Doing the things that matter

Hello friends,

It's not a surprise when I say that we have a lot to do in our lives nowadays. We have a social circle to take part of, we have to make some money to pay our rent and bring food to the table, we have things to learn, tasks to do, we want to explore the world and deep down we all want to live a fulfilled life. We feel the need to do it all.

And then you get another assignment by your boss. Another task. More and more to do.

Sometimes it feels overwhelming. You forget tasks.

Oh shit, and I totally forgot to work out!

You don't know what to prioritize, because at some point just everything seems important.

I had this problem a while ago where I wanted to do every single task I got, meet every single person I could, and just spend all of my time on "being productive". But at some point, there is just too much to do. I couldn't chase everything. I needed to learn how to spend my time.

Time we can use

Our biggest factor in what and how much we can achieve in a day is our free time.

We only have 24 hours per day to do whatever we want. Let's take 2/3 of that time away for sleep and work. Then you need to eat about 3 times per day, you need to shower, you have to travel to work/school and if you have to cook, you even invest more time. Let's take away 4 more hours for all of that.

So we have about 4 hours for ourselves per day.

4 hours per day is not that much. Yes, on the weekend we have more time, but we'll leave that aside for now. We need to focus on using our precious time as good as we possibly can. Time is our most important resource that we have.

This is where Return On Investment (ROI) becomes important: ROI defines how much "value" (in form of money, fun, saved time etc.) you'll get by doing one specific task (doing your homework, approaching a girl, hitting the gym etc.). The higher the ROI, the better. The best ROI you'll get by a high value output and low time investment.

And here it is where we need to work on our planning and prioritization skills.

“You can do anything, but not everything.” - David Allen

Planning is key to use your free time to the fullest. This is our first step to organization.

Prioritize the essential

First of all, write literally everything that you have to do on a journal or get an app like Todoist to just dump all of your tasks at hand in it. They can be tasks that you have to do today, in a week, in a month or even habits that you are doing or plan to do daily.

Everything that you have or want to do.

You should now have a list with a few (or many) different tasks.

Then you start to prioritize. I have a system that works great for me:

• Priority 1: No task gets this priority if it's not absolutely necessary to do. It has to be something that is worth dropping every other task instantly, so you can focus on that. Use Priority 1 as your to-do joker: Every other task that has another priority is not allowed to be worked on until Priority 1 is done.
• Priority 2: The Tasks at Priority 2 are ones that you want to do and have a big return on investment, OR need to be done today (despite the Return on Investment). You should focus on them firstly. By working on them, you'll get a lot of benefits. You do the most important tasks first.
• Priority 3: Those things are the things that you want to do, and it would be good if you can make them today, but it isn't a necessity. The ROI is decent, but not as crazy as Priority 2.
• Priority 4: Things that you can do if you have some spare time, but that aren't that important.

This is an amazing system that really helps you in planning your time and keeping an overview on what you have to do.

Some Side Notes on how you can improve it even more:

• Set yourself a rule to do a task that takes 2 min or less first, just so you don't have to constantly think about it.
• Then go on with the Priority list. Start working through Priority 2, then Priority 3 and then Priority 4 until your time you want to spend on work is over.
• Remember to take breaks from time to time, but not on Social Media or by playing video games, but by listening to music, reading, going outside shortly etc.
• Remember: The list doesn't respect what you want to do the most, but what is the most important for your goals.

With this system, you got yourself an overview on what needs to be done and what tasks really matter. You can then proceed to look at your tasks daily. A daily to-do list. You know what is important and what not. I personally use Todoist, and it works amazing, because you can just put your tasks into the app with a specific date, and it will display your task when it needs to be done. Amazing app. Highly recommended.

My challenge for you

Write your own to-do list. Either do it on paper or in the Todoist app. You'll get an overview into what's important and what isn't. Then, after you've written down all your tasks, prioritize them.

Bonus points if you make it a habit to use either your handwritten to-do list or Todoist (or any other similar app) daily.

My Song of the week

This song is legendary and you know it.

Thank you so much for reading today's blog post. I wish you an amazing week!

Much Love,

Kim