little book

After my recent post about goals, I received two emails (shown below) from my Grandfather. I come from such great posterity! How did I get so lucky?! Maybe his thoughts will help me stick with my goals for more than a week, accomplish more, not stress as much, keep my priorities straight, and to be consistent. And I get one of his little books (as stated below)! Thanks Grandfather!

Brenda and Don:

During the past 50 years I have used a small "Time and Growth Manager" with a separate page for each day.  I have had them printed myself.  There is a page for each day, plus some blank pages in the back for notes.  Each page had columns for: (1) "No. in order of importance", (2) "Things to do Today", (3) "Time allocated", and (4) "Check when done."  I fill in the second column first.  Then I go back to column 1 and rank my to-dos in order of priority.  If I don't do this, I find I am inclined to spend my prime time doing the things which are fun and easy, only to discover at the end of the day that the things I did not get completed were the most important things I had to do during the day.

Column 3 is very useful.  We need to develop some idea of efficiency in our lives.  Some jobs aren't worth spending long periods of time on.  Sometimes just the quick and dirty way is all a task is worth.  I learned that time management is really event management.  I recall Fred Hyatt telling me about his father's method of training his eight sons.  On Saturday he would take them all into the garage and organize the work for day.  He would say, "Fred, you mow the front lawn -- and it should take you 25 minutes!"  It is wasteful to spend more time doing something than it is worth.

I like the fourth column.  A simple check mark gives us a feeling of accomplishment, of satisfaction.  Psychologically, we need lots of check marks during each day.

I am mailing one of my little books to you.  If you have further interest/questions, lets discuss at the reunion.

 

Brenda and Don:

An additional thought -- I have found from my experiences in life that when I reduce to writing a plan for the day that I accomplish about double the amount that I would if I only tried to keep in mind the things I wanted/needed to do.  Going through life without a daily written plan does not result in a very productive life; that is, life is less productive than it could otherwise be.  Grandfather

My Grandfather, Grammy, and their 7 kids. An amazing family! My mom is the shortest one on the left :)