As part of my quest for productivity, I read many articles and books on the various aspects of time management. I get frustrated from time to time, because I think a lot of the authors miss the main point.
For example, I have been reading recently about building a better task list. And I’ve discovered that most task advice is worthless.
Why? Because 90% (probably higher) of the advice out there applies to the workplace. It completely ignores the different challenges of managing tasks in your personal life.
I’m not saying that task management at work is a bad thing. I’m just saying that most authors offer advice for work and expect it to apply with no modification to everything else.
Work versus Personal
There are two main differences between tasks and work and in your personal life.
Job Tasks Are Limited
Unless you are a one-person show, jobs have people with specific responsibilities. I don’t have to worry about the accounting tasks of billing my clients, or managing my HR paperwork because these fall to others in my organization. I get to focus on my specific area, which is data mining and analytics, used by others to manage the business.
At home, I have to wear all the hats. From house cleaning to menu planning to cooking to decorating to managing bills to dealing with the incoming paperwork, all of those tasks land on my shoulders in some degree. Even if I am delegating the task, I still get to do the management of it.
The point with this is that the scope of job tasks is limited. When I go to work, I focus on a small set of tasks in a limited area of operation. At home, I get to focus on everything. There is much more to choose from, and many more tasks to complete.
Home Tasks Must Be Done
On the work site, there are generally tasks that get shoved to the bottom of the list. In my line of work, it is documentation. Without someone to specifically manage documentation, the priorities of my job function make this the bottom-of-the-list item.
Most job tasks have a way to rank them on importance and urgency. A task list at work can be sorted into an order that you know how to work them.
Home tasks don’t have these limitations. While many of them are not considered important in the scheme of your life, and not urgent, they still have to be done. And they have to be done regularly if you are going to avoid a bigger task. What would happen if you didn’t put the garbage out for a few weeks? You’d probably end up with critters visiting.
Home tasks also don’t have clear importance and urgency. Let’s say you have nothing to wear and no clean dishes. You have to do laundry and the dishes, but which one comes first? Do you eat a proper meal naked or eat something over the sink while clothed?
Take a few of these tasks and add in the dozens of other tasks that need to be done, and the field gets very muddled.
Applying Work Advice to Home Can Be Disastrous
The guidelines that make it possible to wade your way through tasks at work don’t apply to personal tasks. Importance and urgency get washed away in the deluge of tasks that need to be done.
Prioritizing a few tasks can work; prioritizing dozens can lead to wasted time and paralysis in the face of all the tasks.
Conclusion
Don’t try to apply your work task management system to your personal life. The two scenarios are different in scope and limitations, making job task management almost meaningless in the face of real life.
Action Steps
Check back next month, when I will spend time talking about how to create a task management system for your personal life that works. Don’t want to miss the article? Sign up for the newsletter and article email list here: Newsletter Signup
