My top tips for getting everything done
Like many of us, I wear a lot of hats. Sometimes literally — I’m a hat girl, what can I say? — but mostly metaphorically. I have multiple jobs: I’m a high school English/Science teacher. I’m also a working writer — my second novel, “Hana Khan Carries On,” publishes this April. I also write this column, and I usually have a few other writing projects on the go as well. I’m also a sort-of active public speaker. And of course, I’m a parent — lately, a very distracted, very tired one.
I’m not complaining about any of my jobs. I feel grateful and happy to have each one, but I am often asked by friends, family and random strangers how I manage to do All The Things. To paraphrase Liam Neeson in “Taken”: “…What I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career …”
I probably couldn’t hunt down a kidnapper, but I can write a novel while teaching high school English, write this column, schedule speaking events, keep a clean inbox and make sure my kids are doing their homework. I won’t boast of doing any of this well — my usual speed is “organized chaos,” but somehow, it all gets done.
Over five years of keeping this frenetic pace going, I’ve learned a few things. Actually, I’ve learned two things:
1) The importance of calendars, and 2) The essential nature of to-do lists. Most of my students have foregone the paper agendas of yore in favour of … well, I’m not exactly sure what they use. Some variation of Google calendar, Instagram and group texts, I think.
Maybe I’m old school, but writing things down on paper is the number one way I stay organized. I have a paper calendar stuck to the cork board above my desk, which I use for keeping track of deadlines and events, and plan my year. This is cross-referenced with Google calendar, but the key is writing things down.
As I tell my students and my own kids, writing things by hand aids in recall and learning. According to research by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, reported in the Scientific American, students who write out their notes on paper actually learn more.
My second invaluable tool is my to-do list. I fell into the habit of making to-do lists — literally a running tally of all upcoming deadlines and chores — as a student, and it has stayed with me through university, novel writing and a heavy marking schedule.
I’ve started compiling my list at the start of every week, and ticking off items as they are completed. I’ll be honest — the satisfaction I get from crossing off an item is the real motivation.
Items that aren’t completed move to next week’s list, until I get so disgusted with myself for my procrastination (I’m looking at you, “clean out the linen closets”) that I eventually complete the task, just to get it off my list.
That’s it. Physical calendars and to-do lists. The key is to update both several times a week, and treat them as living documents, not pretty objects made with good intentions and no followthrough.
As I tell my sons, if you want to get stuff done, all you need is a notebook, a pen, a list and the ability to block out distractions for tens of minutes at a time. Twenty minutes of focused activity, done consistently, is worth hours of distracted work.
I’ve been trying to model my multitasking expertise to my sons. Surely if it works for a working teacher/writer, then calendars and to-do lists will work for my school-age sons too. “Be more like me!” I tell my kids. “If you follow a few suggestions, you, too, can do All The Things!”
So far this has elicited a lot of sighs and rolled eyes, but I know I’m having an effect. My husband has started keeping a list of tasks on his phone, and my older son has finally agreed to think about using the paper calendar I forced on him in September.
Take it from the crazy-hat-lady: When it comes to getting things done, it really is all about taking things one day, and one crossed-off item, at a time.