How do you organize your time?

Why do you never have enough time?

How do you organize your time? We all have the same twenty-four hours. And yet, in a Gallup survey, eight out of ten people said they don’t have enough time for everything they want to do. So why do some people manage to fit it all in? Today you’ll see it through what science says, and you’ll walk away with a plan to make your week really work for you.

By the way, this is my house in MindHaOS, and this is the room where I organize my time.

First, a trap we all fall into. In 1994, Roger Buehler and his team asked students how long it would take them to finish their thesis. They guessed about thirty-four days. It took them fifty-five. And even their worst-case guess, forty-nine days, fell short.

And there’s a second trap. In 1955, the historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson wrote, as a joke, that work expands to fill the time you have to do it. If you give yourself the whole afternoon for one email, that email takes the whole afternoon.

The good news is that getting organized does work, just not the way you think. In 2021, Brad Aeon and his team pulled together one hundred fifty-eight studies: managing your time helps you perform, but above all it makes you feel better and less stressed.

So it’s not about squeezing every minute. It’s about three things: getting everything out of your head, choosing what comes first, and giving it a time slot in your calendar.

Here, in my desk planner, is where my day begins: I jot down what’s on my mind, put it in order, and give it its time.

Why isn’t your head a good planner?

Whatever you leave unfinished keeps spinning around in your head. The story goes that in Berlin, in the 1920s, the psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik noticed that a waiter remembered the orders that hadn’t been paid yet by heart, and forgot them as soon as they were paid. In her experiments, people remembered the tasks they had left half done better than the ones they had finished.

That’s why David Allen, the author of a very well-known book on productivity, says to capture everything: every to-do, however small, goes into one single place that you check often. Your head is for having ideas, not for storing them.

And his most famous rule: if something takes less than two minutes, do it now. Writing it down and coming back to it later costs you more than just doing it.

In my schedule, everything on my mind goes into my To-do tray: no date, sorted by priority, until I give it its place.

And it’s not only my to-dos: here I keep an old-school address book with the people I know, so I don’t forget their birthdays, plus the care I need to take of myself and of the important people in my life.

What comes first?

In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower said he had two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important, and that the urgent ones were almost never important.

And science backs him up. In 2018, Meng Zhu and her team found that people pick the task that’s due soon even when the other one pays off more, just because it feels urgent.

That’s why his matrix is so useful. Look: urgent and important, do it today. Important but not urgent, give it a time slot. Urgent but not important, hand it off or do it quickly. And whatever is neither, let it go.

In my tray, every to-do has its priority, and I drag it up or down until the most important one is on top.

Why does doing several things at once slow you down?

Every time you jump from one task to another, you pay a toll. In 2001, Joshua Rubinstein, David Meyer and Jeffrey Evans measured that switching tasks costs time every single time, and more so the more complex the tasks are. Look how the jumps add up.

And your mind doesn’t switch all at once. In 2009, Sophie Leroy called it attention residue: part of you stays stuck on the previous task, especially if you left it half done.

That’s why Toyota’s factories came up with the kanban board: three columns, to do, in progress and done, and one golden rule: only a few things in progress at a time. Finish one before you start another.

In my schedule, my to-dos also live on a board: I move them from to do to in progress, and when I finish them, to done.

How do you give the important things a time slot?

Anything without a date gets left until the end. In 2002, Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch asked students for three papers. Some got a single deadline, at the end of the course; others got one deadline for each paper, spread across the course. The ones with spread-out deadlines got better grades.

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That’s what time blocking is: instead of an endless list, every important thing gets its own slot in the calendar, like an appointment with yourself. Look how a week falls into place.

And look at your time from different heights: the day to act, the week to spread things out, and the month so nothing catches you by surprise.

In my house, when a to-do has a date and time, it shows up on its own in my calendar, with its reminder, and I can see it by day, week, month or year.

Why does resting help you get more done?

Working nonstop doesn’t get you further. In 2022, Patricia Albulescu and her team reviewed twenty-two studies: breaks of under ten minutes give you more energy and less fatigue, and on routine tasks they even improve your work.

One simple way is the Pomodoro technique, which Francesco Cirillo invented with a tomato-shaped kitchen timer: twenty-five minutes on a single task, five minutes of rest, and every four rounds, a long break.

And make the break a real one: get up, look into the distance, drink some water. Scrolling on your phone doesn’t count as rest.

That’s why in my calendar I give rest its time too: between one block and the next, a break, which I also check off.

What do you do when everything piles up?

First, estimate better. In 2008, Jeffrey Forsyth and Christopher Burt found that when you break a task into steps and estimate each one, your guesses get closer to how long it really takes.

And leave a buffer. If you think something will take an hour, set aside an hour and a half. Look what happens to your day when something unexpected comes up, with a buffer and without one.

And when it no longer fits, choose: move it to another day, hand it off, or say no. Every yes to something is a no to something else.

When something comes up, here I drag the block to another slot or stretch it, and my week still holds up.

How do you keep going? Your plan to continue

In the first week, get everything out of your head into one single place, and every morning choose three important things. Just three.

In the first month, give the important things a time slot in your calendar, with their breaks and their buffer. Don’t fill every gap: leave room for the unexpected.

And once a week, a fifteen-minute review: empty the tray, move what didn’t get done, and plan the blocks for the next week. That appointment with yourself is what holds everything else together.

And my everyday stuff goes into my missions: every app in my house has its own, like drinking water or studying, and in my calendar and my schedule I see them all together, day by day, and check them off.

To sum up: your head is not a planner, so get everything out; choose the important over the urgent; do one thing at a time and give it its slot; and rest and leave a buffer, because getting organized is about living better, not running faster.

In the Schedule room in MindHaOS you can jot down your to-dos, move them around on a board, give them a date and time so they show up in your calendar with a reminder, and never forget your people’s birthdays. Build your mental house for free today: the link is in the description. And in the next guide: how do you learn faster?