“Set the Most Important Tasks for the week and the day.”
You have a to-do list and a brand new day ahead of you. What will you do today?
Without adding structure and planning to your day and your week, you’re too much at the mercy of the winds of change, prone to react to what happens to you, rather than deciding what is important and what you really want to accomplish.
Take control of your day, rather than letting others’ needs, desires, and priorities control it for you.
The three essential points
- Every week list the Big Rocks you want to accomplish and schedule them first
- Every day make a list of the 3 Most Important Tasks (MITs: basically the Big Rocks of the day) and make sure you complete them
- Dedicate yourself to your MITs at the beginning of the day to get them out of the way and be certain to complete them
Of course, you’ll also handle other tasks on your list, but you primarily identify those you really want to complete, those that at the end of the day make you feel proud of having accomplished something.
How to plan
1. Big Rocks
At the beginning of each week (on Sunday or Monday, as you prefer) sit down and take a look at your to-do list. What do you want to accomplish this week? These are your Big Rocks.
This term comes from Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It means you must put the Big Rocks in your schedule first, i.e., the most important activities, and then let the pebbles and gravel, i.e., less significant activities, fill your time by adapting around the Big Rocks. If you do the opposite and put in the pebbles and gravel first, they will fill your time and leave no room for the Big Rocks.
Try to initially limit the Big Rocks to 4-6 results to achieve for the week; later, once you’ve discovered how much you can accomplish, you can add more.
Make sure to include at least a couple of tasks that move you forward toward your goal for the year.
2. Plan
Take the Big Rocks and place them in your calendar. Only one or two per day so you don’t feel overloaded. Place them in 1-2 hour blocks, in the first part of the day, if possible. Now that these important tasks have been scheduled, you can plan other activities if necessary, without compromising those.
3. MITs, Most Important Tasks
Every morning, decide what the Most Important Tasks of the day are. They will probably be the same as the Big Rocks, but gradually they might differ. Choose about 3 MITs per day: you might include a Big Rock and a couple other important tasks. Block time at the beginning of the day if you can: if you place them later, you will surely have other commitments that will get in your way.
4. Complete them
Here’s the most important part: actually doing things.
First thing in the morning, even before checking email, complete the first MIT.
Eliminate every distraction, make sure you focus only on that task until you have completed it.
When you’re done, reward yourself … but make sure to move on to the next MIT right after!
Look back and ahhh. If you complete your MITs, you’ll feel great. Make sure to look back at everything you’ve accomplished and give yourself a pat on the back, or even reward yourself.
The power of planning
Often we work hard and do a lot of things, but when we get to the end of the day it seems like we haven’t accomplished anything. Instead of checking off a good number of tasks from your to-do list, try to complete the most important ones.
Planning helps you to:
- Focus on what really matters
- Eliminate the sense of overwhelm
- Increase your overall productivity
- Create a sense of accomplishment
- Align your daily actions with your long-term goals
