Book review: “Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management”

Title: “ Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management ”
Author: Mark Forster
In the end of 2014 I’ve read a nice review about this book in one of the blogs I’m subscribed to. It is about time-management. In the book author demonstrates very interesting and not very mainstream vision in «Do It Tomorrow». I will summarise some ideas & techniques I found interesting for me below.

Closed lists

The most useful technique in this book IMO. The main idea is to make your TODO-list for specific day closed for adding new items. You plan your day, define a very clear scope for your work and just do it. If new tasks are approaching, you write them down. If they are not urgent (the vast majority is not) — you schedule them for tomorrow. You do the tasks today only if they are really urgent or if you already completed all your planned work for the day.
I’ve incorporated closed lists in my day job about 3 weeks ago. It worked pretty well so far. It brings the feeling that you are on top of your work, you know what to do. For me, it reduced the level of stress for a very little effort. There is one more good side effect about it: you begin to understand your working capacity and plan the days accordingly.

Prioritisation by importance doesn’t work

It is very natural to rank something by its importance. But it doesn’t work that well. Though you are doing the most important stuff, the least important tends to accumulate. “Not important” tasks become “never be completed” tasks. It is disappointing and upsetting experience.

What you DON’T DO is as important as what you DO

What we are doing is important. It is the most obvious fact ever. But we tend to miss the other part which is not less important: the things that we decided not to do, decided stop doing. Setting limits for the stuff you do is very powerful technique. In «Do It Tomorrow» author strongly arguing for setting limits for your job.

“Little and often”

One more very useful technique which I’m trying to incorporate in my life called “little and often”. It means that it is unnecessary to finish the big task at once. It is much more productive to stop the task at some point and then return to it later to continue. That’s how I’m trying to write this post. One positive side effect that I’ve found in this strategy is that you have to start you work much before the deadline. It means that if you have some troubles doing it, you can ask for help earlier and (probably) still meet the deadline.

Current initiative

If you have some work that you want to have done soon, you can make it your “current initiative”. It means that it should be the first thing you do in the day and you have to spend at least 5 minutes for it. This technique helps to move forward the goal every day. I’m trying it out myself, seems to work. The trick here is in timing. It is very easy to work on something for 5 minutes, so you have very little resistance doing it. But usually you won’t stop after 5 minutes, you will work much longer.

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The book is not offering you the whole system, it provides a set of smart tricks for your time-management toolbox. I found author’s approach for time management interesting and I definitely recommend spending some time reading this book.