A 3-part to-do list

For a large part of 2021, I was balancing a full-time job, a large project in my free time, and climbing. The full-time job obviously occupied an 8-hour slot of the time that was cemented, but I could time-manage the other ones the way I wanted.

At first, I did them by my gut feeling, prioritizing on the way and focusing on the thing that was most urgent. It wasn’t the best method, as I would usually find the Kickstarter project more urgent than the other things, so I was just doing that, and I could easily go the whole week without climbing. And that wasn’t consistent with my goal for the season, as I wanted to step my game and climb harder. And even worse, vacuuming and other household chores never seemed to have an immediate urgency, as you can always do it the next day, but the apartment started to look like a mess after a week and a half.

Clearly, I needed a better system.

So I did two things — I asked myself:

1. What are my priorities?
2. How many things can I balance at once?

And as I had a pretty good overview of the things I could list under number 1, I started with number 2. Knowing myself, I was pretty certain, that job aside, I should have a maximum of three fronts opened at any given time if I want to do all of them effectively.

So the first one obviously became the Kickstarter project. And immediately after, I reserved the second one for climbing. You may find it counter-intuitive to put a hobby, something that I love doing, on a to-do list, that contains things that I have to do, but I did that to make sure that I would make time for it. I consciously acknowledged what I felt — that climbing is an important part of my life — and created conditions that would allow me, give me an excuse, if you want, to allocate the time for it.

In hindsight, knowing how my season went, this was one of the best decisions I made about my to-do list.

With that, I had one more slot open. And allocating it was a serious matter, as I decided I would only allow myself to spend my time on things that would help develop and accelerate the 3 selected areas. The 3 strongest candidates were reading and writing, spending time with my friends (though we were in a total lockdown at the time), and improving the quality of our living space, namely our apartment that was left half-decorated when the covid situation hit.

But as appealing that these things were, if I was completely honest with myself, I knew that I have to give the last spot to everyday chores like laundry, shopping for groceries, paying the bills, vacuuming and cleaning, or else my to-do list would be pretty unsustainable.

So I, or better we, did that. Because sometime in the planning, I realised I should include my fiancé in the plans too, as the choices would affect both of our lives. The fortunate thing was that in this case, our priorities were completely aligned.

Once we had the list of priorities, we sat down every week and decided on the to-do tasks for each area that we would do that week. We were realistic about how much we can handle, so we didn’t cramp the list too much, as that would again lead to improvisation on the fly, and would result in areas being neglected.

The adjustment to the new system was effortless, and it eased my day-to-day decisions (or rather enabled a mode of operation where I wouldn’t make excuses to myself), as the list provided clear, written-down guidelines. Anything that wasn’t in line with one of the priorities that we’ve carefully chosen and agreed upon, wasn’t worth investing our time into.

So goodbye curtains and living room bookshelves, we’ll manage to live without you for a little while longer, and no, we won’t make it to that online board-gaming thing this weekend, sorry.

And the effect was almost instant. We could see the progress we were making in the first two areas, which motivated us to stick to the system, while the third area allowed the system to be sustainable in the longish run.

Longish because we made it through several months, about half a year, being really effective, but then we were starting to feel exhausted and we were probably on a road to burnout.

And you know how it went from there — we took a large part of the summer off, and then I eventually left my job. You can see that from the standpoint of the to-do list, it was a logical decision — we wanted the same progress in Kickstarter project and climbing as before, and we needed to maintain the chores, but we also needed some free time on top of that that was unstructured and we could use it for other things that we liked but didn’t make it to the to-do list, or simply for rest. And the 8-hour slot occupied by my job was the only chunk large enough that would make a difference. (Of course, there were other factors in that decision that were not so straightforward, but this one was.)

We did this thorough evaluation of the situation, however, we never re-evaluated the to-do list. The time that was freed actually allowed us to do way more on the Kickstarter project than before, and have enough free time that it seems to be sustainable in the longer run, but I think I may have been too ambitious in estimating the number of things I will be able to do. I wanted to finally take the time to get those finishing details for the apartment, invest my time in studying the cryptocurrency field to make better investment decisions, continue writing my book that’s been on pause for too long, and study the field of numerical simulations.

And though I have prioritized somewhat in my mind, I think I need to sit down and compile a written to-do list too, as I feel my focus is being dispersed over too many areas, and I’m not effective as I could have been. And I think now is the perfect time. On one hand, I’ve had enough time to see how the new lifestyle with additional 8 hours feels, and on the other hand, the workload on the Kickstarter project is increasing, as we are in a final sprint because we’re aiming to launch the campaign in January, so ineffective planning is starting to get a toll on climbing, and I need to set it straight again.

Therefore I’m taking this opportunity to re-evaluate, to see how many areas I can handle, and then allocate them to priorities.

I thought I’d share this process in case anyone finds it useful. I think I will probably optimize it further over time, but here’s where I’m at right now. I’d love to hear about your feedback too and what system works for you!

To setting the priorities!
Nika