Budget your time according to your priorities

photo credit: abductit

When I started writing the series on my top productivity tips, I thought about what made my days so exciting every day. I thought it was the fact that I always have something different within the same day – academic research, client work, teaching, research, meetings, etc. Then I figured it that it wasn’t only the fact that I never get bored and always do something interesting.

I have managed to budget my time according to my priorities, and I try (some times more successfully than others) to always allocate the most time to the things that will require the hardest thinking or the longest to complete. The full daily hour budget always reflects my priorities. For example, when client work leads to a deliverable that needs to be submitted on deadline, I always make sure to budget time BEFORE the deadline to respond (and sometimes you need to build in a cushion). Other times you need to readjust your strategy based on the inputs and outputs that you’re given – if you need a document that other colleague is generating to base yours on, then you can’t really do anything about it – but you still can budget the right amount of hours/days/weeks to ensure that you will deliver the product/service on time.

My usual strategy is to do a yearly plan, then a quarterly one, then a monthly one, and then a weekly one. Finally, I allocate my weekly hourly budget depending on what I need to deliver by when and to whom. If an item is high priority, I accommodate for contingencies. This may work for you too!

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