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time management

“Spending time with family”? You certainly can capture your son’s
weekly lacrosse games and your daughter’s regular soccer practice.
And including an item “Spending time with family” is a good idea,
as it will force you to think further and plan how to accomplish this
goal. This is a good time to commit to a weekly or biweekly “date”
with your spouse or significant other, too.

You may feel that it isn’t necessary to include the obvious fam-
ily responsibilities that come with being a spouse or parent on your
list. “I’m doing these things anyway,” you reason. Maybe you’re the
best parent and/or spouse on two legs, and don’t wish to cheapen the
time you spend with your loved ones by labeling those experiences
as “tasks” and scheduling them on the impersonal medium of a task
list. Remember that you’re building a list of commitments, and cre-
ating a device to ensure that these commitments are met.

Collecting this master set of tasks or super “to-do” list, in
whatever format you choose, will undoubtedly represent a major
effort, but is a step that you may not need to repeat if you maintain
the “schedule” part discussed below. Unfortunately, however, the
classic to-do list does not permit an understanding of the task, nor
does it accommodate a plan or acknowledge what resources, such
as time, are necessary to accomplish it. So, at this stage, “Oil the
bathroom door” has the same weight as “Write a will.” In that
regard, your list is as random and disorganized as your uncon-
scious mind. The next steps will address that problem.

Define

Now that you have captured all of your outstanding responsibilities
and undone tasks, it’s time to define them. This step is essential in
being able to prioritize, schedule, and develop a plan to accomplish
them. During this stage, you define the steps involved in complet-
ing the task and decide how long each will require to complete.
The small tasks, such as oiling the hinge on the bathroom door, get
a small time window because the task only involves finding the oil

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