" of procedures for that task - all 22 written down. At any given time I might get to do the first five. I cross them off. Two days later I might do another three. I cross them off. I now have 8 or 22 separate procedures completed. This is a method of "chunking down" that I mentioned earlier. That gives me a sense of advancement that releases pressure off me for the enormity of the task that faces me. Here is another thing that might help... Ever misplaced your list? Buy yourself a simple $2 clipboard and attach your list to that. I have one and I can tell you it's a lot harder to lose a clipboards than it is to lose a flimsy piece of paper. I love my clipboard. My whole family rubbishes me for it but apart from what I already said it allows me to sit in front of some moronic TV show and do all sorts of things - like jotting down ideas, forecasts, crosswords, sudoka, football scores - that sort of thing. Hope this helps a bit. It sure helps me to stay on track. I have a further point to make which I think everybody will really like. You see, it involves all those time-wasters who keep coming to you with all sorts of "problems" for you to sort out. I have a solution for those type of people and it ALWAYS works. But I'll let others have a say first. There's plenty to discuss here and I don't want to hog the thread. (Actually, I do but fair is fair). Gary Simpson.

Hi Cheri; ======================================== To organize priorities, decided to divvy them up into sections, Business, Home, Health, Money, General and take one task from each section daily. There are actually three business sections, one each for my three major areas of income generation. Here's the dilemma. Some of the business tasks are multi-day or multi-week projects even if I chunk them down. How to get to important tasks in other sections, while staying true to the concept? ======================================== Well - this is just me... but the first thing I'd do is create two groups "work" and "personal" so you can take care of each in it's own time. If you took one task each from Business, Home, Health, Money, General, you'd find that your business tasks are only getting 1/5th of your time. I'm very familiar with the concept of multi-day and multi-week tasks. If I'm juggling 4 website design jobs, there's no way any one of them is going to get done in a day. lol Here's what I do. First, I have a master list of "longer" jobs, broken down into parts. For example, it might say something like this: Cheri's site: -- Main page -- Contact page -- install rotation script -- etc Jen's site: -- Set up cart -- Main page -- etc I'll have a few of those. Tomorrow's list might contain one or two elements from each of the ongoing jobs. When I cross it off the short list, I also cross it off the long list. Then, when I make tomorrow's list, I look at the long list to see what has priority. I actually keep 2 "longer" lists. -- one for client projects -- one for my projects When I make my daily 6 list, I look at my long lists to create the short list. : ) Linda

Hi. I guess it's appropriate for Murphy's Law to be at work during the week preceding St. Patrick's Day, lol. Moments after I posted my question, I received a call from my husband who was having a medical almost-emergency. Turned out not to be as serious as we at first thought, but the rest of the afternoon was devoted to getting him to a doctor. Well, I got the most important business task (a multi-day one) well-started, and the next most important one done. The rest go on Friday's list, because tomorrow was already booked solid. Linda, your observation about the amount of time being devoted to work would be accurate if the length of time it took each task to be performed were equal, but they aren't. My home task might consist of getting one load of laundry in, while the most important business task was figuring out a compensation plan for agents in my new real estate agency--I can't start hiring until I can tell them what they'll make. I started to make a list of the smaller tasks in that one, and decided there wasn't enough bandwidth to transfer the resulting post, lol. But I did 'get it'. I don't have that chunked down small enough yet. OK, back to the drawing board...after all Rome wasn't built in a day. How's that for mixed metaphors, lol. It turns out that sequence is a big factor also, that the story didn't really address. I found today that the first task is getting the sequence right. Gary, I'm keeping my list on the computer and will print it out on scrap paper each day. Cut and paste the tasks from one list to the other, easier to change the priority. Besides, if I brought one more thing into this office, even a clipboard, it would explode. Winston, didn't you allude to something like this method in another thread? What and where was that? Thanks, everyone. Some great ideas here. I'll see what works for me. Cheri

Hi Cheri, A Time Management Expert is a fictitious character. I assume it is work that you are trying to manage. :-) I have some expertise in Continuous Process Improvement and in many of my analysis of existing processes I have found that people generally spend too much effort in completing unnecessary work. This typically happens because a vision, purpose or objective has not been clearly defined. This may not apply in your case. Let's assume that all the work you have listed is necessary. Are you familiar with Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). This is a fundamental technique used in preparation of a project. The idea is to decompose your objective down to separate work units. Each work units is allocated a duration and a deadline date. Using a project planning software you enter the work unit information and schedule your work to maximize the amount of time you have available. I have used Microsoft project but if you search on the following keywords, wbs, project, software, you should be able to learn much more on an effective, efficient and productive way to manage the work you need to do. Here is a quick link to get you thinking. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) It doesn't have to be complicated and you can probably use some office tools that you currently use. Using a process as I mentioned will allow you to schedule work. It should also identify if you have sufficient resources (Your Time) to complete your objective. You may need to leverage your time (Hubby's Time) or re-evaluate your objectives. Clearly define WHAT you want, use a process to define the HOW to achieve component and implement a procedure if your want needs to be repeatable. Jack

Hi, Jack, Thank you. I'm familiar with those concepts, and I'm sure some of them would work for some of my projects. I fear that the real problem is that I have too many of the latter, but am not yet willing to give up on any of them. My husband can help me with one of them, but to any major degree only after I free him from his full-time job and train him on how to analyze the deals (real estate investments). This is a catch-22. So I have defined what I want. If anyone can tell me how to get it, I'll be everlastingly grateful and nominate them for PTOW (6). I want a 36-hour day. Cheri