2.34 How to manage your tasks

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. My weekly podcast, The PhD Life Coach covers the most common issues experienced in universities, including procrastination, imposter syndrome, and having too much to do. I give inspiring and actionable advice and often have fun expert guests join me on the show. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Transcript

I've tried a ridiculous number of to do list management systems, everything from bullet journals, online Kanban boards, the getting things done system, the total workday control system, productivity ninja, whiteboards, little different colored cards, like physical cards, notion, to do list, those, all those different apps that you can get, uh, planners, diaries, Literally, I think pretty much anything you can think of, I have tried, and almost every single system has lasted a period of time, that's not necessarily very long. All of them took quite a long time to set up, by the way, just so you know that bit too. Perfect procrastination fodder, because I felt like I was being productive, setting up a new system. Lasted a little while, then stopped. Now, some of this may be my undiagnosed ADHD. But a good portion of this is not understanding the principles of what makes a to do list system work for you.

So today I'm going to share with you the three reasons that I think those different systems didn't work for me previously, and I'm going to share with you the system that currently has been working for me for about two years now so that you can see which bits of it you might like to steal for yourself.

Hello and welcome to episode 34 of season two of the PhD life coach. And we are talking to do list systems. Anyone who claims that one particular system will solve your problems- I wouldn't trust them. I am going to share with you a specific version that works for me, but I'm not sharing it because I think you should all use my system. My system has some really specific nuances that make it work really well for me, but that might make you guys think I'm a little bit strange.

And that's fine, because the ultimate goal we're going for here is a to do list system that works for you and how you work, not just when you're at your best, but also at your more kind of typical normal person level of work and organization.

Now I said there were three reasons these systems hadn't worked for me in the past. The first is that I had too many things. So I was expecting to find a system that would enable me to fit in all the things I wanted to do when actually all the things I wanted to do was an unrealistic amount of stuff. And so one of the reasons that these systems failed was entirely on me. I wasn't reducing the amount of things that I was trying to fit in, I wasn't making those important decisions and prioritizations before I put them in the system. And then I was somehow blaming the system that it didn't all fit in my life and it didn't all get done. And I blamed myself for not having implemented the system properly. If that sounds familiar to you, don't worry, you're completely normal. Go back and have a look at some of my episodes on things like what to do when you've got too much to do, for example, and how to make decisions and prioritize, because I think those will really help you to narrow down some of the things you're trying to do. There is no system that is going to enable you to do an unrealistic amount of work. 

The thing I realized is that these systems failed. And for those of you who can't see me cause you're listening on podcasts, not on YouTube, I'm doing little Speechmark thingies failed around that is because I had really unrealistic expectations of what level of adherence I should have to the system. So I would get all set up in a new system, put all my tasks into a new app and bear in mind, I usually had hundreds of tasks. This was always quite a thing. I'd get all set up. I'd use it for a while. I would stop using it perfectly either using it somewhat or stopping using it altogether and then I would declare it a fail. I would immediately say this system doesn't work for me. I need to find a different system and then spend time researching that new system. And the problem is what I was doing then was I was writing it off before I'd even given it a chance. Whenever you use a new to do list system, you need to think about that beginning phase, that first couple of months as being a practice phase. You're trying this out. You are not trying it out to assess whether it works for you or not. You are practicing using it. And if you go about it from the perspective of practicing using it, then when you notice that that you haven't been using it, you nudge yourself back to starting using it again, rather than declaring it just some big fail and looking for a new system. So remember you are practicing, you're figuring out what works for you. You are optimizing it for your own tendencies, your own work style, and your own preferences. And if you can see it more like that, as a work in progress, rather than a kind of yes no test, is this system going to work, then it really changes the way you engage with the new system. 

