important non urgent category

This category is full of stuff for me, and I'm having a tough problem going through it. It takes a lot of discipline to be prepare in advance, but I think it's key to any kind of success. The best way I find to deal with the non-urgent important, is book yourself a meeting with yourself, and treat it as importantly as if it was with your most important customers. In a meeting with your most important customers, I'm sure none of us are checking their blackberry for emails or answering calls, well such is the rule for a meeting with ourselves as well. I like to think that fire alarm is ok, everything else is off. Then, since most of the time I'm not done with what I had set up myself to do, always too optimistic on the time it will take me to do something, so just before my meeting is over, just like with my most important customers ask what should be the next steps, and when should we meet again and then I put another appointment in my cal, and I keep moving the rock forward.

Time Management - Weekly Review

I'm stressed all the time, and one great way to get rid of a lot of stress at once, is to know that things are taken care of. I don't mean knowing what my team is doing in this particular case, I mean all the stuff I'm supposed to be doing, I need to know it's written somewhere so that I can forget about it, and reminded in due time.

So reviews are a great way to catch things, weekly reviews are recommended by all time management consultants to improve your organization level and decrease your stress.

For me they decrease stress because I get to look at my todo, my calendar, notebooks, you get the picture all the places where I enter information throughout the week to review what's in there. The review process is simple it's all about gathering the items into Outlook, so that then I know it's been processed, and will be "actionned" eventually when it needs to. The freedom I feel when I have done this right, not more than 60min, when I strickly stick to review/manage, and not do or think, is tremendous. I hit the weekend light as a feather.

So why if I think it's so important, and the results are so good on my stress level, do I only get to do my weekly review one week out of three? I keep on booking myself meetings or call during the time I have set aside for my weekly review. It's easy to book there because when I don't have access to my agenda, I know I don't have anything else booked during that time.

I need to get better at getting the review done weekly, it will help me spend better weekends with the family, and help me do my job better. This time I reserve for the review, has to become non negotiable.

Anyhow try it out, let me know. For references on Review, I'm a big fan of GTD as you know already!