All right, let's do a cool case study here. Let's do one more question and then I have a cool case study I wanna read. - Sounds good. This question is from Adam Portillo from New York. Can you describe your decision rule for entering a task either onto a travel board versus directly into a weekly plan?

I'm finding it tempting easier to put time sensitive items and links directly into my weekly plan, but then it gets a little cluttered. - Well, Adam, I'll tell you my best practice on this issue, which is not something I always follow, but I'm always happier when I do. And that best practice is the following.

So you have, you know, something pops up, a task, an obligation, you jot it down and your whatever you use for capture in the moment. So for me, it'll probably be my time block planner. On the daily pages, there's a section for capturing these things. And then you get to the end of the day, you need to process it.

My best practice is there's two places where that new task can go. Onto an appropriate task board or list or onto your calendar. All right, so task board or list onto your calendar. What would qualify it for going onto your calendar if it's connected to a specific day in which you've decided it needs to be executed?

So the calendar is for time specific tasks. So let's say I need to do a book blurb and it's due on Thursday, I might put an all day event on that calendar day, you know, book blurb is due for whatever. Oftentimes I'll actually find the specific time for one of these time sensitive activities and put it on my calendar like an appointment.

Give you a real world example, Friday of this week, department merit reviews are due. It's a administrative task where you have to go through a spreadsheet and sort of fill in all the academic activities you did during the year and it helps generate your raise for the year. I have the specific time when I'm gonna do that on my calendar for Friday.

So if a task is associated with a particular day, it can go on your calendar, it doesn't have to be on your task list because your calendar is obviously a productivity tool that you trust when you get to each day, you see what your appointments are and you do those things.

So I trust my calendar as a productivity tool. If it's not tied to a specific day, it goes to a task list. In my case, those lists are kept on Trello boards. Now I look at my Trello boards each morning when I build my daily time block plan. So if you're actually following the system, if I actually am in the groove of looking at my task board every day when I do my weekly plan, I can trust that stuff that's important will get done because when I look at the relevant task board, I'll see those tasks and I'm not gonna be dumber tomorrow than I am today.

So if I know today this thing is important, when I see it tomorrow, I will remember, oh, this is important and see if I can fit it into my time block plan for the day. So that is my best practice. I sometimes don't follow it when I feel like my schedule is disrupted enough that I don't trust myself to look at my task list every day and that's when I begin adding an extra reminder to my weekly plan, emailing myself an email where it's a reminder in the subject line.

But that is all a, that's all an artifact of lack of trust. I don't trust that I'm gonna see this in my list and make sure it gets done. That makes me nervous, so I'm gonna add these extra reminders. But when I am on track, executing my system properly, that's how I like to do it.

If it needs to be done a particular day, put it on that day, otherwise put it on the list. Even if I know it needs to get done this week, I don't really need to write that down somewhere because when I see that task in my list every single morning, I will remember this is something that needs to get done this week.

Like I'm not gonna forget tomorrow what I know today. So that's my best practice, calendar or task list, check the task list every day. That moves smoothly. And that's how I know that I'm out of sorts by the way, is when I start emailing myself reminders, that's when I step back and say, I'm off my system.

I need to get back to my system. And I always feel better when I do. - Do you do that process in like the same spot every day or is it vary? - I do now. So in my study at home, which we'll have to in an upcoming weekly update video, Jason's gonna bring the camera over to my study at home.

I go to my study at home each morning and I have a desk, my custom built desk that's made to fit the kind of weird space of the study. And it has a one drawer. I had it built in this one drawer and I open up that drawer and here's my time block planner.

I take that out, I put it on the desk, I turn on my laptop and it's the first thing I do is I'll make that daily plan for the day. And I try to do this if I can before I walk my kids to the bus stop. If not, immediately after I get back from the bus stop, I'll do this by load up my computer.

And so my weekly plan will be, and I was looking to see if I don't have my backpack in here my weekly plan will be printed and in my time block planner. So I open this thing, I read the weekly plan, I open my computer, I read my calendar, I read my task list in Trello and sketch out that time block plan for the day.

So when I'm on the ball, that's what I do. And so having the set location that I come to every morning at the same time to do this, that really has helped keep me in it. So during the period when we were renovating that study and I didn't have a set location, I might work outside, I might work at the kitchen table, I might work upstairs, I fell off the system more.

And so it's a good question. Having a great location where this is where I do, that's how I start my day has really made a big difference to me. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)