The third thing, is the thing that I'm going to spend the bulk of this episode talking about, which is, I had no system for choosing which approach I was gonna take. I would just see a new way of doing it. I'd see a little YouTube about Notion Worksheets, or my friend would show me her beautiful bullet journals, and that would inspire me to be like her or somebody else would say, I do it like this, and I'd try that out. I had no system for deciding whether it's an appropriate system for me or not. So when we're thinking about something that's tailored for ourselves, it's really useful to figure out what are the principles that will make this a good system for me. Now, what I'm going to do today is talk you through some of the principles that I now look for in a system, and the principles that have led me to the system that I'm using at the moment, and I stand by these principles. I think that a good chunk of these principles will be useful for you as well. You will listen to them and go, Oh yeah, I need a system that does that. Yeah, I need a system that does that. There's other bits that are about my personal preferences that won't make sense for you. So as you're listening, I want you to evaluate each of the principles for yourself, see whether you want to adopt it as a principle that's relevant for you. And if you don't, what would you swap it for? What additional principles would you add to the ones that I use that would enable you to decide that a system could work for you.

So at the moment, I have eight principles, who knows if we'll make up more as we go along. But the first principle is it needs to be a system that I can implement imperfectly and still return to a state of order. I know I am never ever going to find a system that I stick to absolutely perfectly. I am not that person. You might be. Maybe you are somebody who loves being systematic and methodical and all of those things. And you know that when you've got a system you like, you will stick to it absolutely beautifully. I'm not that person. I get caught up in things, especially when I've got time urgent stuff happening, and I forget to use my systems. Now, I'm working on that myself. I'm working on that through my own coaching and things, but I have to be realistic about who I am, and plan for the real version of me rather than the version of me that I wish I was. And what that means is a key principle for me is that I have to be able to sort of return to it having not used it for a few days and be able to sort of get it sorted out relatively quickly and get back on track. Now I'm getting way better at allowing that gap to be less time. I used to let these things slide for ages and ages and then it would take quite a long time to get back. But I need a system where I can disengage with it for a while and still return to it and sort it out. For a while that led me to things like, non dated planners so that you could miss weeks and not miss pages. That worked quite well for me, but there was other things that that was lacking that I'll talk about in a second. But something that I could use inconsistently was really important. Kind of part of that is having a system for where I capture things that I need to do when I'm not using the system perfectly. So in an ideal world, you would have a single place that you capture your tasks and then you do them from there. That would be dead straightforward. Wouldn't that be lovely? That's not how my life works. I have bits of paper from my mom telling me to book my boiler service. Which I still haven't done yet. So I have those on bits of paper on my desk. I have bits that I've jotted down in my phone. I have emails that I've sent to myself, emails that other people have sent to me.

I have bits and pieces, you know, and I'm always trying to narrow down the sources of things. I mentioned at the beginning that I read a book called How To Be A Productivity Ninja. I actually really liked that system. Again, I had to modify things for myself. There were bits of it that are overly complex for me, but one of their key principles is being able to collect all the places. They have a cord model, C O R D, and the C is collect. And that's all about knowing where your tasks are coming from. And so I needed a system where the fact that I had tasks in a few different places was not insurmountable and that could be relatively easily reconciled back into my to do list system.

The second thing is that I need to be able to throw things over the horizon. Now, this is a phrase that I originally came across with the Total Workday Control system that I was introduced to, like, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago, I guess. It's developed by Michael Linenberger. I had a proper old school book on it, which taught you all these little outlook tricks as to how you could manage your task systems. But this principle of throwing tasks over the horizon means capturing tasks that you do need to do, but that you don't need to do now, and having them there in a way that you can't see them until you need to action them. Often we end up with these huge long lists. This is a list of things that are really overwhelming. Whilst I've got a lot better at managing my thoughts, it's not the list that makes me overwhelmed, it's the thoughts I have about it. I also know that it's a lot easier to have those overwhelming thoughts when you've got a huge list in front of you and where half of it you don't even need to do yet, but you've just got to keep track of it.

