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There are a lot of things that I work on, and many more I'm trying to work on as well. Trying to handle all of this often makes me feel like a headless chicken: running around a lot but ultimately accomplishing nothing. To combat this helpless feeling, I've decided to manage the situation with two simple resolutions, which should improve my quality of life and might help yours as well.

1. A time for every purpose

Often, I find myself working on several of my projects on the same day. The mental context switching this requires cuts down on my productivity, as it takes a while to clear my mind of one project and ramp up on another. It might not be much time, perhaps 10 to 15 minutes each time I switch from one to another, but if I'm working on several projects in one day, especially if I go back and forth between them, that time adds up quite rapidly.

The trick here is to find a time for each project or activity you need to do. If I restrict myself to working on two projects a day, one in the morning and another in the afternoon, that reduces me to one context switch, and the time spent in it can be put to use making myself a nice little lunch.

2. Weekly personal review

When you are spending a lot of time running around like a chicken without a head, looking back at the time wasted you start to wonder if you ever got anything accomplished. A weekly personal review can help fight that feeling of wasted time.

It's pretty simple to do. Look back on everything you did over the past week (take and keep notes whenever you get something done, if you need to). Did you accomplish any of the tasks you (or others) set for you? How many? And how can you improve the percentage of completed tasks?

Once you've gotten that worked out, now look to the week ahead. What do you need to get done? What do you expect others to ask of you? Plan out your short term goals, and you'll have something for comparing results with next week's review.

Putting it in action

I've decided that Sunday is the best day for me to do these personal reviews. Of all days of the week, it's the one where I am least productive (by choice; I need one day off of every seven) which makes it a great time to reflect on what I've done and what I will do. With Monday, I'll be working on particular projects only at certain times (barring project-related emergencies), which will make it easier to manage my time.

If you find yourself overworked and feeling helpless about it, perhaps these two resolutions would be good for you, too!

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