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color-coding

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organizational system and to-do list

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planner with a weekly spread

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These days, it seems like we could all benefit from an assistant who manages our time, effort, appointments and focus.

Life is busy, and free time is hard to come by.

With smartphones and computers, there are apps that can get you a lot closer to a lifestyle that resembles having your own time management professional there to guide you from task to task throughout the day.
Scheduling, Prioritizing and Organizing

Any.do -This minimalistic interface shows you the things you need to accomplish today, tomorrow and points further into the future. At the start of every day, it walks you through a review of the things you prioritized yesterday to ensure they are still things you want to accomplish today. You can download the app from iTunes or Google Play (for Android), or onto your desktop.

Habitica -Video games are considered the antithesis of productivity, but Habitica is trying to change that. It gamifies productivity, so that the more you get done, the more experience points you gain. More points means moving to a higher level where you can have more fun with other users' in-game characters. It is available on iTunes or Google Play (for Android).

30/30 -This free app allows you to break from rigid scheduling. You create tasks, tell the app how much time you'd like to spend on each one and tracks your time investment, so you know the things you're spending too much time and effort on. It seamlessly handles interruptions too, so you don't have to block time for any one specific goal. You can find it on iTunes or Google Play.

Making Lists and Tracking Time

Wunderlist -Checklists are like steroids for your productivity. This app allows you to collaborate with other Wunderlist users (in case you're working on projects with different people), and use it to create reminders so you're not checking it throughout the day. The app is available for mobile devices (iTunes and Google Play), Windows and Mac for desktops, Kindle Fire, and as an extension for Chrome.

Inbox by Gmail -Turning Gmail's inbox into a to-do list (which gets sorted by the category of the task), Inbox integrates perfectly with other Google apps, like Google Calendar and Google Drive, to make sure you have all the resources you need to get stuff done. Mobile users can download the app from iTunes and Google Play.

To-Doist Karma - Similar to Habitica, this app tracks your productivity like experience points in a game. It renders your effort into a visual graph that shows you when you're most productive and least productive, and it awards you karma points based on everything you get done throughout the day. The app is available for mobile devices (iTunes and Google Play), Windows and Mac for desktops, Kindle Fire, and as an extension for Chrome, Gmail and Microsoft Outlook.

Blocking Out Distractions and Staying Focused

Self Control App -We all procrastinate. That's why Self Control exists. It blocks access to the Internet (or certain apps of your choosing) for a set period of time during the day. It is available through Google Play and as a Chrome extension.

FocusWriter -Computers and phones are distraction machines. FocusWriter combats that by blocking out your entire screen with an empty page. Now you have no other option but to write. What's more, you can customize the page for whatever mood you're in and set timers on the program so you're not watching the clock. Mac and Windows users can download the app onto their desktops.

Cold Turkey -This app keeps you from visiting attention-stealing sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for set amounts of time. You can find the app on Google Play.

Tomato Timer -A browser-based app that makes using the Pomodoro productivity method easier than ever. The technique involves working for 25-minute blocks and taking 5-minute breaks in between. Tomato Timer focuses that functionality into a simple, minimalistic browser page. It is available as an extension for Chrome.

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Time Management Apps for Online Students | New England College Online

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These days, it seems like we could all benefit from an assistant who manages our time, effort, appointments and focus. Life is busy, and free time is hard to come by. With smartphones and computers, there are apps that can get you a lot closer to a lifestyle that resembles having your own time management professional there to guide you from task to task throughout the day.

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Ink + Volt - notebooks, planners, and tools designed to bring you closer to your goals

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Since launching The Spark Notebook, I have been talking a lot about productivity.

The goal of our notebook is to capture all of your great ideas, and to make you more successful at the same time. We believe the cornerstone of success is doing work that matters, which can only be achieved with thoughtful planning.

And that brings us to the topic of this blog post - time blocking. This is probably my favorite productivity hack, since it really helps you pack as much good stuff as you can into one day.

I first read about time blocking on Cal Newport's blog where he discussed the importance of doing deep work. He describes his daily method for allocating all the time in your day and warns against uncontrolled time.

Another statement he made that really resonated with me was:

Using your inbox to drive your daily schedule might be fine for the entry-level or those content with a career of cubicle-dwelling mediocrity, but the best knowledge workers view their time like the best investors view their capital, as a resource to wield for maximum returns.
Cal Newport

You spend so much time working. If you want to be truly productive, though, you need to make sure that your time is spent in the most optimal way.

How does it work?

