How To Plan Your Day for Stress-free Productivity
Thou shalt plan your day before you get on to your work.
Simple and profound, right? No one would disagree! And since it’s easier said than done, this too goes in cold storage like many other such commandments.
There are practical difficulties, most of which arise from the two basic facts that our mind is not good at remembering the work and the world around us changes too fast. You may not remember what priority for the day is. Or you may decide on one thing, but you may not be sure if that’s the best use of your time or if you are missing something. Or you plan but couldn’t follow it because of a sudden change in priorities.
You will need a robust system behind this to make it work for you! The premise behind this approach to daily planning is that, given the dynamics of today’s business world, it is impossible to follow a tightly planned daily schedule. However, that doesn’t mean that one should not plan, but it means that you have to make a flexible plan for the day so that it doesn’t break with small distractions.
- Make your calendar sparse: Your calendar should contain day/time-sensitive tasks only. These are the appointments, that you couldn’t snooze. So, for example, reading a report is a strict no-no for a calendar.
- Make a to-do list: All the goals and tasks other than what went into the calendar should be put on a to-do list, preferably a digital one. You don’t need anything fancy. A regular spreadsheet app is good enough. The only care you need to take is that just one spreadsheet should be the single version of the truth of your work. You might consider using it from the cloud so that it is available from all places where you could be.
- Weekly planning: Every weekend, you would need to spare 30 to 45 minutes to go over your to-do list and identify the probable candidates for the coming week. You need to be more practical here than wishful.
- Daily planning: Now that you have your sparse calendar and the week-specific to-do list, you are well-equipped to do the daily plan. Your calendar shows you the slots that are already booked for you for the day and which are non-negotiable. You need to find the remaining slots for the work items from your to-do list, factoring in your calendar items, lunch, and other breaks. You would extract the day-specific to-do list, from your week-specific to-do list, based on the time slots you have and the priorities.
Let us make you oops-proof
The human mind is quite peculiar: it’s brilliant at connecting ideas and generating interesting thoughts, yet it often struggles to remember them. If you want to act on those ideas later, you must develop the habit of capturing them in one designated place. This is especially important because we often get our best ideas when we’re away from our desks. That’s why it makes sense to have this “single designated place” on your smartphone.
The idea is to quickly collect these thoughts in a mobile app before they slip away, and then process them later when you’re back at your desk. While there are many apps for this, you need something lightweight that allows you to add an item quickly, without unnecessary steps. Google Keep is a great option, known for its simplicity and effective features.
Google Keep is available for both iOS and Android, and it also has a browser version so you can access your lists interchangeably from your computer. Setting up the app is easy—just create a list called something like “Catch All,” where you’ll store everything: tasks, ideas for social media posts, things to buy, or something to research later.
The next step is to establish a ritual, preferably in the morning, to process your “Catch All” list at your desk. While you may complete some tasks immediately, the main goal is to sort them. Some items might go on a to-do list, while others may land in separate lists, like writing ideas.
Once you have Google Keep, you can use it for other purposes too. Here are a few ideas:
- Meeting agenda items: Maintain a running list for quick reference during meetings.
- Meeting actions: Capture actions from meetings and process them during your morning routine, just like the “Catch All” list.
- Errands: If you’re not out and about frequently, keep a list of things to do when you’re out so you can maximize productivity.
- Checklists: Create recurring checklists for things like monthly payments or travel packing.
For better organization, you can set different colors or backgrounds for your lists, making it easier to find what you need quickly. And don’t forget to pin your “Catch All” task list at the top for easy access and smooth operation. You can even reorder lists, keeping the most important ones at the top.
This simple setup, combined with the habit of consistently capturing and processing your thoughts, will go a long way in helping you stay ahead of your responsibilities and remain stress-free.
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(Originally published in Times of India on September 10, 2022)
You too could be Organized with your work!
Have you seen a chef performing on a cookery show? Why do you think they perform so well? The reason is that they could fetch all that they needed in a moment. Their kitchen is perfectly organized – at least when they are on the show! Similarly, being organized with your work and work material is the key to sustained and stress-free personal productivity.
There is a popular belief that people are born either organized or unorganized, which is not true. If you too feel so, ask yourself this – When you plan to go out, do you get your car key easily. Yes, right? Why is it so? Because you keep the key at a certain place when you come back from a drive. That’s enough to prove that you are organized. It’s not about genetic makeup but it is about a deliberate decision of being organized about something. It’s prudent to be organized with the things that matter to you.
So how do you get the capability to fetch whatever you need for your work in a moment? As we saw that it is possible only when you plan places for all your work material. You need a singular, known place that is easy to access for every kind of thing that you deal with. In absence of this, you lose precious time in searching for what you want, or even worse, work couldn’t be done on time because you could not locate the required material.
As we deal mostly with digital artifacts, the central element of your organization of work material is a well-planned hierarchical file folder structure on your computer or cloud. You will have folders to store specific kinds of material, say, project proposals, design documents, invoices, notes, presentations, and so on. Keep the retrieval in mind when you create such a structure or name the folders. Keep experimenting with it till you settle on the best arrangement.
