Gamify Your Day

Gamify your workday with Taskable and get your top priorities done quicker, so you have more time for other things.

Getting through your neverending backlog of to-dos and priorities can feel overwhelming. No matter how much you get done, your list continues to pile up.

However, the goal shouldn’t be to complete every last one of your tasks. That is an unwinnable challenge. The question then isn’t “how am I going to get all this done”’, but rather ”how can I efficiently address my top priorities today?”

With a bit of planning, you can turn each day into a game and do just that - tackle your priorities quicker. The idea of the game is to design your day, challenge yourself to complete your priorities in the given time, and end each day having done everything you set out to do.

Here’s how it works.

Start with a plan

Just looking at your neverending backlog of things to do, and working on the next thing means you will never win the game. The backlog keeps growing, and you will never get through it. Plus it will likely cause stress, increase decision fatigue, and kill your productivity.

Instead, find the top priorities you want to work on that day from your backlog and add them to your daily list. Only focus on these, and try to avoid any new tasks and distractions that come your way. Give yourself a chance to actually complete all your priorities.

Read more on planning your day in ‘My new productivity system for 2021’

Design your day

Once you have your list of top priorities, begin to actually plan out how your day is going to go. Timeblock/timebox your calendar with the tasks you want to accomplish. Timeblocking helps you achieve a few things. First, it helps you plan better by forcing you to think about how much time you have to actually accomplish your priorities. You might find that you planned too many tasks, or maybe not enough tasks, and then you can recalibrate by trimming, adding more, or using that extra time for personal pursuits.

Second, it helps avoid spending too much time on tasks that don’t need it. By timeboxing a task, it challenges you to complete it in the allotted time, helping you stay focused.

Learn how to Timeblock with Taskable

Execute your plan

Now that you’ve planned out your day, it’s time to execute. By adding tasks to your calendar, you are up against a clock for each item. Sometimes you’ll complete something quicker than planned, and you now have extra time to work on something else, read, go for a walk, or take a break. Sometimes, you’ll be behind, and the countdown will help you buckle down and focus. Sometimes, you’ll lose to the clock, and have to spend more time on something than planned. And that’s ok too.

Reflect

Finally, at the end of the day you can reflect. Did you get through everything you planned to, in the time you planned to do it? Or did today get away from you? Do you need to allot more or less time to specific tasks in the future? What can you do better tomorrow? 

Conclusion

If our goal is to get everything in our backlog done, we face an impossible challenge. Instead, try treating each day like a game. First, start by deciding what your top priorities are, and what you would feel good about accomplishing by the time you log off. Next, design your day by deciding when and in what time frame you want to get things done and challenge yourself to stick to it. Finally, get to work, racing against the times you set aside to accomplish your goals. Some things you’ll do quicker, some will take longer, and that’s ok. If you get to the end of the day having completed everything you set out to, you’ve won.