Plan tasks into your life

In this post, we look at how to plan the tasks into your life. As we discussed before, your life is complex with lots of competing elements. But to get your To Do List completed, you need to plan them in. Get your diary out. Again, if you don’t have one, use what you find the best, a Wall diary, a beautiful day planner, your online calendar. Pick something you will use daily. Put in anything you know about already, block out work time, celebrations, appointments already made. Get rid of those bits of paper you were using, and put any letters in a pile for later - this is a task I am sure you have - filing paperwork or important letters. You may be able to do this diary planning when watching the TV or whilst the kids are doing their homework. Doesn’t that feel good?

Now, what space do you have left. If you have some urgent tasks, try to book those in first. Appointments you need to make? Slot them into a lunch-time and set a reminder with the details you need e.g. telephone numbers, references, information. This way you can complete it as fast as possible. Once booked, put it into the diary as soon as you can.

Don’t overload your time, add in time for Mindfullness or exercise if you want. If you have a task that will take a morning or evening and you have kids, put this in when they have an activity e.g. a club, visit with friends or perhaps they can help you? Make it fun for them too, then book in something nice after it. Going out for a coffee or a swim, visiting a cinema or a long soak in the bath.

At first book in 2-3 tasks per week, especially if you are working full-time. Pick those that are most urgent and that you don’t have to get tools or information for. Make sure you have written a task to get this information or tool so you can do those tasks later. Plan in some simple but not so pressing tasks as well. The more you tick off the better you feel.

Do this for a few weeks, then see how you go. Do you put too much in and fail? Have you under or over-estimated the time needed? Don’t worry, the next post will help you review how you are doing. If you think that you will never have any spare time to do any of your tasks, below is a blog with some suggestions for making more time in your daily life.

How to get My Life Sorted - Allocate your time

Now we are geting somewhere. You have made your To Do List, you have allocated tasks to people, ranked your tasks in importance, and now you need to look at how much time each task may take. Something like phoning for an appointment may take a short length of time, but redesigning a room may take much longer - days even. Don’t make this complicated, allocate each task a 1, 2 or 3 in terms of time to do, - 1 being the shortest amount of time, 3 being the longest.

Go with your gut instinct on this, its just a guide. If you need to add a fourth type, go ahead. Perhaps 1 is minutes, 2 is a morning, 3 is a day and 4 is multiple days. Whatever works for you.

You know what to do next…reorganise your tasks again into their time allocations. All short items together and so on. You leave the tasks that other people are doing to them to organise as they wish. But you may want to put a timeframe on them, when do you want them to be completed. Let them tell you if this is not doable.

You now have a list of your tasks, with approximate lengths of time to complete and their importance. You are now ready to start planning them into your life.

Remember these 3 choices every time you want to add a task to your list, do YOU have to do this, how Important is it and how long will it take. This will make planning new tasks easier in the future.

We are all bad at estimating time, so always add a buffer at the start. You will get better as you go along, so don’t worry about it. Below is an article on why we are so bad at estimates and some tips on what to do to improve.

How to get My Life Sorted - How urgent is my task

In the grand scheme of things, some tasks are more important than others. Which ones, though, depend on the person adding them to their To Do list. Here, you get to decide which tasks are most important to you. Importance may be defined by:

1. Urgency of the tasks- is there a firm deadline for it.

2. How much difference it would to your (and your family’s) life

3. Does it need to be finished to allow another important task to be done.

Your next stage is to rank your tasks from High to Low importance. Be honest, don’t put off a difficult task as low urgency if you are afraid of completing it. This may be because of lack of knowledge or skills that you have. A later blog post will help you with dealing with your fear of this, so rank them properly. They may even be high importance if they have not been attempted at all.

Of course, because of life, these rankings may change, tasks may rise or fall in importance over time, so, review this regularly to make sure they are still accurate. One strategy to do this is to use the Eisenhower Matrix - 4 squares to rank your tasks.

Below is a link to a Video on this subject which may be interesting.

