After you have a good base for note tracking (see blog posts about Google Keep), then you can use the information in the following steps: scheduling the action items or get the things done.
Google Calendar
I am using the Calendar app from Google for this, though I have tried plenty before and I am still trying new ones. (I will write another post about the tools I am using in another post).
How to schedule your day
You should split the day in different parts: morning ritual, lunch and after lunch activities, dinner and night items and the free time between these.
In this way you can make sure you are doing everything you want to do on a daily basis. For example I tend to clean my flat in the evening and in the morning I always take a shower after my morning physical activity. Thus I stick to my habits.
The free windows
Here you can schedule whatever has priority in you todos list.
I usually open Keep in a browser tab, Calendar in another tab and I just populate my agenda with tasks I have to do (Tip: use CTRL + TAB navigates to the next browser tab, CTRL + SHIFT + TAB navigates to the previous one). I start with the high priority ones and if there is some spare time left in the day I leave that free time to my future self to decide what to do about it.
Don’t allocate all the free time, cause you cannot expect one task to finish in the estimated time.
Another thing: split the big tasks, the ones over 1h long into smaller descriptive pieces that can be countable as progress to your big task. If I have to do a project at Uni that would take a couple of hours, I usually add subtasks in the Calendar: investigate the tools needed to finish the task (10min) , investigate similar projects(15 min), setup project (30 min) and so on. Then I can focus on finishing a smaller piece of the puzzle.
Moreover this splitting works best for motivation as you see tasks fulfilling and you see progress. Best anti procrastination framework for me.
Ideas
After you have small windows in your agenda, then you could apply even more granular splitting.
Use Pomodoro technique.
Other remark would be to take breaks. 2 minutes to verify the Facebook news feed, 1 minute to verify the emails, 1 minute to text back someone who wrote me. Value your breaks as much as possible. Don’t waste the time.
You have a strong delimitation between task, you know you are done with one, then just treat yourself and appreciate by taking a small break.
Review your agenda. You can empirically see now how you spend time and you can now ask why and what can you do in order to improve.
