If you’ve attended How to Get 10 Hours Back Every Week, you know the value of taking care of your schedule, aka your ‘machine’. To produce the best results with the least amount of stress, you want to work systematically. This means breaking down tasks into manageable steps.
Working systematically allows you to clearly see your plan of action. Imagine you were building a skyscraper. You wouldn’t start with the ceiling or slap a 2000ft building onto undeveloped land, right? You’d lay a foundation and then create a framework so that your skyscraper doesn’t fall apart. This principle extends to all areas of your life. Rather than trying to tackle everything at once, work in small steps to ensure you’re churning out quality results.
How To Use Sections
Tasks is a tool that helps to visualize your next steps so that you don’t have to worry about missing anything. To increase efficiency, create a Section for your major areas of interest (eg. homework, admission prep, job applications). Then list out all of your deadlines as tasks. For each main task, ask yourself what steps you have to complete, then write these down in the task description. Let’s say you have an English project due Friday. Now break it down:
| Section: English Homework | By When | Priority |
| English Presentation | Monday | Medium |
| English Paper | Wednesday | Medium |
|
Prep for English Test |
Friday | Medium |
Let's see what this might look like within your Tasks:
How To Use Task Descriptions
Use each task description to break down the work associated with that task.
Breaking down your project this way allows you to space out your responsibilities. Often students don’t write out their next steps and forget something or sacrifice quality instead. Or, they’re overstressed because they don’t have a clear plan. With Tasks, you can turn your pressures into possibilities.
Bonus tip: Schedule your by-when’s into an online calendar to receive reminders!
How to Manage Your Tasks
Aside from having By Whens for your tasks, you can also decide its Priority! Look over your whole week. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What are my upcoming deadlines?
- Where do I have some free time?
- How much time do I need to complete each task?
Use these questions to help determine the priority of each task. Mark each task as High, Medium, or Low to easily visualize how you should be tackling your tasks based on priority! This allows you to efficiently tackle your workload. Instead of randomly shifting between tasks, you want to work with intentionality. Imagine you had a test and scholarship essay due on Wednesday. Your first instinct might be to study for the test but remember that our editors return essays within 24 hours. So you probably want to submit your essay draft first. That way you can study for your test while waiting for the edits. This means you’re not stressing about either deadline. Visualizing your work with Tasks can help you to align your priorities in this way!