The time management process is essential if you want to be an effective leader or manager. There are professional events such as meetings, project deadlines, planning sessions, and other important tasks that you need to track. In addition, you also have personal events such as parent/teacher conferences, vacations, grocery shopping, car maintenance, among others. Prioritizing and synchronizing all these events requires a system in order to accomplish them all.

Over a period of 24 years, I have read many books on time management and prioritization, including “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and “First Things First,” both by Stephen R. Covey. These two books are a must if you really want to understand the time management process. I have also read “Managing Management Time” by William Oncken, “Getting Things Done” by David Allen, “Time Management from the Inside Out” by Julie Morgenstern, Ryder Carroll’s Bullet Journal, among others.

After trying different systems over the years, the one that I have used in the last seven years is the Bullet Journal concept, incorporating what I have learned from Stephen Covey and David Allen in order to prioritize events and tasks.

Here is how my system looks like. I used Moleskine or Leuchtturm dotted format notebooks with at least three ribbon markers (task page, weekly calendar, and daily logs). You can also use a paperclip to mark pages of interest.

1. After the presentation, I taped a 12-month calendar (6×5) that I printed from the internet for free. I wanted to have a 12-month snapshot for reference.

2. Table of Contents or index using two pages. Example:

January Tasks: 5 (indicating the page number)

January Calendar: 6-15

January Daily Logs: 16-22

February Tasks: 23

February Daily Calendar: 24-31

February Daily Logs: 32-40 (sometimes I added a note such as “VIP” visit page 36 to highlight where to find information for that particular visit)

3. Future Logs using four pages with three months spaces per page to capture plans, etc.  Future Logs (example of page 1 Jan-Mar)

4. Monthly Tasks. One page before starting weekly calendar. Here I capture all tasks for that month and highlighted which one I was doing and the ones that I delegated. I used “X” when a task was deleted and an “arrow” indicating the tasks that were moved to the next month.

5. The next eight or so pages were my weekly calendar.   Best way to see all my daily events.

6. My daily logs started immediately after my weekly calendar. These were my note taking pages, brainstorm sessions, etc. As many pages as needed but not that many if you follow the Bullet Journal concept. I probably used about 8-10 on a monthly basis.  

This was my basic notebook layout, and then I applied some of the time management and prioritization principles that I learned over the years to manage the system. One, in particular, was the “2 minutes or less rule”. David Allen teaches that as you assess each task or action and decide what’s the next action, if the task takes less than 2 minutes, then just do the task. It doesn’t make sense to add it to the “to-do” list.

Regardless of which system you use, my advice is that you use only one system and make it work for you. It becomes complicated when you try to use multiple systems.

If you are undecided on which system to use, my hope is that this post will help you in your decision-making process.

• Leadership