Time Management

I have always been under the assumption that multi-tasking was the way to be; I can focus on and complete multiple things at once and get twice as much accomplished in half the time.  Even if I am not performing multiple tasks at once, I am usually thinking about more than one task at a time.  I attended the Women's Assembly Zoom from Echelon Front this month and this was actually one of the things they recommended steering away from...color me shocked!  But why?  Why focus on one thing when I can focus on two?

One hostess of the Zoom talked about how she would have 15 things on her list to get done and only manage to get 3 of them accomplished; she couldn't believe it!  So she did an audit on her time and found that she spent the majority of her day wasting time versus actually getting after her to-do list.  She said that one of the reasons she wasted her time was that she wasn't prioritizing tasks, she was multi-tasking and trying to get everything accomplished at the same time.

This made sense to me and made me reflect on my own To-Do list that I have; and in thinking about priority, I re-wrote it to have the higher priority items towards the top and then rank the rest of the list.  Normally, I don't even list them numerically, I just put a dash and write and item and do that for the entire list.  Basically, all levels of priorities are a jumble and there wasn't any formal organization-everything was listed in the order it came into my brain.  

For this upcoming week, I am going to try and be more intentional with my To-Do list: I am going to break it down by day of the week and prioritize my items by importance and day.  This way I am not overwhelmed by completing all necessary and high ticket items on one day and fluffing the rest; my goal I to have more order and structure to my lists and therefore, less wasted time.  

We shall see how it goes! Does anyone else find that they get scattered when they try and multi-task?  Any other good planning tips?

For more information on the Women's Assembly, please check out their website here