24 hours is indeed inadequate for all of the things we want to achieve in a day, and because of this, we tend to multitask leaving us stress and exhausted.
I also encountered the same problem especially I am on my daily grind to meet my 1BCH goal and it feels like the whole day became shorter and shorter leaving my other errands unfinished. As a solution, I analyzed myself—what are the things I do on a day and put it a paper and set a specific schedule for each. However, I still had a hard time following it, and took me almost several weeks to figure out what is the most efficient way of doing all of these.
Today I will share how I optimize my time especially I’m on my daily grind here in this platform. The things I will state below may/may not work for you. We have different ways to adapt to our schedule after all.
First is I will list all of the things I do tomorrow
This is the basic and most important. Let’s say that this the main foundation and without it, you will not have any progress.
Before the day end, I will foresee all the things I want to do tomorrow. I will list them down in a notebook and categorized them based on their importance or priority.
For example, the things I want to do tomorrow are these:
Write 1 article
Reading articles
Mop the floor/clean the house
Watch a Netflix series
Create a noise.cash post
Interact with other members on noiseristificationism
I will create a two-column on my notebook and label each. It will look like this:
It’s up to you where to put those tasks. In my case, as I am currently catching up on my 1BCH goal, I will include writing an article, creating noise, and reading articles as my top priority. The rest is on the other side.
Put a required estimated time to finish every task.
I'm not sure if others do the same, but I like to estimate how long it will take me to complete a task. This forces me to concentrate and focus at the moment since I know I have a deadline to meet. You know the feeling that it’s like you are doing something academic-related and you have to finish it before the deadline so you won’t be scolded by your teacher, lol 😂.
To help you decide on how many minutes or hours you will allocate on each task, count the hours where you are awake. For instance, I often wake up at 8 am and go to bed at 12 am. Basically, if we will count the hours between my wake up and sleeping time, I am active for 16 hours.
Now that I know the exact hours where I am awake, it is easy for me to distribute it to the task that I am planning to do. Okay, let's visualize it!
All in all, I will spend an estimated time of 11 hours and 30 minutes to 13 hours and 30 minutes doing all of my tasks. This will leave me 4 – 3 hours of extra time that I can use for other things.
BUT remember that this is just an estimation and I might finish the errand earlier than the time I set or vice versa. This is why I divided it into two sections: top and least priority. In a situation where you didn’t expect that one certain task consumed too much time, at least you won’t be bothered that you can’t do the things on the least priority since it's not that important and you can just do it tomorrow or on another day.
Regardless, the main purpose of this ‘technique’ is to have a clearer picture of how many hours do you have and how you will use it.
Observe yourself at what time do you perform better.
Before, I always write at night. However, I noticed that my intelligence capacity is at its lowest during this timeframe. I often zone out and get distracted. This is why I tried to write during the day, especially in the morning. The results are superb as I can easily finish my tasks, read more articles, and have a me-time. I guess I am a morning person? Lol.
If you really want to optimize your time, do the tasks that require brainpower during the period where your brain is actively performing. In my case, all the task that requires brainpower is on my top priority.
ADD ONS:
I am thankful that I can easily think of an idea to write on almost every situation. For example, my friend and I were talking about something, and then he/she mentioned a thing that triggers the light bulb on my head, I will immediately list it down. That helps me to have a hoard of topics to write about.
Also, before sleeping, I will scan those topics to decide what will I write tomorrow. If I chose a topic, I will have a moment to think about it - what will be the approach or tone of the whole article? Should I include this or nah? Something like that. In that way, I can have a great grasp of the topic I will write thus saving me a lot of time when I start to seat on my computer.
Final thought:
This is my way of organizing my schedule. It seems complicated for some but it works perfectly fine for me. I also do this to discipline myself as I always observe that I tend to be unproductive most of the time. In addition, time is valuable, and putting it in vain is like throwing the part of life into the worthless and non-sense void.
Thank you to my sponsors, upvoters, silent readers, commenters, and critics for keeping me motivated in writing 💯. I am just a speck of dust floating in the wind without you :)
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That's a nice strategy to manage your time well. I also do that last last year? If I'm not mistaken but my laziness often strike me so I chose not to 😂