THE PROACTIME METHOD 9

9. Organize your days to increase your productivity

The organization, preparation and planning of tasks has only one purpose: to move them through a kind of funnel to the final bottleneck, the production phase, where they will be accomplished, one by one. The Dashboard of PROACTIME lists the planned tasks of the selected date and displays the resources we shall use to accomplish them. It is our assembly line. The challenge is to define the best possible sequence to accomplish our planned tasks and achieve the day's main goal. It is the key to productivity. PROACTIME gives us the tools to optimize our daily activities.

The center table of the Dashboard lists the time slots occupied by scheduled sessions and tasks. Time slots reserved for weekly recurring activities are highlighted with colors. You can transform them into real activities. For example you can plan to play tennis with a friend every Thursday evening. On Thursdays you will discover the highlighted slot on your calendar. You will be able to change your intention into a real action by the help of the context menu.

All needed information and data for organizing and planning your day are included in your Dashboard. The right table lists the day's pending tasks. When you select a task, its linked resources are displayed in the left tables. The pending projects with actions are also visible. If you select a project, its actions will be shown on the right table.

Organizing your day means to identify the optimum itinerary to accomplish your planned tasks in order to reach the day's goal. Above all it is about deciding in what order you want to proceed.

The context menu enables you to define the best sequence. PROACTIME will pop up the next task to accomplish every five minutes. We can define a logical task sequence. However our mind is not a computer. We are psychological beings. Our energy cycles vary in the course of day. Hence our task sequence should also take into account our motivation and the levels of task difficulty.

The context menu makes it possible to proceed by motivation. Early birds are used to tackle difficult tasks first. Late birds may prefer to start with easy tasks to warm-up. If you have distinguished your tasks by degree of difficulty you can use the five buttons right below to display the tasks according to their difficulty.

PROACTIME advises to choose the path of least resistance, that which corresponds with our internal rhythms. Thus you avoid using unnecessary willpower and you spare your energy. Organizing your days is a personal matter although you have to take into account social and time constraints.