This workshop with Darrel Girardier was jam-packed with tips and advice on how to be more productive to “get it all done in 7 days.” He openly admits that with the way our never-ending workloads seem to be in America, it may be near impossible to do it all in 7 days, but he’s got great advice to help with it.
Filled with both practical and philosophical points, each of his seven key talking points could have been a workshop in and of itself. With that said, I’m going to highlight one that stuck out to me the most because I’ve seen it in the workplace with certain personality types.
Point #2: Use a Calendar instead of a To-Do list
Now, if you’re a high achiever, Type A, internally and externally motivated type person, then you may find this point moot. Why? Because you already know and practice how to make to-do lists the right way. Many people, however, do not know how to make a to-do list that helps them get the work done to be more efficient and productive.
Darrel argues that many people write a to-do list as a wish list. It’s a brain dump on everything they want to get done. No deadlines, no bite-size chunks, no prioritizing. It’s just a fairy tale wish of everything there is to do, and that is exactly why to-do lists often fail them.
But if you put down on a calendar the things that you want to get done, it forces you to think about when you’ll do it, what time is available to work on it, how long you can allot towards the task, and it helps you prioritize it within your week by where you put it on your calendar.
Darrel even goes so far as to share his own calendar and talk through a bit of his process during the Q&A portion of the class. Similar to a time-blocking exercise, putting the things that you need to get done on the calendar for the week lays out a path for greater productivity and efficiency… and perhaps even fewer distractions.
Find this a little hard to implement?
Here are a few tips:
Step 1: Write a list of tasks or projects that you need to work on/accomplish for the week. Just let it be a brain dump.
Step 2: Order them by priority. Think about what’s most urgent. Think about what’s most important.
Step 3: Starting with the highest priority tasks and working your way down, schedule each on the calendar. Think through how much time you need to accomplish that task and how early it needs to be accomplished (the higher the priority, the earlier in the day/week it should be scheduled).
Step 4: Follow your calendar!
Give it a try for a week or two and see how it works for you!
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This article was written by Katelyn Johnson, and edited by JT Boling.