The next thing you need to know is the DRIFT principle – Do it RIght the First Time.
When you are at work as the work material comes to you through all kinds of communication, you will organize each piece of it in the right place as and when you receive it. Once you know that you will need something in the future, you need to ask yourself where would you look for it, and that’s the place where you should put it. This is what I am calling the DRIFT principle.
In addition to the file folder structure on your computer, there are other artifacts that you may want to build with the DRIFT mindset, such as –
- A to-do list for work to organize your tasks in it
- Checklists to organize steps to do or verify certain things
- Running lists to organize things dynamically
- Browser bookmarks to organize the web resources
- App shortcuts for most frequently used Apps
- A Read later App for online reading material
- “Watch Later” lists on YouTube for video recommendations that keep coming all the time
- Wish list of books that you might want to read
Armed with such a simple but powerful DRIFT mindset, you will be able to beat the stress and be highly productive.
(Originally published in Times of India on August 28, 2022)
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Dos and Don’ts of Digital Calendar App
Digital calendar Apps are now ubiquitous and are critical for managing our schedules. Calendar Apps are easy to learn and use, but only if you use them with proper discipline, you could derive multifold benefits from them.
It’s an irony but most people end up underusing and overusing the calendar App at the same time, albeit in different scenarios, that we will talk about in this post. But before we get there, you should be able to distinguish between the two types of tasks:
A. Tasks that must be done on a specific day or time, say, attending a meeting. These are the tasks that you could do only at that specific schedule and if you miss them, you miss them for good. let’s call them time-sensitive tasks. Calendar App should be used to manage only these time-sensitive tasks
B. Tasks that must be done ASAP but not on a specific day or time, say preparing for a presentation for a meeting with an important client. These are important tasks but you have some room to negotiate the schedule with yourself. A calendar is not the right place for managing these time-insensitive tasks.
Overuse scenario:
There is a common practice to secure important tasks to the calendar, irrespective of if they are time-sensitive or not. Although a task is important if it has nothing to do with a specific time slot and it can be done flexibly at some other time, as well, the Calendar is not the right place for it. This is what I call an overuse of a calendar App. As you see, you are using Calendar App as your to-do list, in this case.
If you put such time-insensitive tasks into the calendar App, you would likely end up snoozing them, multiple times, for various reasons, say you were drawn into some unplanned but important activity during that schedule.
It’s not just that. Once you accumulate several snoozed events, you start losing time-sensitive tasks in that clutter, which is quite risky. Thus, we need to maintain the sanctity of the calendar events, such that, a notification about an event should signal you to drop everything and attend that event.
The pertinent question then is where do the time-insensitive tasks go and the answer is, your to-do list, which you will look at for every time slot that you get to pick up an item as your next action.
Underuse scenario:
Several tasks are time sensitive but you do not enter them into your calendar either because you think you would remember them anyway or you think that they are not that important. This is what I call underuse of the calendar App.
Let’s say you need to take some medication, every alternate Sunday. It makes sense to create a recurring event. If this is not placed in the calendar, you would likely forget to do it, at least some time, if not all the time.
There would be several events that are day-specific but may not have a specific time to do them. They should also go in the calendar and as the day arrives, and you get the notification, you would either do it right away or add it to your to-do list to wait for the right time slot.
The bottom line is that the criteria to add a task to the calendar is NOT whether the task is important or not, but it is, whether the task is time sensitive or not.
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How to complete online courses along with the juggle of your Life
Learning! It’s at the core of the 7th habit of Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Effective People – Sharpen the Saw! You need to continually enhance your greatest asset, which is You.
The advent of MOOCs has revolutionized the learning space and has made it easy to learn. You don’t have to struggle to find good courses in the area of your interest nor do you have to depend on your employer to arrange training. You get to register for sophisticated courses from top universities in the world in just a few clicks and no money at Coursera. You will find many other MOOC providers if Coursera doesn’t offer a topic, albeit at some fee. Yes, we are indeed spoilt for choice. But this has created a new problem.
As easy as it is to register for a course, it’s hard to complete it with the ongoing juggle in our lives. We don’t have the luxury of time. In fact, we don’t even remember when we had it last! So, it’s not surprising if you have several incomplete online courses in your name. But it doesn’t have to be so. If you deliberately organize yourself, you could indeed complete the courses and enjoy their benefits.
So, here is a 7-step plan to complete online courses along with the juggle of your Life
- Make the content omnipresent – The first action must be to organize the course content so as to make it handy. This would mean a few things. Add a Bookmark to the course web page in your computer browser – preferably in the bookmarks bar. Also, let your browser “Remember me”, so that you don’t waste time typing your credentials to get in. If you have set your browser to share bookmarks across all your devices, you will have to do nothing to get the bookmarks in your Smartphone/Tab browser, but otherwise do it explicitly.