And so, with throwing things over the horizon, you have a system whereby you will find it when you need to do it, but that you can't see it every day when it's not what you need to be doing. This rules out an enormous number of systems. Most systems aren't set out to cope with that, especially most paper based ones, which I always have a natural affinity with, yet it's incredibly important for me. Again, part of that is that I also need a system that will show me if there's something that I've been kind of kicking down the road every time, where it's never quite come to the top of my to do list. I need a system that kind of flags that to me. So that I can then make a decision, right, we do this thing now so it's gone, or let's just decide we're not doing it.

Because if we keep pushing it back, we might as well just decide we're not doing it. 

The third thing is that I need to be able to sort my tasks by role. Now, this is something, if you haven't already listened to my podcast about role based time blocking, go back, listen to that. It's one of my favorites. I refer back to it a lot. And the idea there is that that you plan your week by giving yourself chunks of time to be in different roles.

So for me, those are now business related roles. So sometimes I'm in coach mode where I'm working with clients. Sometimes I'm in content creation mode when I'm doing things like this or writing my book or whatever it is. Other times I'm in finance mode, operations mode, CPD mode, for example, all different roles. If you're a PhD student, it might be writer, data analyzer, you know, laboratory demonstrator, whatever it is. If you're an academic, you will know you already have a ton of different roles. You're a PhD supervisor, you're a personal tutor, you're a lecturer, you're a researcher, you're a principal investigator manager person. And because I use that time system, so this morning I'm in content creation role before I switch to my coaching session at 10. And therefore I want to only be able to see my content creation tasks. I don't want to be looking at my to do list when I'm meant to be doing content creation work and going, oh, I do need to send those invoices. Those invoices I want to see when I'm in operations mode later. So I need to be able to sort by the role that that job is kind of part of. Again, this, in theory at least, rules out most paper based systems, although I'm going to tell you my workaround for that in a second. It also rules out quite a lot of other systems that don't have that sort of functionality.

My fourth thing, and to be honest, this doesn't rule out any system, but this is about how we use it, is I need every step to be very specific and very actionable. So I need to be able to see exactly what I need to do. So I had on my list, which I'm just pulling up in front of me, I had on my list, write the next section of my book with what I've written and what I've done this morning is turn that into much more actionable steps. Add this section, look up that bit, write that section, much more specific what I need to do step by step. And any system that I use needs to have that ability to have multiple steps. Now what I tend to do, this isn't about the system, this is just the way I use systems, what I tend to do is things that are further away I put in in bigger categories, so write book or whatever, write workshop and then once it gets to the stage where I need to be thinking about it. So I've thrown it over the horizon saying plan workshop for June, then when it comes into my, okay, I actually need to be thinking about this now I'll break it down into much more specific steps as to what I need to do next, because there's nothing like looking at an item on a list and being like, yeah, I don't really know where to start with that and therefore going on to something different. As I say, you can do this with pretty much any task list. It's just that most of us don't. Most of us leave it quite generic to remind ourselves what we should be doing and forget to give ourselves that really specific instruction. The system I use at the moment works really well for that though.

My fifth thing, and I talked about this in one of my very early podcasts, is I need to be able to see what I've done as well as what I've got to do. And this is mostly from a motivational perspective. Sometimes it's useful for my kind of audit thing of looking at what I've spent my time doing and all that kind of stuff.

Although I don't do time tracking in any systematic way, I love being able to see what I've done. And I talk about that in podcast seven or eight, something like that, about how motivating it can be to focus on what you've done in a day rather than what you haven't. And what that means is anything that involves deleting things or crossing them off doesn't really work for that unless they go somewhere.

It was one of the reasons that a Kanban board was quite tempting for me because then you had things that were to do that you were doing and things that were done, and you kind of moved the ,card into the doing when you were focusing on it, and then you moved it on after that. I found that my systems were too complex for that to work for me, you might be able to get it to work for you. But it did have that thing where you could see the tasks that have gone into done. Many of the apps I tried using, it just deleted it when you'd done it, and that just didn't work for me at all. Remember, all the way through, make sure that you are assessing these principles against what you think. You may well, I really hope that some of them you're like, oh, that's just not important to me, I don't care. Or, god no, that'd be awful, I definitely don't want a system that does that. Or, actually, yeah, that's a good one that I hadn't thought of. I need that in my system. So make sure you're evaluating this for yourself all the way through.

