Cal Newport's Secret To Finishing Tasks On Time

00:00:00.000 | So a few more questions. I'm going to give quick answers, Jesse, because I know we're

00:00:02.640 | running a little late. So I'm going to be pithy. Sounds good. Next question is from Shibuzo,

00:00:09.840 | a health administrator in Nigeria. I find that I'm always excited to start things,

00:00:14.320 | but struggle with finishing them. I'm constantly having competing overdue tasks on my assant.

00:00:19.440 | Where do I begin to stop this habit? Ah, typo. I think that's a sauna.

00:00:26.960 | They got typoed in there. Okay. So he must be using a sauna for, for his tasks. All right.

00:00:33.040 | If you're not completing things on time, there's two issues. Either your plans are unrealistic.

00:00:38.640 | So you're giving yourself too much to do or your execution is too unfocused.

00:00:43.280 | So you have a reasonable load of things to do. You're just not doing it.

00:00:46.480 | Two different types of solutions, unrealistic plans. You want to do multi-scale planning.

00:00:51.600 | Here's what I'm working on this quarter of those things. Here's what I'm working on this week

00:00:56.400 | of those things. Here's what I'm working on today. So you can see the whole ball game. You're not

00:00:59.440 | just bouncing around randomly. You also should use doubling heuristics, whatever lists you think is

00:01:04.960 | reasonable for you to do today, cut it in half. However much time you think you should give

00:01:11.200 | yourself to complete a project, double it. So if you use those doubling heuristics,

00:01:16.800 | because people are bad at estimating how long things take place and you use multi-scale planning,

00:01:21.920 | you'll get a better grip over what are we working on? What's the reasonable load?

00:01:26.080 | If your issue is unfocused execution, you need the time block plan. Otherwise, you're just bouncing

00:01:31.200 | through the day emails here, they're hoping that your energy carries you through execution.

00:01:35.600 | That's not sustainable. That's not scalable. Give every minute of your workday a job,

00:01:40.800 | make a reasonable plan for the time you have available, force yourself to actually make

00:01:44.320 | decisions about given this time, what do I actually want to do? And when's the best time to do it?

00:01:48.400 | That's how things get done. Not just going randomly through a day with seven inboxes

00:01:52.560 | and WhatsApp open and just continually asking yourself, what do I feel like doing next?

00:01:57.360 | All right, let's roll.