The Two Most Important Personal Systems

There are different systems you can use for personal productivity, and what you use will directly impact how productive you are. It is imperative to understand how these different systems are connected in order for you to eliminate any friction between them so that you can reach your goals. Keep reading to learn how to leverage the two most critical personal systems by using a calendar and task manager together.

Your personal productivity system is there to help you efficiently accomplish what you need to, so that you’ll have the time to do the important things in your life. To do this, you’ll need to use you task manager and calendar together. Tasks are the things that you need to get done; the job of the task manager is to show you what

At the same time, you can go through your projects to see which tasks need attention, what can be deleted, and what can be added onto the calendar. You need to maintain your task manager since you will rely on it when planning the coming days and weeks on your calendar.

Basically, you’ll be using your task manager to plan what you need to get done, but only some of the items are entered into your calendar.

What should go on your calendar?

These are the 3 different event types should e included in your calendar:

Appointments/meetings – places you must be at a certain time on a certain day.

Time-specific tasks – Any task that has to be done at a specific time.

Time blocks – blocks of time you set aside to do important things that have no urgent tasks.

By creating blocks of time for yourself to work on your tasks (time-blocking), you can effectively get going on tasks that would have otherwise been pushed aside. Although you don’t need to plan everything in your week out, it is helpful to know where you need to be and what you need to be doing from a high-level perspective. “Time is money”, right? Take this approach into managing your calendar so you can get the important things done with the time you

This time-block is important because it probably won’t happen unless you section off some time specifically for it. If time isn’t allotted to focus on tasks that are most important, it easy to get pulled in to others’ requests. So, if it is important for you have focus time, make sure to black out some time for this.

This is also true for other things you would like to create time for. Say you like to jog regularly, it’s perfectly acceptable to block out some time every day or every second day specifically for jogging. This way, it becomes less likely that something else will come into that allotted space since you’re already committed to it. There’s a higher chance that you will stick to these plans if you create a space for that activity beforehand.

The “buffer” time-block is also great to add into your calendar. This time-block can be used for random things such as checking emails or cleaning up your computer. Since these small things usually come up within a work day, buffer time-blocks set at the beginning and end of your day are a great way to take care of