The first exercise in the class
was to write down the roles we serve in our lives. Everyone has multiple roles:
employee, manager, spouse, parent, etc. We spent a few minutes thinking about
our lives, and writing down all of the roles we play.
Next, we were instructed to write
a long-term goal for each of those roles. Then we were asked to write one or
two short-term goals that would move us toward completing each of the long-term
goals.
Finally, we were told to examine
each short-term goal and write down at least one or two specific actions that
would move us forward toward accomplishing that goal.
This is why I found Michael
Linenberger’s instruction to be transformational. His productivity systems —
the One-Minute To-Do List (1MTD), Master Your Now (MYN), and One-Minute Project
Manager (1MPM) — all revolve around the urgency of the tasks that you need to
complete.
One Minute To-Do List (1MTD)
1MTD is literally a “One-Minute To-Do List” — you can get
started in about a minute, and it is an excellent solution for managing up to
about 100 tasks.
1MTD Urgency Zones
In 1MTD, your tasks are arranged in lists depending on when
they need to be done: today, within next 10 days, or after the next 10 days. We
show this by creating Urgency Zones for storing the tasks.
The CRITICAL NOW list is for tasks that must be done today.
There should be no more than five tasks on this list. You should review this
list several times each day — every hour is a good practice.
The OPPORTUNITY NOW list is for
tasks that are available to work on today, but do not have to be finished
today. Some of these tasks may have a hard deadline of tomorrow, or any time in
the next ten days. But they are not due today. This list can have up to 20
items, and should be reviewed every day, at the start of your work day.
The OVER THE HORIZON list is for
tasks that you don’t need to work on or think about for the next 10 days. You
should review this list every week.
As you review the lists, drag the
tasks up or down to meet your current plans. In each section, move the tasks
into the order that you intend to work on them. If you see a task under
OPPORTUNITY NOW or OVER THE HORIZON that must be completed today, move it up
into the CRITICAL NOW section.
If you need to track more than 100 tasks, you may need to
move up to MYN. But if you’re only exceeding the 100 task maximum by a small
number of tasks, or only occasionally, you may be able to continue using 1MTD
by adding another urgency zone.
It’s likely that the OVER THE
HORIZON list is the one that has grown beyond the normal limit, and that it’s
becoming difficult to keep up with a full review of the list every week. If
this list has grown beyond 75 tasks, you probably don’t need to be reviewing
the entire list every week.
You can create another urgency
zone for OVER THE HORIZON tasks that you will review once a month, rather than
every week. I like to name this section OTH (monthly), and rename the original OVER THE
HORIZON to OTH
(weekly). With your long-term tasks split up into weekly and
monthly reviews, it will be easier and less time-consuming to keep up with your
reviews.
Master Your Now (MYN)
MYN expands the 1MTD concept by adding Start Dates to your
tasks. Rather than seeing all of your tasks on the list, you will only see
those that are relevant today. Tasks that you don’t need to think about yet
have a Start Date in the future, and will not appear on your list until you
need to act on them. This approach allows you to track any number of tasks without
being overwhelmed.
It can be helpful to organize your tasks into projects. This
could be as simple as having two projects: Home and Work. You may prefer create
projects for specific goals.
I like to start with a project
called Routines, where I put all the boring tasks that have to be done but
don’t actually contribute to moving my goals forward. This includes bills that
need to be paid, and routine maintenance for my house and car.
Then I create projects as needed
to store tasks I need to do for my goals. If you don’t need to separate your
tasks into projects, you can create a single project called “Tasks,” “To-Do’s,”
or perhaps “Reviewed,” to indicate that you have reviewed these items and
assigned the desired priority and date. You do need to have at least one
project, because new tasks will sit in the Inbox until you have assigned them
to a project.
The next button, with the flag, will set the priority. The
default is Priority 4, but all tasks in MYN should have a priority set. Since
the task will not appear on your Today list until the start date arrives, think
about the urgency of the task on that day. If you will absolutely need to
finish the task on that day, it will be Critical Now, and should be set to
Priority 1.
If the task does not need to be
completed on that day, it will be Opportunity Now and should be set to Priority
If you don’t need to work on that task within 10 days of that date, it will
be Over the Horizon and should be set to Priority 3.
When you select a date for a P1
task, this is obviously the date that you are going to work on the task — you
have to finish it on that date.
The One-Minute Project Manager (1MPM)
approach is ideal for projects like this. And whether you are working the
project alone or with others, Todoist is an excellent tool for tracking the
project. Todoist will allow you to track the overall project plan and progress,
and feed tasks to your MYN list (or the lists of other people) as appropriate.
A quick review: 1MTD has three
urgency zones;
Critical Now: Must do todayOpportunity Now: do in 1 to 10 daysOver the Horizon: can wait beyond 10 days
In 1MPM, project tasks are prioritized in these urgency
zones:
Critical This Week: tasks that must be completed
this weekOpportunity This Week: tasks available to work
on, that do not have to be completed this weekOver the Horizon or Brainstormed Tasks: initial
list of all tasks needed to complete the project
Step 1: Confirm that Critical Items from last week
were completed and mark them as complete.
Step 2: Chase down any incomplete tasks. If others
are involved in the project, they may be meeting with you during the review (in
person, by phone, by video call, etc.) and can explain what’s going on so you
can update the task.
Step 3: Review the tasks in the OPPORTUNITY THIS
WEEK section. Is it time to move some of these tasks to the CRITICAL THIS WEEK
section? You can re-prioritize tasks by dragging them up within their current
section, or dragging them to a different section.
Step 4: Look at the BRAINSTORMED TASKS section — is
it time to promote some tasks from there? If so, drag the tasks up to the
OPPORTUNITY or CRITICAL section.