Effective Time Management = Automatic Workflow

I Just want to share a short thought about time management. I think the essence of effective time management is how we put anything into our workflow in such a way that they will automatically appear to us at the right place and the right time.

This way, we can concentrate on doing valuable things at hand without the need of remembering anything. Our system will run in autopilot and present us with the right thing at the right place and the right time. This is the idea behind Getting Things Done (GTD) with tools like Next Actions, Calendar, Someday/Maybe, etc. On the other side, this is also the idea we can use to extend our system beyond GTD or even create our own system.

For example, I have things that I need to do daily. To make them automatic, I have a “daily checklist” which I will go through every morning. Just by going through this check list, I can be sure that those daily things are done. My daily GTD review is also part of this checklist. Previously, I often miss a day without reviewing GTD (Next Action, Calendar, Waiting For, etc). That makes my GTD implementation bad. But this daily checklist solve that problem: now I automatically review them every morning.

I also have things which I like to do weekly. Again, to make it automatic I put them into a “weekly checklist” which I usually do after my GTD weekly review. Now those tasks will automatically pop up without the need of remembering them.

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