A weekly collection of posts and articles about productivity, time management, tools and technology.

• Setting the Scene for a Productive Day : The 99 Percent
• A Master Plan for Taking Back Control of Your Life : The 99 Percent
• Start Planning For 2012: Your Goals
• The Strange Art of Achieving More by Doing Less — Chris Garrett on New Media
• Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything – Tony Schwartz – Harvard Business Review

If you have any interesting articles please share them in the comments section.

• Checking Your Personal Performance – Sources of Insight
• How to Better Control Your Time by Designing Your Ideal Week | Michael Hyatt
• Organize Your Life! – Magazine – The Atlantic
• The Future of Work is Now – YouTube
• There Are Stupid Questions

If you have any interesting articles please share them in the comments section.

Free form

Some people don’t like plans, they prefer to go with their gut feeling and focus on whatever seems right in the moment. If you’re one of those below should be helpful.

Clear you mind – each morning take a piece of paper  and write down the ideas, thoughts which are floating in your head. 

See what stands out for your and select three items and focus your efforts on those.

Structured approach

If you follow any productivity system and you’re used to keeping various of lists, make reviewing those your priority for each day.
Sounds obvious and simple but it’s not always easy. There were many time when before I managed to open my task list I got sucked into the email and my day was gone. To prevent that and get few things done start your day with REVIEW and PLAN:

• Review your project list and pick three projects you want to move forward.
• Review your action list and select three items you want to finish first.
• Focus on the three actions first, one at a time.
• Once you’re done with those look at the projects and pick one, make as much progress as you want and them move to the next one.

Perhaps any of this won’t be easy or even possible to achieve each day but once you make a habit it will become more natural.

Do you have any tips for kick starting your day on a good note? Please share them in the comments.

1. Guest Post – Managing Content w/ a Dashboard Pt. 1
2. The Two Types of Procrastination
3. If It Won’t Fit On A Post-It, It Won’t Fit In Your Day
4. What Are Your High Value Activities?
5. How to Harness the Power of Momentum

If you have any interesting articles please share them in the comments section.

Below is the list of topics that I’ve covered.

1. GTD Project Series: Natural planning model
2. GTD Project series – project tools
3. GTD Projects series – software list
4. GTD Project Series – executing a project

Just to summarize in couple sentences the main concepts.

Firstly everything should be a project,  at least every outcome that takes more that two steps. Why is that? Mainly because it forces you to keep track of all your open projects and secondly in your busy life it’s easy to drop a ball when you juggle a lot of them.

When ever you finish something you can check your project list and see what’s out there. If you’ve been tracking your projects even on a simple list, it’s almost guaranteed that you will be better at completing things and following through.

We all want clarity and whether we realize that or not, we like the routines and to follow a path. By referring to the planning model and establishing the purpose, vision and actions we are getting a clear vision of what we want to achieve and how to go about it. No need to re-think what’s next, just use the plans.

You will hear that tools are not they factor to increasing productivity and that’s true. No tool will enforce the right behaviours as you rather abandon the tool then change your habit. Yet finding a good set off applications can reduce the friction of tracking projects and actions. So as long as you don’t obsess with finding the perfect tool and master what you have spending some time searching good software will payoff.

I hope you’ve found this series useful. Please share your best practices or problems you’re facing when working on projects.

1. The lure of distraction…
2. 7 Must Read Success Lessons from Stephen Covey
3. Tips and Tricks for Smart Project Planning
4. Why the 80/20 Rule Could Make You Less Productive
5. 10 Ways to Stop Multitasking & Be More Effective

If you have any interesting articles please share them in the comments section.

A collection of posts and articles about productivity, time management, tools and technology.

1. How to Be Successful When You Can’t Plan Ahead
2. You are in control when you can see it all
3. 10 Tips for Teachers Using Evernote – Education Series
4. The Complete Dropbox for Educators
5. Why it’s ok to be obvious

If you have any interesting articles please share them in the comments section.

1. Jason Fried: Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work

2. Working On What Counts

3. New Productivity tool – Wunderlist

4. Reach Out and Touch Someone: How the Power of Personal Connection Creates Blogging Success

5. Springpad Helps You Get Things Done

6. The Autofocus Productivity Method: Stop Maintaining To-Do Lists and Start Getting Stuff Done

If you have any interesting articles please share them in the comments section.

