We can easily turn personal productivity into a question of how do we collect our to-dos, how do we categorize them, and how do we prioritize them. What often gets forgotten is to make time to actually get our to-dos done. This is bad because when we don't carve out time from our schedules for our to-dos, we will likely focus only on the urgent and forget the non-urgent but important tasks. We can also feel extremely overwhelmed as more and more to-dos pile up on top of our existing tasks.

The solution can be as simple as making sure you have 1-2 hours of admin work marked in your weekly schedule.

This is different from setting up reminders for your to-dos. Reminders are great for making sure that the bills get paid in time and we don't forget our deadlines. However, does your reminder app know the best time to remind you? If you get notified by your reminder app in the middle of focused and valuable work, is it good use of your time to interrupt your thinking and flow in order to take care of a chore?

Reserved time slots are different because you can plan around them. They don't interrupt your work. In addition, the act of marking time on your calendar for your to-dos can help you to mentally commit to them.

Reserving time for admin work can still feel a little wrong: it's often not work that creates value or work that's especially meaningful. However, most of our to-dos still need to get done and individual tasks like setting up an investment plan can create a lot of benefits in the long term.

If something is not on your calendar, it's not on your schedule and it's not going to get done.

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