One of the most frequent daily problems: the lack of time, deadlines, too much work...

How to deal with that precious and volatile substance called TIME? How to deal with many projects at a time?

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Time is limited. We have family, hobbies, friends, work duties and sometimes we want to develop exciting projects (research, to write a novel, to learn other languages...). The problem, if we do not have a plan, a perspective, is that anxiety makes us prone to procrastination

Procrastination is the avoidance of doing a task that needs to be accomplished by a certain deadline. Here we'll apply this concept also for your own aims. When we face difficult tasks, procrastination gives us some fresh air, but we will loss time and things will be worse later

The whole issue of time availabitily is influenced by 4 things:
1. Your goals
2. Your behavioral response to tasks (your trend to procrastination)
3. Your "mandatory" work load (the tasks you are paid for)
4. The step of your career you are in, see https://twitter.com/DeMadaria/status/1211596747128102912?s=20

The trick to deal with many projects/tasks at a time is to increase your efficiency. The outcome of 1 hour of work can be very very very different
Perspective! if you have a clear perspective of your aims and available time you can plan your work and increase your efficiency

You probably know the Urgent-Important Matrix (or Eisenhower matrix). Tasks can be important or not important, and urgent (upcoming deadline) or less/no urgent (there´s plenty of time to deadline or no deadline at all). Table from https://goalmuse.com/life-planning/starter-life-planning/the-action-plan/the-urgent-important-matrix/

This table is inspired on a quote by General Eisenhower. It recommends you to do urgent and important tasks, plan important not urgent tasks, delegate urgent not important and eliminate not important not urgent tasks
Table from https://goalmuse.com/life-planning/starter-life-planning/the-action-plan/the-urgent-important-matrix/

It is OK to understand some angles of this problem but not enough. I have been involved on research/educational projects for 16 years, and this twitter thread is just my experience to have enhanced efficacy through planning. Enough introductions, let´s get to the point my friends

You must have a roadmap of your aims and tasks by month. You can use a word document or certain apps (I use @NotionHQ, Trello may be also useful). Write in every month 2 categories of tasks:

Categories of tasks/month:
DEADLINES: tasks that have a deadline in that month, ie a scientific meeting abstract deadline, a review for a journal
STRATEGY: tasks needed to accomplish your aims (important, not urgent) but they have no deadline, to design a study, to write a paper

Be careful!! If you have many deadlines, don't be very ambitious for strategic tasks. You can cheat anybody but Chronos, the God of TIME!!!

Do that for every month. You don't have to make all the strategic tasks for the whole year (they are dynamic and may change), but keep your deadlines ALWAYS controlled.
This is an example of the tasks for one month

OK! you have now several months with deadlines and strategic tasks. Now we have to face the day-by-day plan, but before let´s talk about time slots

Time slots are the available daily blocks time you can use to make the different tasks. Different days have different time availability.

Programming your day to do tasks is VERY important. This is called "time-blocking". It increases your efficiency a lot because you have a clear perspective, you know that if you do not make the daily specific tasks, your plan will not work and you´ll face delays and anxiety

Time blocking is an effective vaccine against procrastination

1st golden rule to advance in your career is to have a fixed daily time to work on your projects. For example, I am an early bird so I work from 5:20 to 7 am. You may prefer to have your fixed time slot after siesta or late at night...the moment it works best for u

The aim of planning your tasks day by day is 1) to work comfortably, relaxed, no anxiety, 2) to arrive with enough time to deadlines, 3) To do the strategic tasks, to avoid the interference of deadlines with important/not-urgent tasks

Again, you cannot cheat Chronos God of Time, so DO NOT PLAN TOO MANY TASKS FOR A TIME SLOT, be frank, learn the time it takes to do specific tasks (for example in my case to review a paper 2 time slots, to make a presentation 5 to 8, to write a paper 10...)

2nd golden rule: it is better to use most of your time slot for a single task than to divide it into different non-related tasks, you´ll be losing focus

I usually plan at least 1 month. TO PLAN CONSUMES TIME! I use a whole time slot (1 hour and a half) to plan my next 4 weeks. Important tasks have to be planned with time and always having the complete perspective of other tasks. Plan deadlines and strategic tasks day by day.

3rd golden rule: it is better to assign > time than needed to specific tasks than to try to cheat Chronos, God of Time programming too many tasks, you will not perform the tasks and the whole plan will have to be changed (you have to react to reality and adapt your plan to you)

This is an example of daily planning #gigang

By the way, you have to plan the time you spend checking your email! Emails will also bring more tasks that have to be planned.

My friends, remember that not everything is work and your career; family, friends and hobbies are part of you, don't be a solitary Nobel prize winner!

Do you have other advices to be efficient and to avoid suffering with deadlines and missing strategic tasks? Share your experience!

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It took me 3 hours to do this (2 time slots )