Master Your Workday Now: Proven Strategi

Therefore, you should scan this list at least once or twice per day to see if any tasks there become eligible to fit into the day, or to see if any of them have jumped in urgency.

SOCs are not significant enough to be called goals— goals implies something beyond the task level and I cover the subtleties of goals in Part II. I do not like calling them projects either—the word project implies a much bigger activity, often employing formal project management methodologies. SOCs are just very large tasks, and as with most tasks,

Coming toward him on the belt are workday tasks and meetings that he needs to keep up with in order to “do his job.” Those things immediately in front of him are what he is working on now or that are due now; as he accomplishes these, he tosses them into his mental “ accumulated accomplishments” pile shown in Figure 4.3 and moves on to the next ite

In essence, they are your most important Opportunity Now tasks

One of the places A Perfect Mess is correct is that the cost of getting organized—the amount of time spent—may exceed the savings in efficiency.

I am a strong proponent of emptying the e-mail in-box every day. The e-mail in-box was designed to play the role of receiving e-mail, not the role of a bulk filing system, and not the role of a task management system.

The important take-away from this entire discussion is that a spinning object gives you both firm guidance to keep you pointed in an intended direction (gyroscope effect), and great power and momentum to get you there (flywheel effect).

I just received a fantastic raise of 25 percent. That means I can now buy that convertible I have been longing for—I can see myself now, driving down the coast, the sun on my face, the wind in my hair. What a sweet experience this is! I am also going out to dinner every weekend—I love great food.

So you will be using the Over-the-Horizon urgency zone as the place to put the least urgent tasks, once your Opportunity Now list gets over 20 items. I call this step “Tossing tasks over the Now Horizon” because in the context of the Workday Now mental model, that is what you are doing