Time blocking is really just a method for planning your day. And the reason it works is because it forces you to focus on your top priorities for an amount of time that reflects their importance.
Step 1. Identify your priorities
What are the most important things on your plate? To really get clear on your top priorities, you have to think big picture. I start with my yearly goals and work backwards from there.

What are the 5 most important things I want to do this year?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Then I like to look backward, and then forward. The following questions are a great guide:

1. How did things go last month; what did I accomplish?

2. What needs to get done this month?

3. What long term goals can I make progress on (revisit your yearly goals here)?

I think it helps to think about your monthly work as a pie chart. Are you spending 30-40% answering email? If building a new skill is really important to you, but you are only allocating a couple hours per month, maybe you need to rethink your time allocations.

If you outline what is important and how much time you think you should spend on it, you can get a nice break down of your time.

For example, here are my work priorities and their order of importance for November 2014.

1. Sales - 30%

2. Notebook Kickstarter - 25%

3. Day-to-day Tactics - 15%

4. Technical Improvements - 5%

5. Pop Star Content - 5%

6. Manager Dashboard Product Development - 5%

7. Professional Growth - 5%

Step 2. What do you need to do this week?
If you have clarity on your monthly goals, then planning your week is all about combining the things you must do with what you have set out to do.

I like to do weekly planning because it helps me balance all of the things that always seem to "come up" with my big picture priorities. Most of us work in an environment where things are always in flux - projects get canceled, operations take a high priority, your creative juices don't flow, or you end up spending too much time in meetings.

As a result I find it helpful to establish my minimum bar for what must get done, and then set some stretch items that I hope to accomplish. For me this is around 10 things, which is about 2 things per day.

If you have big things on your list, I would strongly suggest breaking them into pieces that will take less than 4 hours each. Chunks bigger than that make it harder to plan realistically.

In the Spark Notebook, we designed our Weekly Goals to make this easier.
Step 3. Plan your day
Once you have your weekly goals set, it is time to start time blocking.

Depending on how much things fluctuate during your week, it can help to do time blocking each day (either at the end of the previous day or first thing in the morning - whatever works better for you), or at the start of the week.

When I worked as a CTO with a big team, I couldn't have planned things for a whole week - too much was changing every day. However, as a CEO running my own company, I seem to be able to plan my week a bit more reliably.

Essentially each day I layout the things I want to accomplish in the morning, the afternoon and the night.

I use our new Weekly Outlook from our notebook to plan my time, but you can use any notebook or sheet of paper. Some people even like to use an online calendar like Google Calendar by creating appointment placeholders for when they plan to do the work. Using an online calendar also has the side benefit of actually blocking the time off so other people can't schedule over it.

Keep in mind, though, if you have whole days blocked off, it can be really frustrating for coworkers who want to schedule a meeting.

Step 4. Execute
Now the hard part - sticking with it and getting things done.

Here are some tips that I find useful:

When it is time to work on something focus on just that task. No email. No social media.

Schedule your tasks when you are best equipped to complete them. I write and do the hardest work in the morning. I save working out until later in the day when I hit a plateau with my mental activity. I send sales emails on Wednesday, because people tend to be less busy then. I also don't schedule anything else in that time block typically because I hate doing it so much it takes me a lot longer than it should.

Pack in more than you think you will get done. It is always easy to move things until the later in the week. However, if I complete everything early I tend to like to take long breaks (I am a natural procrastinator) :). As a result I tend to pack as much as I can in a block so I can be sure to get as much done as possible.

Put your personal stuff in there too! If you have to go to the dry cleaner, set aside the time. If you cook dinner, then add that to your agenda. You have one life and combining your work and your personal items into one view makes sense, that way you aren't forgetting to make time for things like eating and taking care of yourself.

Hope this helps you!

I love this method of planning because whenever I find myself done with something I always know the answer to "what's next?". It is amazing to me how motivating that is, because even if I don't feel like doing something I will often stick with my plan since I know the rest of the week is taken up with other items. For instance, writing this blog post; initially I wasn't feeling terribly inspired but I managed to get it done because I knew it was important and I had set aside this time.

Do you have other tips and tricks? Maybe you use time blocking a little differently? If so, leave your thoughts in the comments and we can add them to the post.

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Since launching The Spark Notebook, I have been talking a lot about productivity. The goal of our notebook is to capture all of your great ideas, and to make you more successful at the same time. We believe the cornerstone of success is doing work that matters, which can only be achieved with thoughtful planning.

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Time Management Tips for Online Students

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Time flexibility is a big part of the draw of an online course provider like The American Academy. Here are a few time management tips to keep in mind.

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A few years ago, my to-do list was an endless source of frustration. At the end of every day, it seemed like it had more items on it than when I started. I never seemed to get it all done.

