It’s the start of a brand new week in February! Your chance to kick some ass and finally finish, or start that big new project? Well, I know I’ve done my fair share of things in the past week. I already wrote a couple of words on our blog The Book Dragon’s Nook about it. But I finally finished the first draft of my novel Stempels. Last Thursday I put the final words of the epilogue on paper and sighed in relief. It’s been almost a year that I’ve been working on this project and finally finishing the first draft was a big milestone!

I know I posted last week that I would post something about making manageable To-Do lists. That is still on my February To-Do list 😉 I will go into it this week, seeing as I really wanted to finish the draft of Stempels and sometimes focussing on one project is better than dividing your attention and not getting both things done. I would like to go into the subject of To-Do lists a little bit today, however.

Keeping it realistic

A lot of people struggle with keeping tabs on everything they have to do and To-Do lists are just about the easiest way to keep track of everything you should do. One of my favourite ways of going about this is trying to make daily lists, weekly lists and even monthly lists. All of these serve my yearly goals as well. Every year around December I look back at everything I wanted to accomplish that year and look forward to what I want to do the next. The important thing is that you don’t overdo it. A year may be a long time, but there’s only so much you can do and one thing you should never forget is the importance of downtime, either. If Jeffrey is doing all work and no play, he won’t be a happy person.

So, whenever I make a daily To-Do list, I rarely write down more than five things. The important thing is that if you want to keep it manageable you have some understanding of how long certain tasks will take you. For instance, writing 500 words for my projects usually doesn’t cost me much more than 30-45 minutes, depending on the level of flow I can achieve that day. Of course, being able to make a reasonable To-Do list also depends on experience, because that will give you an idea of how long a task will take you, based on your prior experiences and level of knowledge.

I’ll get back to you tomorrow!

I’m very enthusiastic when talking about this stuff. I love notebooks, To-Do lists and tools that can help you to manage your time. I promise I’ll post more about making a weekly To-Do list tomorrow and then later this week I’ll get into the basics of doing a monthly one. I’m not saying my method is the best, because different methods works for different people, but it is how I do things and it’s been helping me achieve a lot of stuff over the years, so it might just help you out too!

See you tomorrow and have a great week!

~Jeffrey