☑️ my productivity / task management system

I love all things I’m spending my time on, but it’s a lot for my brain to keep track of — historically it’s been a challenge to have a task management system that gives me peace of mind.

Peace of mind in this context being: I’m doing enough — the right things at the right time to progress towards the goals I’ve set forth.

Over the years, I’ve tried every project management / task management software in an attempt to create a system that works — Notion, Monday, Asana, Trello, etc.

None of them quite did the trick. With Notion, I felt like everything was captured and prioritized, but I still felt anxious that I wasn’t doing enough, and felt like I wasn’t able to see the big picture.

In a conversation with my friend Danny and from reading 10x is easier than 2x, I devised a system with Miro that feels:

• Flexible

• Able to give me the big picture — a grasp on the week, month, year

• Satisfying — I finish the day feeling like I’m actually done for the day and can relax

The System / Template

I turned the Miro board into a template you can copy/use here.

Here’s a snapshot & overview:

Esentially, it’s like a flexible kanban board on a calendar + whiteboard.

I have floating kanbans for each area of my life — Human3, Newsletter, Life Admin, Music, Side Projects, Hobbies, Social Events, Relationships (facetiming with long-distance friends, connecting 1:1, etc).

The system is based on simple principles, but when you’re in the trenches, they’re principles that are hard to prioritize:

• Map out the work to be done for the month — what’s a reasonable amount of work to be done for each day

• Schedule days to execute on these deep work projects on the monthly calendar Miro board, with every month on the board

• Drag completed tasks to a Done board for the day, to give a sense of what I got done that day

• If I don’t complete something that day, reschedule it for another day. Create a rule that I can only reschedule something twice — this prevents that endless procrastination of items that I feel resistance towards, or just don’t feel important in the moment. There’s something to this forever pushing away resisted action items — I haven’t quite articulated it, but it drains my energy

Every Sunday evening, I drag cards onto the days of the week. I batch my days — Prep/Admin Days, Performance/Deep Work days, and Rest days.

According to that, I estimate what are the highest priority things for each day and drop them in, accounting for other things like if I have an event the night before that might affect my sleep, or some other extraneous thing happening.

It allows me to look at each day and week and pre-emptively be satisfied with that output, rather than being attached to the list of things that still need to be done.

When a task is completed, there’s a board right below to drop it to ☑️.

If I don’t get to something (and it’s not urgent), I drag it to the next day or week. I know it’s being accounted for, and it’s out of my head as a stressor.

If it feels like it’s a super low priority task and/or I have too much going on right now, I can drag it down to the next month.

During the past few months of using this — I finish each day satisfied with the day’s work, content with the progress I’m making in my life, and able to sink in more deeply to my daily experience, savoring the journey.

My Old Method / The To-Do List Problem

To-Do lists never end.

Every week it feels like they will.

This system was born because I recently came up against the fallacy that they do, and how it’s been negatively affecting my quality of life, ability to be present, and state of satisfaction.

“As soon as I complete this batch of work, I’ll be able to relax and enjoy life.”

My previous method was to capture everything I needed to do in a Notion doc, then organize it based off of project.

I’d just have a running list of things that needed to get done, and every day I’d wake up and make an estimate of what’s the most important deep work to get done that day.

I’d hammer it out, then delete the text from ‘Today’s Work’, and move on to project management, replying to emails, and life admin / to-do list items.

When I ran through everything and felt drained of energy, I’d stop working.

The issue with this was — I didn’t have a grasp on where I was at with my projects, the progress I made that day, that week, that month, towards my ultimate goals.

It left me in a perpetual state of feeling like there was something more I needed to do; that I wasn’t yet at my goal yet, and because of that, I couldn’t yet rest and savor life. It was low-grade anxiety that ruined my quality of life.

10x is Easier Than 2x describes that the most happy successful people do one simple thing — they look back at their progress instead of a relentless vision towards the future and where they’re going.

It makes sense. Appreciate the journey, stay in tune with what you’re doing right now, what you’ve done today, where you’re at along the journey, so you can stick your head out the window and enjoy the breeze.

Here’s the template again.

Lmk if it’s useful. If you have a different system or have improvements on this, would love to hear.

- Ali

IG: @earthoali3
Twitter: @ali__jang