So, in an effort to understand what was going on, I began to track how I was spending my time and saw some interesting patterns emerge. As I learned more, I started applying a productivity-changing principle to my daily "get it done" list: time-blocking.

Time-blocking is essentially organizing your day in a series of time slots. Instead of writing a list of tasks that take as long as they take, with a time-blocked approach, each of these time periods is devoted to a task or tasks. It immediately lets you see where you're being unrealistic about your time and keep yourself focused on what you're supposed to be doing.

Giving every hour a job typically lets you make much more efficient use of your time, says Georgetown University professor Cal Newport, author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. "This follows because it allows you to schedule work for the time where it makes the most sense-batching together small things, tackling hard things when you have the long stretches to make progress, and so on. The other advantage is that it provides you more accurate feedback on how much free time you actually have most days and how long certain recurring tasks actually take," he says.

Why Time Block?

Organizing your day through time blocks instead of to-dos makes sense because of the discipline and order it applies to your tasks, says time management expert Kevin Kruse, author of 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management. Research by productivity blog I Done This found that 41% of to-do list items are never completed. In Kruse's own research he says the high-performers he interviewed never talked about their "to-do lists," but instead talked about their calendars and how they were organized.

Organizing your time instead of your tasks also has psychological benefits, Kruse says. There is also a psychological reason why time-blocking makes more sense. In what is known as the Zeigarnik effect, which basically states that we remember what we haven't done better than what we have done, and uncompleted tasks weigh on us. "This can lead to stress and insomnia. However, when we have all of our tasks placed into a specific date, time, and duration, we sleep more soundly knowing everything that needs to get done is in its place," Kruse says.

So, if you're ready to give it a shot, pull out your calendar and keep these tips in mind.

Pay Attention to Cycles

Before you start slotting in tasks every 30 minutes or hour, think about how your energy and work both flow, says business strategist David Horsager, CEO of the Trust Edge Leadership Institute, and an avid time-blocker. Are there work cycles that could affect how much uninterrupted time you will have? And what times of day do you have the most energy or are best suited to do the tasks you need to do?

For example, if you know that Fridays are typically very busy in your office, you might want to allow more slack in your schedule than you ordinarily would. Also, if you know you hit an afternoon slump at 3 p.m., don't schedule work where you're going to need deep focus or creativity, as you're likely to come up short, he says. Look at the times of day when you're at your best and least likely to be disturbed and, as much as you can, plan your work accordingly.

"Don't schedule a hard task in a time of day where you typically lag, and don't schedule a big task in a small amount of time. Wishful thinking can't change the reality of your schedule," Newport adds.

Allot Enough Time

"We chronically underestimate how long things will take," Kruse says. So, we are constantly running over our time allocations and not getting to the things we have on our schedule. Kruse suggests including time-block buffer zones. In other words, add one to three 30-minute blocks of time so if you run over, you can bump another appointment into the buffer zone. And if you are on schedule, you can use that buffer time to think and recharge, or to get a jump on another event, Kruse says. If you're chronically running late, revisit the amount of time you're devoting to your tasks.

Offload Distractions

You can be pretty sure that, as you're being so productive in your time blocks, interruptions will try to take their toll, Horsager says. Do your best to eliminate them by turning off push notifications and, if possible, turning off your phone and letting calls go to voicemail. "I keep a stack of Post-it notes nearby so when I think of something else that needs to be done, I just jot it down so I remember it, then keep working on what I'm doing," he says. He and his team also integrate a "power hour"-which is actually a "power 90 minutes"-where employees can focus on their work with no meetings and minimal interruptions, he says.

Make It Flexible

"People's biggest misconception with time-blocking their day is that the goal is to stick with the schedule no matter what," Newport says. A better ways is to rework your time blocks throughout the day as circumstances change. The goal is to make sure they you always have an intentional plan for the time that remains in the workday, he adds.

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Could Time-Blocking Replace Your To-Do List?

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A few years ago, my to-do list was an endless source of frustration. At the end of every day, it seemed like it had more items on it than when I started. I never seemed to get it all done.

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Are you taking online classes this fall? Are you terrified? Lisa Ferguson is answering your viewer questions about how to tackle online classes and distance learning. Watch! Tweet: http://clicktotweet.com/96bWv What are your fears about going to school online? Do you have any tips? Let us know in the comments!

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Taking online classes? WATCH THIS! I spent a year taking classes myself and researching online ed from the student perspective - this video summarizes my findings. This video is about how to determine if online ed is right for you, what factors pose the biggest threat to your success AND how to manage them.