Create a list of tasks you could finish in 5 minutes

Why you should create such list? We often have some time gaps between major tasks. Having nothing prepared to work on you will waste that time. So what we could do? Make a list of things that could be done in five minutes or less.

After that, prepare everything in order to work on such tasks (notebook, pencil, pda, ...).

Learn to recognize such time gaps and fill it with some useful work.

How to deal with unpleasant tasks?

There are several strategies for dealing with the tasks we don't like.

1. Do it first thing in the morning. That way you fight procrastination and the rest of the day you should feel fine.
   
2. Make the task pleasant. If you don't like cooking, try with cooking exotic food or listen music you love.
3. Reward yourself. When you finish with task, reward yourself. Meditate, socialize or do something else that you like.
4. Delegate. Is it really necessary that you personally do that?
5. Eliminate. Do you really have to do it?
   
6. Split the task. Smaller task are less unpleasant.
7. Why this task is unpleasant? Find out the reasons for your negative emotions, and fix it.
8. Use calendar and to do list. Having unpleasant task in writing somehow makes you think about task as a fact.
9. Make a habit of doing something unpleasant every day. That way you will stretch your comfort zone and less tasks will be unpleasant.
10. It doesn't need to be perfect. The task should be done. It is not necessary to be perfect.
    
11. Start with the subtasks that are not that unpleasant. Not all tasks should be done in some order. You could attack the task from the point that you find interesting.
12. Tomorrow is your enemy. Keep in mind that this task will not be more pleasant tomorrow.
    
13. Stop negative thoughts. For example you might think: "I hate responding to all those emails". The more emails the more you hate responding. If you switch that line of thinking with "I wander if there is something that I can learn from this email?" answering emails could be less unpleasant.
14. Group unpleasant tasks. You could schedule some time for doing unpleasant tasks, for example every Monday (9-11).
    

Why to delegate tasks?

There are several possible reasons for delegation of tasks:

1. You don't know how to complete the task,
2. You know how to complete the task, but someone could finish it sooner and better,
3. You don't like working on that task,
4. You don't have the time for that task,
5. It is cheaper if someone else do it,

Some of this reasons we are aware of and we delegate tasks without thinking. For example when we are in legal trouble, we don't hesitate to ask or hire a lawyer. Lawyer know how to complete the task, and it is probably cheaper to hire a lawyer than to pay $100k penalty or even to go to prison.

On the other hand, usually we don't delegate regularly. We usually delegate in the case of emergency. I believe that we could delegate far more than we do. Decision process of whether you should delegate or not could look like this.

• Calculate the price of task if you have to do it.
  For example, you have a lawn that should be mowed. You have a low cost lawn mower and using it you could mow your lawn for 2 hours. Your pay per hour is 15$. Than the cost of you doing it is 30$+amortization of your lawn mower.
• Calculate the price of task if someone else is going to do it
  For example, The Lawn Mower corp. could mow your lawn for one hour, charging you 25$ per hour.
• Find out what is cheaper!
  In this example it is cheaper to hire The Lawn Mower corp. 25$ vs. 30$+amortization of your lawn mower. In that case you don't even need to have a lawn mower, and you can do something more purposefully with that money.

Of course, another part of the equation would be the pleasure for mowing your lawn. Don't delegate a tasks that you enjoy doing just for couple of dollars.

Three methods for prioritizing your tasks

After creating a task list, the next step is to prioritize tasks in some way. That means that you should determine if a task is more important then other tasks. How to manage such list? There are several methods to do that.

A-B-C-D-E method

• Make a list of all tasks
• Mark a task with 'A' if the task is very important
• Mark a task with 'B' if the task is important
• Mark a task with 'C' if it would be nice to complete the task
• Mark a task with 'D' if it possible to delegate the task to someone
• Mark a task with 'E' if the task should not be completed at all (complete waste of time)

When you start to work, first finish the tasks labeled with A, then with B, ... Never work on tasks that are labeled with B if you can work on task labeled with A.

Order the task list by priority

• Make a list of all tasks
• Choose ONE task that you find the most important (imagine that you are going to some trip and you have time to do just one task, which one should you execute)
• Label that task with number one
• Choose ONE task that you find the most important among the unlabeled tasks
• Label that task with number two
• ...
• Repeat the process until you label all tasks

When you start to work, first finish the tasks labeled with number one, then with two, ... Always work on tasks with the lowest label that are unfinished. Never work on task labeled with 4 when you have unfinished task labeled with 2.

Order the task list using important and urgent marks

• Make a list of all tasks
• Label all tasks that are both urgent and important with IU
• Label all tasks that are urgent but not important with U
• Label all tasks that are important but not urgent with I
• Don't do anything with unimportant and non urgent tasks

When you start to work, first finish the tasks labeled with IU, then with U, then with I. Don't do anything with unlabeled tasks.

Order the task list using the price per hour

• Make a list of all tasks
• Determine for each task how much time it requires (in hours)
  
• Determine the worth for each task
  
• For each task calculate price per hour (estimated worth/required time)

When you start to work, first finish the task that have the highest price per hour. Let's look at the example:

• Task A, required time 0.5 hrs, value 5$, price per hour 5/0.5=10$
  
• Task B, required time 0.25 hrs, value 3$, price per hour 3/0.25=12$
• Task C, required time 1.5 hrs, value 12$, price per hour 12/1.5=8$

The order of task execution should be:

1. Task B
2. Task A
3. Task C