We all have had that feeling. You are in the groove, in the flow state, and having a productive start to your day. Then you get the “bing” on your computer, the “ding” from your email, the “buzz” from your phone, and before you know it, everything feels urgent. If you have hair, it’s enough to make you want to pull it out.
How do you prioritize tasks when most of your days look like the scenario I described above?
I like to keep daily work journals and call them “work” journals. A work journal does two things for me. First, keeping a daily journal helps me satisfy my natural fidgetiness, and second, a work journal aids me in keeping notes of what I need to do, things I want to do, and things on my radar that may need attention soon. In college, I learned the importance of taking notes, and that habit has stuck with me throughout my professional life.
I’m always taking notes.
It’s like being an air traffic controller, where I schedule and guide ‘flights’ (tasks) to a safe landing at the appropriate time or divert some ‘flights’ to another location altogether. My work journals are my radar screen, helping me keep track of all the ‘flights’ in the air and ensuring they land safely.
The journal is a quick, old-school, and analog way to jot down all the dings, pings, and buzzes, which helps me prioritize tasks. I like to draw a vertical line down the right side for the most critical functions of the day, which are related to my family. Everything else gets in line on the other 2/3rds of the left side of the page towards the journal’s spine.
A common trap to avoid is adopting the mindset that your work journal is a place to “check off” completed tasks. We all understand everything can’t be done in a day, correct? I don’t check tasks off per se; I ‘carry them’ from previous days, maintaining a continuous flow of what’s happening in my “work” day.
Your journal is a place to organize the urgentness of your day.
The entries you make as your day progresses are notations of the tasks from the previous day, the dings, pings, and buzzes, five-alarm fires, and any other updates to your current day.
After decades of daily work journaling, the biggest challenge I’ve found is what to do with those old journals that inevitably pile up. I like thumbing through them, taking photos if necessary, and then filing them in the recycle bin.
Your phone camera works as a good scanner to digitize pages you feel are essential and delay deleting them for a little longer. Cheers!
P.S.
I’ve fallen in love with the journals at www.denik.com. I found multiple three-packs of Denik Journals at the end of last year in a marked-down bin at a bookstore, and I’ve been using them ever since. The perfect binding holds up well, the soft touch covers are rugged, and the pocketbook size with rounded corners fits nicely in your laptop bag.