Principle six is not a crucial one that, but it's nice. Would rather it was free. I've got lots of things I like to spend my money on, and to do list management isn't really one of them. If I found a perfect system that was absolutely amazing and made my life easier, would I invest in it? Yeah. Absolutely. Have I spent inordinate amounts of money on pretty planners in my time? Yes, yes, I have. Do I want to keep doing that? No, I don't. So for me, being free, easily accessible was really important. It did mean that there were other principles that I would have loved to have in here that I had to let go. So one principle that I have let go, to put it out there for you guys, and you might not be willing to sacrifice this one, is that my system is a computer based system and I can only add tasks to it when I'm in my computer. What that means is if I'm on my phone or I'm somewhere else, then I email myself and then at some point I've got to reconcile it later. That's not ideal. I would love it if there was a way for me to add things directly into my to do list in the exact format that I want them to go in from my phone. There isn't in the way I do it at the moment. And some of these fancy apps will tell you that they do that. For me, there were too many other sacrifices.

So free is a principle that I would have been willing to sacrifice if the other things were better. Accessible from every device was something that I did sacrifice in this.

Number seven is I need it to not be distracting. So bullet journaling, there were big elements of it that I really liked. Some of the abilities to sort and things like that didn't work for me. But one of the other things was I got way too distracted googling pictures of beautiful bullet journals and buying washi tape and deciding to watercolour a page before I turned it into a spread or whatever it was. And I got too judgy when my bullet journal looked scruffy instead of beautiful. Now again, as usual, I could have managed my mind about that, I could have coached myself on it, but , you know what? There's a billion things for me to coach myself on, and sometimes you've just got to make it easier for yourself.

So I wanted a system that would look organized and functional, that I didn't even think about wanting to make pretty, and that would just work with me keeping me as focused on the bits that are actually important as possible.

And then the final thing, and this is one of the ones that's definitely probably a bit nuanced for me, but see what you think, is that I love the facility of it being digital. I love the way that that means that you can sort and hide and all those things that you can't really do on paper. But. I also engage with the to do list system if it's on paper, much better. So I decided I needed a system that did both. It means it's probably not the most efficient thing in the world, But it is highly effective. And those of you who listened to Jo Van Every's podcast a couple of weeks ago will have heard her talk about that difference between efficiency and effectiveness. The most important thing is finding something that works for you. Does it mean that I'm there on my printer on a Monday morning? Yes, it does. Does that make me like I'm living in the 90s? I don't care. The 90s were great. It works for me. It's inefficient in places, but it's a lot less inefficient than having a system that doesn't enable me to do the things that I want to do.

So those are my principles. I wonder what your principles are. Have I missed any that you think are super important that I should be considering? Hopefully none that will make me want to change my system, but do let me know. You guys can always get in contact with me. If you're not already on my newsletter, please, please, please go to my website and sign up. So it's the phdlifecoach. com and you'll see the work with me. Join free online community. You can sign up for my newsletter. You'll get an email every week, which talks about this podcast, gives you some take home messages, gives you some activities and reflective questions and all that sort of stuff.

So it makes it much more likely you'll take things that you're hearing in this podcast and actually create actionable change in your life rather than just listening to me and then forgetting. So make sure you sign up for that.

