Which Tasks Can You Complete Quickly?

There is a well-known quote that instructs each of us to "plan your work and work your plan", which provides valuable insights for how to be more successful and better achieve more desired results. With a weekly strategy session, we create a game plan for addressing our priorities through tasks, communications, time commitments and development opportunities, staying on track toward achieving our most important goals via the habit of a daily wrap-up at the end of each day. Yet, there are times when we find that we can do even more than that which we'd planned to accomplish.

Maybe traffic was light and you arrived at your next appointment with a few moments to spare. Maybe one of your meetings ended early, giving you extra minutes before the next commitment. Maybe you had a cancellation, which opened up an unexpected block of time. That time can be a gift for boosting productivity.

If you have no guidance as to what can fit within the available time, you might spend 5 of your 10 available minutes determining your 10-minute tasks, which leaves only 5 minutes to actually get anything done. Alternatively, if you denote within your data-dump of tasks how long each will take, you'll know immediately which take 10 minutes and easily plug what fits into the available time.

Don't lose minutes. Make the most of your time, optimizing the most limited of your resources. Know which of your to-do items can be completed quickly so fewer valuable minutes are wasted determining possible tasks for small windows of available time, whether 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes or another increment.

How do you optimize your task management efforts, filling small windows of time as they become available for accomplishing more?