How to get My Life Sorted - Your To Do List

Ok, so you have your to do list written down in a gorgeous new planner. It may have taken quite a while for you to get the list done, but FANTASTIC. Give yourself a gold star. you have started on the path to a new sorted life. What’s next you ask. Planning, planning, planning I answer. You may want to dive straight in and start on the first tasks, but without a plan of attack you could well fail and become dejected about finishing anything.

Be realistic - if you have a busy life, are working full-time, kids, or have a full social life (ha ha) then you will have limited time for anything else. Don’t worry, with planning and a little help, you can get through your list.

Firstly task, review your list. Which tasks are those that only you can do, and what can be done by someone else e.g. a family member or a professional. Make a note by each task, and then check that you are not overburdening yourself with tasks or assigning a professional tasks that will cost more than any budget you have.

Take your time until you are happy you have broken them down by resource, colour code if you wish until everything is assigned. if you are not sure who can do something, put this down as a note, and perhaps it will be clearer later. Re-organise the list into resources allocated. See the list shrink before your eyes of tasks for you to tackle alone, and how much other people can help you achieve it all.

It may help to have someone do this with you as they can make sure you are not keeping too many tasks to yourself. They may also be able to suggest who would be best to complete a particular task. Do this over a glass of wine or a piece of cake. Coloured Contact free post-it notes - available at many stationers, may be helpful - use a free wall as your planning space.

How to get My Life Sorted! - Where to start..

First of all - TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND LET IT OUT SLOWLY. Remember, everything seems overwhelming at the start. Piles of paperwork, overstuffed wardrobes, rooms full of clutter. But, by taking hold of your life and dealing with issues bit by bit, it will soon move from being a mountain to becoming a molehill. At the end you will say my life is sorted, Take this breath at the start of every day if it helps. Here is a link to some simple exercises to help you cope if you start to feel anxious at any time.

To get your ams around the problem, I have found having a to do list very helpful to start with. Make the entries not too vague so that you can’t see the whole problem, or too detailed that the list itself makes it seem too big to tackle. Do this by walking from room by room. if needs be, to make sure you include what is most obvious to you as a problem area.

Entries like:

1. Sort out bookshelves

2. Check over my bank account

3. Make a list of repairs that need to be done

are helpful length notes, but not too scary or big. If the list is starting to get too long just choose the most pressing items to include, the most important or largest. Don’t expect to fix everything at once though.

Where you note down this to do list is very important. Perhaps, if you love stationery, buy a new planner in a colour you love and use that. Or use a spreadsheet on your computer if you are more IT based. If you want to get everyone involved, make a wall chart so that all the family can pick a tasks and put it in their column to do. Whatever works for you. The more fun and easy it is for you, the more likely is that you will get it done.

Some resources for you to create your to do list include Pintrest for wallchart ideas, Planners from makers such as Stalogy and CGD London (found in Amazon and online), make them fun with stickers from suppliers such as HelloOriday and PaperScribblesCo - both on Etsy. Choose what you love and use it, if it doesn’t make you happy try something else. Papier.com has a post on the psychology of colourful stationery…a fun read.

How to get My Life Sorted

Where to start..

After more than a year of a global pandemic, upheaval in everyone’s routine and disruption at home and work, we all feel more out of control than ever. You may have had to home-school your children, decided to set up your own business (I am one of these) or are just fed up of living in your house with all its clutter and drab decor. But you don’t know where to start with sorting out your life. Don’t panic, there are simple ways of getting to grip with your life and getting it sorted and in control.

In this series of blog posts I will explore how you can sort out your life, from decluttering a wardrobe, taking a deep dive into your finances to updating the design of your bathroom. There will be tips and tricks to plan and execute strategies to organise your life, suggested further reading and interesting theories to take a look at.

Its time to take back control over your life and home, and feel at the end of the process that now ‘my life is sorted!’. Look out for my regular updates and please leave a comment if there is a particular area you want me to focus in on.

NOTE: If you feel that your life is spiralling out of control and its seriously impacting on how you live your life, it may be worth checking in with professionals for support. Organisations such as the Samaritans, the NHS can be a start, and websites to which allow you to search for local mental help services such as Hub of hope are good places to find the help and support you may need..