Pixelmatrix Design

If you’re like me, you constantly seek to manage your schedule better and more effectively. You want to make sure you finish everything you need to do ahead of time and want to be able always know what you need to do the next day, or week. Because I am always trying to be more efficient, I cannot seem to settle on a method that is absolutely perfect. The question begs me… should I create a schedule for my work time, or not?

Scheduling

So what are the benefits of scheduling? The way I see it, there are loads of benefits for scheduling your day:

• You always know what you’re doing each day
• You can easily see how much time a project takes
• You can plan for deadlines by emphasizing specific projects
• You can constantly see your availability

Great, it looks like we have a winner right? Yea, you’re right. Scheduling is great, and the list of cons is small, but each one of the cons really packs a punch. See for yourself:

• Your list of tasks constantly change
• You are less flexible
• Things never take the exact amount of time you plan for
• Time can be wasted when you don’t have the information you need to start a task at the time scheduled
• Getting off schedule on one project screws up the rest of your day or even week

The problem really boils down to: it’s nearly impossible to predict how things will go in your week.

Writing a Task List

Let’s take a look at another method I’ve used: writing a task list by hand. This method works pretty well. Here are the benefits:

• Very flexible
• Convenient to take with you
• Low tech
• Easy to look at while you’re working
• Built in sketch paper for drawing and sketching ideas
• Easy to prioritize!

I love to play with my little Moleskine notebook and doodle, and I have to say, this method is very convenient. Any time I want to work on another system I just take my notebook with me.

There are a few cons, however:

• Possibly too low tech
• Doesn’t give you an idea about time per task
• You have to write the list every day before you work
• Less of a concept of deadlines
• Easy to forget which tasks you need to write in

To-Do List App (Anxiety)

This final method is the method I’m currently using to manage my time. It’s a great app by Tom Stoelwinder called Anxiety. It is an impossibly simple to-do list HUD window that grabs your to-dos from iCal and lets you enter new ones right there in the window. This is an app I’ve dreamed about for a long time. A super lightweight To Do list.

Let’s take a look at the pros:

• Very flexible
• Lightweight (doesn’t use much system resources)
• Easy to look at while you’re working
• iCal does not have to be open
• Absolutely beautiful
• Syncs with Mail and iCal (and hopefully iPhone soon)
• Lets you filter the list between different calendars
• To Dos that aren’t finished from the previous day stay with you on the next day
• Free!

Like all the other methods I mentioned, this has downsides too:

• Leopard only (sorry Tiger users)
• Can’t reorder the list (to change priority)
• Can’t view multiple categories at once, either all or one
• Less of a concept of deadlines
• Easy to forget which tasks you need to write in
• Doesn’t give you an idea about time per task

So as you can see, I’ve gone back and forth between many different ways of organizing my time. I am pretty happy with Anxiety, but sometimes I wish there were an absolutely perfect solution out there.

What do you think? Do you schedule your days? Do you use another method that you think works better than these? Let me know in the comments.