So let me tell you about my actual system. And the good news is that I turned it into something that you can have too, if you would like. If you sign up to my newsletter, you will get sent a file that will give you my task management system. And that's because my task management system is an Excel file. I know, deeply unsexy. Like I say, we're in the nineties. It's happy days. But it works, it works really well. So the main sheet that I use, imagine just an Excel sheet, the main sheet that I use is called tasks. And this is where everything goes. I have a column that has week commencing. So what week am I going to start doing this thing? I just put the Monday date in. I don't get more specific than that. Then I have a column that is, what is the specific task? I have a category. column. So that's my roles. So what role does it fall under? I have a notes column where I can jot down anything that I need to remember, anything that's important. I also use that if there's a specific day I have to do it. And then I have status, which I was just done or not done. Essentially, you could put something more sophisticated in there, but that's all I do. So that's how it goes. 

Everything I need to do that I'm aware of goes in there. So things that I need to do now, things that I need to go do in the future, everything goes in there. Everything is categorized by my role. I also put personal stuff in here too. Not all the things that I do with my partner, but just like little bits of, you know, book dentist, do guide leader training or whatever it is. Okay. And then what I've done is I've put filters in that top row. So what I can do is I can filter by week commencing, so I can only see the tasks that I need to do this week, and I can then filter by role to see what I need to do in each role. So what my system is, is that as things come up, I put them into that task. Those things might be coming in on my emails, they might just be from my ideas. So I put those in as tasks, and I put in an approximate date that I'm going to do it. If I'm not sure, or if it's a general idea for the future, I just put it in and put the week commencing as future. Okay. And then every now and again, I can filter by future, see all the future things and decide whether any of them are actually coming into, like, play, whether they're actually things I want to implement or not. If not, I can either leave them there, if I might do them at some point, or I delete them at that. 

So, I put it on this week, see what comes up. Is that a manageable amount of work when I look at this week? Fiddle with it if not, chuck some stuff to next week, put other stuff in the future if it's things that aren't urgent and that I don't want to do right now. And then what I can do is I can toggle by role. Now, all you normal people who might be able to work from digital systems, you could just use it like that. So that when you Go into operations mode. You just toggle to operations and you start working through those systems. I like paper and I like writing things down and I have a metal ruler, which I'm showing the people on, on YouTube. , I have a metal ruler that I like underlining things with and crossing things off. I don't know why I just like the tactileness of it. So I thought, you know what? I'm going to enable this to happen. So what I do on a Monday morning, I reconcile all of this. I chuck in anything that I haven't thought of. In theory, I do that on a Friday night. I rarely do it on a Friday night. Monday morning, sort it all out, get it down to what tasks I'm doing today. And then I just go through, I go to filter for coach tasks, print it out. Filter for operations tasks, print it out. Filter for program. So I'm running my Be Your Own Best Boss program at the moment for PhD students and postdocs. Filter for program. Print it out. And then I have a clipboard because again, clipboards make me feel really organized. So this is the bit you might not want to copy this part of it. This is me and my own strange brain. Clipboards make me feel organized. So those of you on YouTube can see I have a clipboard with about six or seven bits of paper on it, each of which is a different role and each of which only has three, four items on it, which suddenly makes it feel like, you know what? I can win this. I can do this. So I'm looking at my top sheet here, because it's what I've been working on at the moment is program. And I can see that one, two, three, four, five, six of the things are crossed off. There's two things left. One of which I've broken down into more specific tasks to make them smaller and more cross off able. 

If there's things I think of during the week that I need to do, I just jot them in the right category. And then if at the end of the week I've done them, then I add them into my done list, which I'll tell you about in a second. And if I haven't done them, then they go into the to do list.

So it just means that the bits of stuff that I drop down onto bits of paper actually are vaguely organized. So that whole collect thing is a bit simplified by the fact that I try and add it onto these sheets. I can then see what I've crossed off, see what I haven't. I'm also a humongous fan, I should start having one of those like Amazon affiliate things, shouldn't I, of these tiny, they're tiny little highlighter strips. So for those of you who can't see, they're like post it notes, they're semi translucent, except they're How big's that? Five centimetres long, so probably something like that, and about half a centimetre wide, so they're super tiny, and you can use them to highlight things. So in the morning, I go through and I'll be like, right, I've got an hour for operations this afternoon, which are the one or two operations tasks I want to do, and I can highlight them with my little thingies. And because it's not a real highlighter, I can take it off after I've done it, which is amazing, because obviously, normal highlighters are there. It's highlighted whether you finished it or not. So I combine it up with that. And it works really, really well. 

