How to Set Reasonable Tasks and Deadlines for a Busy Mom

Take your time to finish a task and add another hour/day/week to a deadline to be sure you will manage it. It sounds perfect. In theory. How to achieve it in real life?

Overtasking and multitasking are two things that people connect to productivity by mistake. You are not necessarily a productivity guru if the number of your tasks decreases dramatically. You are not a perfect performer if you do several tasks at a time.

I call that to Get Busy. But getting busy doesn’t mean to be productive or to do your work on time. It means to be loaded with tasks, and not finish them. It’s like running a marathon and never reaching a finish.

How I became a very busy person by doing nothing

This is a very personal part. I wasn’t ready to admit this fact for a long time. Now I can.

• My plans were too big
• I was looking for a result and wasn’t ready to face a day-to-day routine
• I was actually afraid of reaching the final result
• I couldn’t manage my time and tasks effectively
• I was alone and should’ve motivated myself better
• My knowledge about finance was poor and I made several big investing mistakes
• I was working in several very different areas at a time (photography, bag production, freelancing, writing — you name it, I took every job I was offered)

In general, I made too many big plans, my deadlines were too tight and never made them into reality. Instead, I was a very busy person all the time by doing… something. Yes, I can tell for sure I was doing something all the time. But it brought me no money, a very small number of clients, a huge debt and extraordinary exhaustion. I received experience though.

What I learned from doing too much

I learned from this situation one very important lesson.

Less is more.

I bet you heard it somewhere. People like to give great unachievable advice. I’ll try to explain my “ Less” better in two parts.

1. Set a reasonable number of tasks. Work will take all the time you have for it. But you are only a human. Start with this:

• minimize the number of tasks per day — three big and important tasks per day works for me
• prioritize tasks — what will I get after finishing this? Will I be paid? Will I receive an experience? Will this make me happier?
• don’t do what is not important — do you have something you can’t finish for weeks? So what if it’s not important for you? Don’t do it.

2. Set reasonable deadlines. This is a hu-u-u-uge thing for me, it changed everything! I was able to keep none of my deadlines before. Now I have fewer tasks and more time for each. I use the calendar a lot and give each task a specific place in my schedule. I also plan up to twice more time for each task than before. I’d better have free time for coffee. But actually, I don’t, I use all planned time — at least not more than was planned.

Bottomline

We all want to do more. But sometimes the process involves us more than the result. We become busy and tired, but the result doesn’t come anyway. Try to focus on what matters, check your tasks and do only what brings you a result, stop hurrying and become a productive person. By productive, I mean confident, calm and steady of course.

Originally published at https://www.workhomerepeat.com on March 26, 2020.