By the book thinking
Structuring your goals means structuring your mind. In a perfect world, we’d have exceptional structure from our school life – but as many of you know, this isn’t the case.
Get into the habit of thinking in manageable tasks you can approach with both a paper trail and a clear head.
Clear heads are the antithesis of procrastination. Paper trails are roadmaps of your mind.
Here are some techniques which have dramatically improved my effectiveness:
Mindmapping
Visually maps thought processes. It’s excellent for weeding out those pesky little tasks the human brain is so good at glossing over, and gives you a paper trail to start formally extracting data from.
If you’re an artist or think visually, it’s a great place to start.
Freemind is a free, open source mind mapping software I absolutely LOVE.
Text lists
Light weight, low overhead task management. That’s right, I’m talking about notepad. Simply alt-tabbing through windows will refocus on tasks at hand, and hey, feels good to delete micro-tasks!
Excellent for short bursts of effective work, and great if you’re feeling apprehensive about approaching a task.
Listing Services
Remember the Milk lets you centralise your tasks, and align goals with daily or weekly objectives. Excellent if you want to just get things done without concern for time.
If you like to think in priorities, use services like RTM.