1. Why Doing Things Half Right Gives You the Best Results

2. 100 Day Plans

3. The Best Writing Apps for Android

4. Barriers to Remote Work: It’s The Mindset, Not the Tools

5. Hunters and Farmers

If you have any interesting articles please share them in the comments section.

What’s a budget?

Budgets are widely popular in the financial world. In very simple terms it’s a list of all the income/revenue streams coming in and all the planned expenses in a period. Each year every country would announce it’s budget plans. This is pretty significant event for the financial markets. Based on the content of the budget proposals economists and analysts try to forecast the future growth and economic conditions of a country.

On smaller scale families and individuals are advised to keep a budget to monitor their spending and income to build future wealth and financial stability. 

In general terms budget is a framework, a plan which details areas of spending and the available resources. The net difference between both will indicate if you have anything left or whether you’ve overspend the available supply.
Budget also works as a boundary which indicates whether you’re spending too much or too little.

What’s a time budget?

In this context a time budget would be a plan detailing available hours against the activities you want to spend that time on. Time budgets can be created for weekly,monthly or even yearly intervals giving you a wide perspective. Similarly to financial budget you would have fixed commitments like eating, sleep, work, commute, shopping and more flexible appointments like exercising, going out, visiting friends and so called free time. Once your budget is read then you can review and you can decide whether you can afford to spend your time on some activities or should you spend it on something else.

How it’s different from time map?

Time maps as we  described them last time show your time and commitments as they  are. Their main purpose is to provide you with a higher view of your current situation. Time budget looks into the future. Budgeting is really a planning process where you look at your commitments, needs, wants and try to figure which are sufficiently important to have your time. Setting time budget is more about taking control of your time and not letting it slip through your fingers.

Benefits of having a budget.

Setting up a time budget can bring a number of benefits:

• Focus on important areas – by creating time budget you can pinpoint areas of higher importance and give them sufficient amount of time. If for example getting into shape would be your top agenda item, then you could create a budget that would take into account 1h of training each day. Consequently you would reduce time spend on other areas in order to set aside time for exercise.
• Less time wasting – with increased focus on important items, you would reduce the time that’s wasted. When setting up budget you would identify elements that don’t take you anywhere and in fact should be eliminated from your schedule.
• Progress on goals – setting up a budget can be a significant boost to making progress on your goals. Simply bringing them to your attention and setting a side sufficient amount of time will allow you to start making a progress. No more saying “I don’t have enough time”.
• Sharpen your attention – Some activities like deep thinking or creative work require significant amounts of time. Unfortunately those are mostly pushed to the back as there is never the right time, mood etc for them. If your work, goals depend on having creative/uninterrupted time making an allotment in the budget will help you with that.

How to create?

Creating a budget is relatively easy and involves just a handful of steps.

1. List the activities your want to accomplish in a week or or a month.
2. Estimate the number of hours you need to have for each task or commitment.
3. Add all of the together and compare against total available hours i a week or month(24h in a day, 168 in a week, 708 in a month).
4. Remember to leave few free hours as there always are some unexpected or unplanned thinks popping up.

For example I try to sleep not less than 7-7.5 hours per night so every week  that means 7.5h x 7days = 52h per week.
Another big chuck of my time is used for my day job, that including commute takes around 9,5h x 5days = 47.5h per week.
Other rather fixed activities that I spending my time on is eating/cooking which takes around 2,5h a day which = 17.5 per week.
Since triathlon is one of my hobbies I need to dedicate sufficient time to keep in shape and that takes around 6-7 per week.
When I add all above I’m using  124 hours on activities that are somewhat fixed but I also have 44 hours a week that I can plan any way I want. Some of it will go toward spending time with my wife, going out, some will go to reading and learning, cleaning, shopping etc.

Once you’ve created your initial budget then you can analyse it and decide if this is what you what or are there any elements that should come forward or should be pushed back. It’s very much a balancing act.

Budget is very much a pro active tool. It’s planning tool where you learn how to use the main resource of your life – time. It gives you a chance to create a framework of commitments for coming week or month. It can help you model new behaviours or introduce new way of using time. Time budget also puts your need and desires in the perspective of what is really available to you.