And then in theory what I do on a Friday, although in reality it's usually on a Monday morning when I'm getting myself together, is that at the end of the week, I go through and just cut out all the rows where it's things that I've done, and I paste them into the Done tab, which is exactly the same format, it's just the things that I've done. Okay, so I get rid of all of those and then I re reconcile ready for the next week. 

The other thing that I've started doing is I have a tab called every week and a tab called every month where I have tasks that I want to do regularly. So they're in red and on a Monday I go and grab my every week tasks and pop them in the bottom of the to do list ready for me to deal with them like any other task and in the first week of any month I grab the first, the week of the tasks and put them in. And that just means that they sort of automatically get pasted in at the time that's appropriate to do them. And that's my system. And if you want that Excel file, you can join my newsletter mailing list and we will get it sent to you automatically through that. And you can let me know what you think. Like I say, This system may not work for you, especially the printing out, putting on a clipboard. I think that's a little nuanced for me, but hopefully it's an example of how you can personalize these things, how you can take things about yourself that are already true and are always going to be true and just make them so that you work with them rather than telling yourself you need to be different.

What are your little nuances? What would make it a system that works for you? Mine's quite linear. I like jotting. If I'm trying to be creative, I use mind maps and things like that. But when I'm getting things done, I want it to be very linear, very structured. You may not like that. You might want to do a to do list system that's more organic and more kind of branching off in different directions and where you can see the connections between things.

I get overwhelmed when I look at things like that because I can see all the connections and I want to do all of it. You might find that inspiring and interesting and engaging in a way that a linear one just doesn't fit your brain. That's fine. But figure out what your principles are and try and adapt a system so that those principles are true for you. And then we stick to it, even when we implement it imperfectly. I don't think I have ever had a week where I have done this system exactly as I intended it all the way through. Never. Literally. I don't think I ever have. But what I do know is that it's quick to get back on track. What I do know is the days where I do it more like I intend, work better. I do know that it plays to the best of me, not to the best of some imaginary person that's perfect. And you know what? It's good enough and it works. And I can't see myself changing it for a really long time. 

Final point. If you are listening to this on a Monday morning as it comes out, now is not the time to go and find a new system. Do not spend the first three hours on a Monday copying and pasting your tasks into my Excel file. Please. Don't do it. Planning can be procrastination if you do it at times which is not when you intend. I am sure you've got one big task that you've been putting off or that you're not looking forward to doing. Do that task. Do that now. And then think about this task management in an hour where you're a bit frazzled or where you're not going to do something more useful, maybe later on in the day, if that's a less constructive time for you. Please do not make this a reason to procrastinate a task that you have already been avoiding. Go do that first and then, final tip. When you do come to do your to do list, write that thing on it and then cross it off straight away. Because I'm also a big fan of making sure that if you do something that wasn't on your list, write it on your list, cross it off, and then at least it's in your done list as well.

I really hope that was useful for you. I was originally developing this for students on my program, where we're going to do this in loads more detail, figuring out exactly what their principles are and supporting them to both implement and then try out and kind of modify systems for themselves. But I thought that this sort of short overview would be really useful for you guys too. If you're wondering what this program is, it's a three month program called Be Your Own Best Boss. It's running at the moment, so I'm not taking registrations. I've got a wonderful cohort in it at the minute, but I am going to be running it again in September through December. In the program I can just give you a lot more hands on support for how to actually implement these things in your life. So if it's something that you want to make sure that you hear about as soon as it's available, again, make sure you're on my newsletter email list and you'll get all the information. Thank you all so much for listening and see you next week.

Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.

com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time.