Our world is full of options: things we can buy, things we can experience, things we can achieve. I often feel like a little kid who is invited by her grandmother to a toy store to choose her own birthday present. Sounds good, but is it? I don't want one toy, I want them all! And this feeling is especially severe when it comes to time management, where the restrictions are not as obvious (but just as hard) as when your grandma insists that you can have only one toy.

Decision-Making Basics

In general, decision-making works something like this:

1. our brain (memory and perception) generates a set of options,
2. we evaluate the options (consciously or unconsciously),
3. we choose the option with the highest benefits.

In everyday life, most of the work gets done in Step 1, i.e. our memory and perception filter the available options that make it to our conscious mind. In many cases we only think of one solution and are not even aware that we are making a decision. And this means that most of the time, Steps 2 and 3 are mostly irrelevant. As a consequence, our built-in decision algorithm gets overwhelmed when presented with lots of options.

The Overload Situation

The trouble is that we live in a world where options for spending our time are abundant. We can read, exercise, watch TV, read social media posts, meet friends. And in the workplace we get caught between meetings, phone calls, messages, social media that we are supposed to ignore but are addicted to, more meetings, reports and the latest employee survey. And on top we are supposted to do the work that was in our job description.

In such a situation, our automatic filters in the brain fail. Everything seems important. And in this case, our attention focuses on the last stimulus. And that makes sense, because this information is still present in short-term memory. If we don't process the newly gained information, it will get lost.

So we get into a working mode when we are constantly trying to work off the last item that was thrown onto our desks. And this leads to several problems:

• If the frequency of incoming stimuli is higher than what we can work off, we end up with a bunch of started but unfinished tasks.
• Even if we manage to handle the workload, our brain has to switch between contexts that are necessary for the different unconnected tasks.
• Firefighting the immediate stimuli keeps us from achieving larger, more long-term results or to take time for in-depth thinking.

All of this leads to a feeling of exhaustion and not achieving enough.

Solution

An obvious and often recommended remedy may be to avoid distractions. Switch off your phone, don't check your e-mail, close your office door. These strategies can help temporarily to give us time to concentrate on a task and avoid any incoming information. But it is not the solution to the basic problem. We need to exchange information with others and it may be part of our job to be available. We cannot just all find a spot in a cave and meditate. We have to find a solution that works in our everyday reality.

A more sustainable solution is to help our brain in dealing with the option overload we are exposed to. And here is the rough procedure:

1. Relieve your memory by writing things down.
   You may not be able to avoid phone calls. But after the call, write down any information that you want to keep and the things you have promised to do for others. And then you can safely allow your short-term memory to forget about it and turn back to whatever you were doing before the call. Also, before grabing the phone when it rings, jot down a few words of where you are leaving off your current task to facilitate getting back to it. To establish a system that works for you, consider that
   • you should be quick when taking notes. You don't want to spend too much time on note-taking and you want to get all information out of your brain while they are still fresh.
   • you have to retrieve your notes at the right moment.
   For me, a to-do list is the ideal spot for most notes, especially those relevant for my work. I know that all the things I want to get done are collected in that one spot. And with todoListo I can also leave additional information about the task in the notes field.
   • How to use Reminders: Phone vs. Shoe
   • Taking Notes in todoListo
   • todoListo as a Note-Taking Tool
2. Structure and hide information.
   

   When you write down all your tasks, you may feel more overwhelmed than before, because there may be a lot to be done. So now, you should reduce the number of items you present to yourself.

   This means, you can reorder tasks to put the more important ones in front. You can create sections for each day and assign those tasks to the section that you intend to do that day. For more long-term items, create sections for the following weeks and months. Don't plan too far into the future since you cannot know how tasks will change or which new ones will have to get done. In todoListo you can also collapse sections so that you only see the tasks of today and everything else is hidden.

   In this way you relieve your brain from considering too many things at once. The point of structuring your tasks for the day is not that you have to get all those tasks done (or feel bad if you have not), but to filter the options of what you might be doing today.

   • Time-Management in Normal Mode: how I work on Mondays
   • todoListo Properties: Sections, Categories and Infos
   • Die Qual der Wahl (Alternativen schnell und flexibel abwägen)

The key is that you turn this procedure into a habbit. It may take some time until you find the specific procedure that works for you, and you may adapt it over time. But consciously taking track of the things you want to do (not necessarily get done, relaxing is a perfectly valuable activity!) and helping your brain with conscious decisions and filtering of options, you can achieve bigger goals than by just following up on the latest incoming request. You will also feel more in control of your activities and feel more satisfied.