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Make real life into a game - your To Do list has never been so much fun...

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EpicWin - the iPhone to-do list app, turn your tasks into quests and level-up your life.

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It's visual, has built in alarms, and you can share diaries with other people

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TimeTree - Connect your moments. Connect to the future.

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If you connect your time with those who share your interests and the people you hang out with, you will be able to plan an even more outstanding future.

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It's an app blocker for your phone with a timer, it's free, and you can choose to donate to build a real forest

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Forest is an app helping you stay away from your smartphone and stay focused on your work.

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More Time Management Advice from the Graphic Design Gurus!

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More Time Management Advice from the Graphic Design Gurus!

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2nd Year Gurus Advice on Time Management

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Wunderlist - for getting organised.

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My Homework app - for managing your workload

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myHomework Student Planner & Digital Hall Pass System

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myHomework is an online student planner with Digital Hall Passes, Flex Period Management, Rewards Points in a complete planner system.

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Swipes - an app for organising To Do lists.

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swipes - to do & task list. plan & achieve goals.

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‎Swipes - To do & Task list. Plan & Achieve goals.

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‎Swipes has been voted as one of the world's top 5 productivity apps with a Best New Startup prize by Evernote and a nomination for a Webby Award. Swipes helps you automatically collect all your tasks in one place, organize them according to your personal priorities and then work on a single task at...

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Trello is a useful app for organising multiple projects and lists

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Capture, organize, and tackle your to-dos from anywhere | Trello

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Make the impossible, possible with Trello. The ultimate tool to boost your productivity. Escape the clutter and chaos—stay efficient with Inbox, Boards, and Planner from anywhere, even on mobile.

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This is a great method for dealing with distractions

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This is a great method for dealing with distractions

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A great metaphor that helps with prioritizing!

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Tim Urban TED Talk on Procrastination

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Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator | Tim Urban | TED

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Unstuck is an award-winning app, online learning platform, and content site that helps you understand what's holding you back and how to move forward.

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Try this if you get distracted when you're writing

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Cold Turkey Writer won't you quit until you reach your goal. Like, literally will not quit!

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Interesting article on why it's difficult not to choose urgent over important tasks 

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Interesting article on why it's difficult not to choose urgent over important tasks 

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Back in the days when American presidents didn't spend literally every waking hour gratifying their appetite for cruelty or cheeseburgers, Dwight Eisenhower came up with a classic time management technique, later named the Eisenhower Matrix. (If you've read one chapter of one productivity book, you've encountered it.) His point, in short, was that every potential activity is either urgent or not, and either important or not. Life's primary challenge is to make time for the important stuff that isn't urgent, even though it doesn't feel pressing, while avoiding the urgent stuff that isn't important, even though it does feel pressing.

Although Eisenhower did also create Nasa, his insight isn't rocket science. We're drawn to urgent tasks because they tend to be easier or more straightforward, and because the payoffs are immediate: keeping your boss happy or paying next month's rent, say, as opposed to realising your grandest ambitions or fostering long-term social change. Plus, it's just nice to get them off your plate, so you're free of that nagging sense of tasks undone - even though the end result, if you keep acting that way, is a life filled up with trivialities.

But a recent study in the Journal of Consumer Research confirms what I've long suspected: when urgency rears its head, we become even less rational than Eisenhower knew. Researchers created situations in which they eliminated all those justifications for choosing the urgent over the important - level of difficulty, immediacy of payoff, etcetera - and found people still chose the more urgent option. In other words, even if some task on your to-do list isn't easier, and isn't a better way to please your boss or keep yourself solvent or anything else - even if there's no reason to do it other than that someone's persuaded you it's "urgent" - you'll still be biased in its favour.

When it comes to getting our priorities straight, we're like the target market for those dodgy ads for commemorative royal wedding plates or battery-powered avocado-slicers, available at a discount while stocks last. It's fake urgency, yet it works: act now, or you'll miss out! Oh, you didn't need or want it in the first place? Never mind! Act now!

Yet merely knowing about our tendency to prioritise urgency over importance rarely leads to better choices. That's because the knowing is intellectual, whereas urgency is an emotional or even bodily matter: you act from a twinge of discomfort, a clench in the stomach, a racing heart. The best trick I've found is to practise consciously distrusting those feelings: to learn to treat the sense of urgency as a sign something probably isn't the best use of your time. (You might still decide to act on it, of course, but you'll be doing so more rationally.) Besides, even when there's a legitimate reason for acting on urgency, you're probably overestimating its significance. As the author Tim Ferriss has written, it's worth learning to "let small bad things happen", so that big good things eventually come to pass. There are many situations in which you need to act fast if you want to avoid a negative outcome. But if that negative outcome doesn't matter much, avoiding it might not be the best use of your time.

Philosopher Damon Young's short book Distraction explains at the deepest level why we're so often tempted to flee the meaningful for the trivial.

Topics

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Focus on what's important, not just urgent | Oliver Burkeman

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Back in the days when American presidents didn't spend literally every waking hour gratifying their appetite for cruelty or cheeseburgers, Dwight Eisenhower came up with a classic time management technique, later named the Eisenhower Matrix. (If you've read one chapter of one productivity book, you've encountered it.)

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Getting started on tasks you really, really don't want to do...

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Getting started on tasks you really, really don't want to do...

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It takes just 5 minutes!

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Time Management & Procrastination Slides

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Time Management & Procrastination Slides

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Procrastination & Time Management for Bb

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Find out more about the Healthy Mind Platter

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Basic GANTT Charts

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Your tomorrow self may help...

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Find out more about how to write an effective list

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Time management tips from the Graphic Design Gurus!

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Time management tips from the Graphic Design Gurus!