How do I make sure the time it will take to do all my Daily Targets won't exceed the amount of time that I have to work on them?
Some mornings are tough so I don't get to Start my Day until later in the day. I won't have time to do everything I need to so... what's a good way to track the amount of time my tasks will take so I can prioritize intelligently at that point? (And even what Start My Day happens first thing in the morning, is there a good way to determine how long a task will take, and how to prioritize well?)
Christen Jones
shared this idea
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Mark Joyner
commented
Hey Christen, this was answered today but no recording! So, here's a summary of my answer:
- err on the side of underestimating your productivity ... if you run out of targets, do Start My Day again. I do this often and it works really well. There are days when I've done it 3 or 4 times in a single day. It feels good to hit all your targets and then you'll feel like an overachiever when you do SMD again.
- we are planning to release some time-blocking features in the near future ... stay tuned
- time-blocking predictions are never going to be wholly accurate - especially with creative work ... unless it's a repetitive mechanical task
If you have any follow ups, don't hesitate to ask.
Mark
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Mark Jones
commented
I am sure there are other, and even better, ways of doing this but I thought I'd share my way of dealing with this: When I add a target to the Morning Brain Dump I also add in brackets at the end the time I estimate it will take me to do (e.g. 30m, 1h etc.). Then when I get to "Do it, Deliberate, Dump it" I add up the total time of each task and make sure it fits into the allotted time I have to work for the day. If not, I will send some targets to the Mental Lockbox (and be sure to add a date there to put them into the Dreamcatcher tomorrow or another day).
I would be nice to have a feature like this built into the Simpleology Webcockpit. There is a feature request for that exact thing you could vote on here: