Introduction

If you ever had problems with your tasks and sometimes you find yourself doing nothing, this guide might help you. I’ve had this kind of problems my whole life. I’m a student of Systems Engineering and I’ve learnt a few things about managing proyects and I realized that I can use that to manage tasks in my life. Do you wanna know how? Let’s continue reading! :D

Workflow

My workflow is a top down approach based on time: year -> month -> week -> day -> hour.

First step: Define your year goals

Start by defining the goals that you want to achieve for the following year. For instance, if you were a musician, you might want to play in a concert for many people; if you were a soccer player, you might want to be the best player in your team; if you were a programmer (like me), you might want to be better at a new programming language; if you were in a new relationship, you might want to enjoy a really good time with your partner. There are many examples! You should define what you really want to achive.

You might have noticed all the goals in the examples are very general and that is fine. You will specify all your goals by months, weeks, days and hours!

Suggestion: I always try to define like 10 goals by year and I try to be a little real. Defining my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (personal SWOT analysis) I know what I can and should do. My goals are diverse so that I can improve like a profesional, like a person, and every role I have in my life.

Second step: Map your goals into months

Ok, so now I need that you specify your goals. I’ll explain this using every example above.

• If you are a musician and you want to play in a concert to many people:
  • Write a album
  • Do a live performance
  • …
• If you are a soccer player and you want to be the best in your team:
  • Improve your statistics
  • Define your position in the field
  • …
• If you are a programmer and you want yo be better at a new programming language:
  • Start a new project in that programming language
  • Read the clean code book
  • …
• If you were in a relationship and you want to enjoy a really good time with your partner:
  • Plan a trip to a romantic place
  • …

Once you have more specific goals map them into the months of the year:

Month	Goal #1	Goal #2
January	Objective 1	Objective 2
Februay	Objective 1	Objective 8
March	Objective 1	Objective 4
…	…	…
December	Objective (n-1)	Objective n

Some goals will need more time than others so you could define to do one or more of them per month. Perhaps, you will define one goal for two or more months. It depends on you. The purpouse of this is that you can concentrate your body and mind in those specific goals.

The next step is to split that goal into tasks that you can complete by week.

Suggestion: I don’t set more than two objectives to do per month, because there are some tasks that appear in the week and I need to solve them too,

Third step: Specify your deliverables for this week

Now, define what you are going to do for every week!

January: Week #1

Everything related to your month goals.

Musician	Soccer Player	Programmer	Engaged
Write a new song	Train aim	Define your DB scheme	Save money every day ($1)
Define your instruments	Train assistance	Create the login	Search for a romantic place to visit
…	…	…	…

Suggestion: You might have noticed that these are really specific tasks and perhaps you want to define a quite big list with all your tasks to accomplish part of your goal in that week. However, remember that there are other kind of tasks, so try to define a coherent list. Saving time for the other tasks too.

Fourth step: What are you going to do today?

I think there are two types of tasks:

• Tasks related to your goals. I call them: Goal tasks.
• Tasks that unexpectedly appear in the week. I call them: Emergency tasks, because they show up in the middle of the week and I have to do them for that week.

In any case what you need is a TODO board:

TODO	DOING	DONE
All your tasks to do this day	All the tasks that you are doing	All the tasks that you have done

You can put goal or emergency tasks in the TODO board.

Fifth step: What task are you going to do in this hours?

Finally, you have to set the tasks in your TODO column into your agenda.

Hour	Task
7	Taks #1
8	Taks #1
9	Taks #2
…	…
21	Taks #n

In another blog post I’ll show you how I define which tasks should I do first, just wait a little bit for it.

Conclusion

This workflow has worked for me. It’s a good way to go from very general goals to specific activities.

If you have any comment, suggestion, or anything. Please, feel free to write it down. I’ll be really happy with all your feed back. Thanks a lot! ByE!