In the shadow of just about everyone is a burgeoning to-do list. Some things are essential, some need to get done eventually. The bigger it gets, the less motivated you can get that you will complete them all.

Like many of you I have one, and I was seeking a way to motivate myself to pare it down. I then recalled a blog post a while back by Andy Wibbels on his concept called 30h30d, or 30 hours in 30 days. The principle is you take your list, identify tasks that are an hour in length, for those that are longer, break them into hour-long pieces, and schedule one a day for the next 30 days. Its beauty is in its straight-forward simplicity.

I started it last Wednesday, and as of today I have completed 7 days and as a result 7 tasks. I must admit not every task was a complete hour (scheduling a doctor appointment) and some took a little longer (integrating Feedburner monetization into my sourcegate technical tips blog), and with these examples you can see there’s a mix of business and personal tasks.

So far so good. My reporting this has a dual purpose – to inform people of this method, and to publicly let people know I am doing it, adding more accountability to this endeavor.

Edited 2/18/2017 - As the original posts and my blog linked in here were no longer valid, I deleted the links. As I wanted to use 30h30d again, I created my own chart based on the picture in this post, and you can get a copy of my 30h30d chart here.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

Business • (3) Comments • Permalink