- Eat the elephant – The only way to eat an elephant is by taking one bite at a time! Do not wait for a shiny day, that you will spare to do this only one thing! The day will never come! It’s like trying to swallow the entire elephant. Be content with what you can achieve in smaller pockets of time. Thankfully these courses are already divided into small units.
- Grab those little unused pockets of time– Now that we have decided to consume the content in smaller, bits, the next question is, when? If the course doesn’t use a lot of presentation material, you could do it along with other physical rituals. Here are my top favorites – evening walks, chopping vegetables, and exercise sessions. Connect your headphone, start the unit and get on with the physical activity that requires no specific mental focus. The course starts moving inch by inch, each day! In short, connect the coursework to one or more of your existing rituals.
- Track the course completion – Most courses are expected to follow a certain order. In either case, prepare a tracking table where you could keep marking the completed units. This mode of tracking helps in a way to even pat your own back, on your progress and get motivated to push forward the work. Create a dedicated folder for this course on your computer to keep this table and everything you produce.
- Keep an eye on takeaways – After each section, you will have to ponder on the key takeaways. It would be best if you kept collecting those points while you are undergoing the course. Put them together section-wise in a document
- Get The Big Picture – Once you complete all the sections of the course, you will need to get a big picture of all the lessons together. It can come in many forms, but the one that I like is Mind Map. You could create a couple of mind maps that slice and dice the whole information and help to form your mind with respect to this knowledge!
- Let the Rubber meet the road – It’s one thing to gain knowledge and it is quite another to apply it. You should find avenues to apply the knowledge. You should set some relevant goals and plan for them. Now, a train of elephants is walking toward your dining table! But you know now how to eat an elephant, so get all those goals and the steps required to attain them in your work management system and track them towards their completion.
Happy Learning
How To Manage Your Passwords Reliably And Securely
You must have lived this moment in your school days: you prepared for your written test but skipped that one tough chapter. You get the question paper in your hand, scan it nervously — and your heart skips a beat. The very question you hoped would stay away is right there, staring back at you.
A similar feeling returns in adulthood when you visit a website after months — and it hits you with the dreaded prompt:
“What’s the password?”
You try a few combinations, grow increasingly anxious, and finally click that little lifeline: “Forgot password?” Now begins the tedious journey of resetting it all over again.
Why do we forget passwords so easily?
It all comes down to our limited working memory. Unless you memorize passwords the way you learned multiplication tables, you’re unlikely to recall them — especially if you don’t use them often. Yet, today’s digital world demands credentials for every service, every app, every website.
So, what’s the way out?
The Tech Fix: Password Managers
One reliable solution is to use a password manager. These tools store all your passwords securely, allowing you to remember just one master password. They can even generate strong passwords for you.
However, many of these services work on a freemium model. For serious usage — syncing across devices, advanced security, password sharing — you’ll likely need a paid plan. And even then, some people feel uneasy about entrusting all their credentials to a single service.
The DIY Method: Memory-Saving + Cryptic Storing
If you’re looking for a simpler, low-cost approach, here’s one that blends logic with a bit of creativity:
- Minimize your user IDs.
Whenever possible, use a single email ID as your username across sites. It reduces chaos and makes tracking easier. - Minimize the number of passwords.
Take advantage of “Sign in with Google / Facebook / Twitter.” By authenticating through these platforms, you can access many sites with just one password. - Set your own login hierarchy.
Don’t pick a provider randomly. Define a clear order: for example, try Google first, then Facebook, then Twitter (X) — and remember the passwords of these providers well (I’ll tell you soon, how). - Create logical password series.
For websites that don’t allow third-party logins and require frequent changes, design a keyboard-based password pattern. You might have to go for a complex pattern, as modern password validation systems won’t allow passwords like qwerty123. Shift the pattern for each new version, and just remember the current one in the sequence. - Be clever with passwords for static sites.
For sites that rarely require password changes, create hard-to-guess passwords — but avoid obvious ones like pet names or birthdates. Use creative derivatives that only you can decode.
Storing Passwords Safely (Without a Manager)
Now that you have multiple passwords in use, where do you store them?
The answer: a cloud document — but with precautions.
- Create a document on Google Drive or OneDrive.
Do not name it “passwords.” Pick a discreet name that gives you a private hint about its contents. - Log details cryptically.
Each line should include:- A cryptic name for the website
- A disguised version of your user ID
- A password hint, not the password itself
Make sure the hint makes sense only to you — not to anyone else, not even AI.
- Make it searchable.
As the list grows, you’ll use “Ctrl+F” often — so keep the code names searchable and consistent. - Add a bookmark.
Create a shortcut to this document in your browser’s bookmarks bar. That way, it’s always one click away when you forget a password. - Update before changing.
Whenever you’re about to reset a password, update the hint first, then proceed to change it on the website. This prevents the common mistake of forgetting to record the new one.
Like any habit, this might feel cumbersome at first. But with a little discipline, this system becomes second nature — and more importantly, a huge boost to your productivity.
Not being able to log in when needed — especially in a deadline-driven, security-conscious world — is a major blocker. Strengthening your personal password system may be one of the simplest productivity upgrades you’ll ever make.
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