Assimilation

Bismillah.

Want to put a stop to procrastination? To end the days of things being on your to-do list for months and months? Want to get more things done in less time–with ihsaan–and learn what barakah in your time feels like first-hand?

First, get your five-times daily prayers in order, consistently. If they’re not, then come back when they are.

Second, read the Time-Management Tripod post.

What then?

Enter this spreadsheet. If you use it consistently, inshallah ta’ala you will find yourself accomplishing MASSIVE amounts of work–including things you’ve been putting off for months!

How it works:

1. Every day, spend 10-30 minutes maintaining it. Delete yesterday’s done items, re-style daily/weekly/etc. items so you remember to do them, fill in every possible thing you can think of that you need to do.
2. Enter a “base priority”, and drag the “real priority” — if you use real priority, it prevents low-priority tasks from never being done, because real priority increases every day.
3. Sort by: category, task size (descending), priority (descending).
4. Start at the top of your list (the biggest frogs), and work down. (I suggest you tackle two-minute tasks first, because they’re small.) As you complete each task, style it as Done, change the type, and move on to the next one.

And that’s it! Note that the far right-side comments are just to show you how it works. You can see some things like how daily tasks are always daily (so they don’t get deleted by accident), and how eventually low-priority but old items surface at the top!

If you find it beneficial, or even have any problems or suggestions for improvements, drop me a comment inshallah!

Download it here.

Bismillah.

Want some barakah in your time? Want to end the long legacy of ToDo lists that never get done? Feel swamped with work or overwhelmed?

Then try these three time-management techniques. Together, they form a rock-solid tripod. Trust the people who have researched them and applied them. They work beautifully for me.

Note: These techniques are from Muhammad Alsahreef.  He literally spent tens of thousands of dollars taking several time-management seminars, and then held a workshop and gave us the best of what he learned for $10.  He also combined it with the Islamic side, so benefit lots inshallah!  For more information on his amazing (life-changing — that’s not an exaggeration) workshops, visit DiscoverU inshallah.

Technique 1: A Brain with a Breeze

Every single day, take out ten minutes before you do anything else (including checking your email), and make a list of absolutely everything you need to get done. You’ll be maintaining this list for days to come, so I suggest you type it up in some sort of spreadsheet and save an updated copy each day. Really squeeze your brain on this one. At the end, your mind should feel wonderfully uncluttered. Get that stuff down on paper!

You’ll find, as well, that if you’re the type of person who forgets things easily, this technique helps you remember everything–especially if you add tasks to it that you remember later.

Technique 2: The Six Ds

Next, catagorize each of the items on your list into one of the following six categories:

1. Do it: If you need to do something (actionable), then do it. If you can do it in 3 minutes or less, do it right now, don’t put it off even one second longer.
2. Delete it: If it requires no action–something like “worry about my grades”, then delete it. Who needs that, anyway! Or if you know you’re never going to do it, because you need to do some other stuff first. (Like finish your spreadsheet!)
3. Deter it: Occasionally, you may need to take further action on deletion–a great example is spam email. Not only do you need to crack some spammer skulls first, but you want to prevent this item from occuring in the future. Deter it!
4. Delegate it: Occasionally, you may get something you can give someone else. (This happens a lot if you use these techniques at work, or for group projects in school.) So delegate it, and fuggedaboudit!
5. Date it: Sometimes, you need to wait a long time for things. So slap a date on it and stick it somewhere. (If you use some sort of calendar/reminder tool, add a note on the day: “do x”.
6. Drawer it: Sometimes it’ll just be something you need to refer to later, or you may need. That’s fine–stick it in a folder and tuck it away into a drawer.

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve done great–there’s just one more thing to do before you start actually doing stuff. And that is … :

Technique 3: The Fine Art of Frog-Swallowing

Add a task-size (and, if you wish, priority) to everything on your breeze-list. Then, sort it, so the biggest tasks come up on top.

Then start with the biggest, and work down.

Have you ever asked a kid to swallow some frogs? How do they do it? They start with the biggest, ugliest, wartiest frog, and work down. Because after that guy, you’re in the zone–the rest are all easy.

So do that. Work at the biggest, and work down until they’re all done.

Putting it All Together: Castles Built on Tripods …

So how do you combine these things together?

Each day, when you get up, do a breezy brain–make a copy of yesterday’s, and start adding to it. It’s like brainstorming–absolutely everything you can think of goes down on that list.

Once you’ve racked your brain sufficiently, start cataloguing and classifying everything. Make special note of the “I can do this in two minutes or less” tasks. Delete any non-recurring tasks from yesterday. Then, resort your list, and start working! Start with the two-minuters, then move on to the biggest task you have.

Note that, if you have recurring tasks, such as “read Qur’an for ten minutes”, put them in a new category–daily, weekly, monthly, whatever works for you. When they’re done, just recolour them as done, don’t delete them the next day.

And of course, ask Allah to grant you assistence. If Allah puts barakah in your time, you really feel it–like the scholar who, at a casual pace, read one-third of the Qur’an literally every day between Maghrib and ‘Ishaa.