Hello everyone, this is Helen Huang @ Organizing, based in Beijing, China.In order to better learn and practice the YiXiaoNeng Time Management System, after finished publishing 100 Chinese articles, I decided to continue writing and publishing a daily English article in another 100 days based on the "YeWuBin Time Management 100 Episodes" audio program. Today is the 107th day.

Today's topic is: What Kind of Plan Will be Able to Keep up with Changes?

Let's continue our topic of contextual management from the last class!

Here, I have to share with you a critical idea: whether it is time management or task management, primarily speaking, these are all task classifications. After tasks have been classified, we need to make arrangements based on contexts.

So then, what is context? Context is the time available to you, the location you are at and your energy level at a certain time.  Think of it's time, location and energy.

For example, think of a traffic jam.When we are in a traffic jam, we have lots of time but we are confined to the narrow physical space of a vehicle.

Under this circumstance, if you are the driver, it will be more inconvenient to complete tasks. If you are a passenger, you have time, but you're still in a narrow space. In addition, your energy level may be low if you've just completed work.  Or if you're on your way to work, you may be anxious about making it there on time.  Under either of these circumstances, you may not have enough energy to complete certain complex tasks. So what should you do in this particular context?

Actually, under these circumstances, it's most effective to complete simple tasks instead of complex tasks.

For example, if I am not the driver, I will meditate or close my eyes to rest for a while; or I can open my OmniFocus APP to check my contextual lists, such as my phone call list. Then, I will prioritize the phone call list to the most important calls and complete those calls.

When you open and review your lists, it does not mean you must complete all of those tasks. Instead, it's important to choose the tasks that are optimal to complete in the current context – that is the time and location you're in and your current energy level – time, location and energy.

Remember what I said in the last lesson: task classification---that is schedules, lists with deadlines and lists without deadlines, should be further classified into contexts, such as phone calls, at home, or on the computer. These detailed lists, then, form a system.

Although calendar tasks are usually simple and recurring, they must be finished promptly and completely at the time they are scheduled. Therefore, when dealing with them, you need to be serious and in a focused mood.  Don't complete these tasks early or late, but do them on time.  This requires discipline.  Completing them early means it wasn't scheduled properly, and completing them late means that you were not disciplined enough to complete them when assigned.

The second classification lists with a deadline involve tasks don't need to be completed at a specific time, but must be completed before the deadline.  These tasks should be completed before the deadline if possible.

Also, it's important that we do not schedule too many tasks on the list with a deadline. We must still attend to these tasks with discipline and focus since we have put them on our list.  Failure to complete items on the list creates an attitude that it is ok to miss deadlines, which is a flaw that will soon spread to all tasks crippling your discipline and effectiveness.

Tasks without a deadline can be numerous and so must be further arranged into contexts to help organize or handle these tasks.  The key to complete these tasks lies not in the deadline but in the proper classification of these into time, location and energy level.

There are three more classifications that we must understand and use to arrange tasks without a deadline… ranging from the very few critically few important tasks to the important few tasks, and finally to the unimportant many tasks.

In our daily lives, we will frequently encounter emergencies or as Stephen Covey call it: urgent tasks. Handling these urgent tasks requires flexibility in our task management. Therefore, if we arrange too many tasks in our schedules at fixed times that cannot be shifted, we will be overcome with anxiety about all the tasks that must be completed.

This is the power of simple tasks arranged and grouped into appropriate contexts.  We have the ability to complete them efficiently and quickly in their proper contexts relieving us from stress and giving us a sense of flow.

So, today, I want to share with you a quote, “Maintain discipline without losing flexibility.”

The discipline to complete tasks at the given time is never early and never late.

Flexibility means scheduling tasks at the appropriate times and in the right context.  In such a way that allows for other urgent items to be handled without adverse consequence to your scheduled tasks.

Therefore important items are grouped according to context and listed in an agenda, so that even though there is no deadline, there is structure and focus in the organization of these tasks.  Do you see how you create the situation that allows you to best complete these tasks efficiently within its proper context?

Do you remember the 80/20 principle?  It refers to the idea that 80% of outcomes come from 20% of causes.  We can group 80% of our tasks into 20% of context specific groups.  Think about it – is it easier to complete 80 non-urgent tasks without order or structure or deadlines, or to complete 20 sets of tasks arranged according to time, location and energy level?  Can you see how these concepts are working together to optimize your ability to get things done?

Throughout today's lesson, can you straightly see how we cannot rely on our brains to get things done?Remember, this is because our brains are not designed to organize and memorize tasks.

It is easy for us to arrange three fruits according to their sizes, but it becomes more difficult to do that among seven fruits. So, you can see that our brain is neither good at memorizing, nor at managing numerous and complex tasks.And of course, our tasks and responsibilities are far more complex than making a comparison between the size of a watermelon and that of a lemon.

So, then, how can we pick out the critical items – the 20% of tasks that we must devote our attention to and focus? Well it is difficult.

So in summary, write all of your tasks down and classify them according to one of the three classification methods: schedules, lists with deadlines and lists without deadlines. Then, complete the tasks according to schedules at their appropriate time, by releasing them from our brain's energy, allowing us to focus on those based on contexts.  This optimizes the use of our brain to do what it was designed to do – Act. And in doing do, it brings out the best of us.

Since it's hard for our brain to organize, classify and manage tasks, what should we do?We can rely on an outside system, which includes mobile phones, computers and even paper and pen. Paper and pen are so cheap that they are incredibly suitable for you in this busy and modern society.

OK, that's all for this class. 

Thanks very much being with me together today. Have a wonderful day!