Hyper-Scheduling Light With Things

I’m a big fan of the work of David Sparks of MacSparky and the Mac Power Users Podcast. He’s recently written a few posts on what he has called “hyper-scheduling.” The CliffsNotes version of hyper-scheduling is that David blocks off time in his calendar for performing certain tasks. Jeff Perry of the Tablet Habit does this too, calling it Time Blocking.

As I’ve read David and Jeff’s insights, I realized I’m doing “hyper-scheduling light” (perhaps ultralight) with Things. This is one of the reasons Things has clicked for me.

hyper-scheduling Light

My job isn’t suited for the scheduling of specific times during the day for performing certain tasks. I’m faced with too many unavoidable interruptions and too many tasks that arise suddenly and need to be handled on short notice. As much as I’d love to go into “do not disturb” mode to churn through work, there are too many downsides of this for me on most days in my line of work.

Despite these roadblocks, I do have a general idea how much time I’ll have each day for churning through my task list. I just don’t know exactly when during the day that time will fall. Enter Things.

With its “Today” and “Upcoming” views, Things makes it easy to schedule my tasks for certain dates. I set an item’s start date, and it appears in the view for that day. 1 During my weekly review, which usually occurs on Friday, I plan out my next week. I go through my actions and tasks and decide what I want to get done on each day of the upcoming week. When a particular day arrives, my task list for the day is waiting for me.

This isn’t for everyone. Some people work better diving into their projects each day, and picking from their tasks or next actions. That became too overwhelming for me, which is one of the reasons I switched to Things. I wanted a tool that would not only help me organize my tasks, but would help me do them as well by bringing them to me on certain days. Things does that for me by allowing me to schedule them.