Overbudgeting

There is a great principle of productivity that I like to call overbudgeting your time. The benefit is that you get everything you budgeted done and a little more. Here's how it works: you write down the beginning time of your budget (800 which means 8 am) and write down the task or acitivity that is happening then; then write down the ending time, after adding triple the time to it (i.e. so if your activity is 5 minutes long, write 15 minutes); write this out for all of your activities; profit; do your best to finish the tasks/activities before the ending time in your budget; decide whether you want to use your new-found extra time to do another small task/activity or start the next one early. The wonderful thing about this system is you get done what is on your list and a little bit more. It's fulfilling. *Note: this works best for smaller and shorter tasks/activities. The bigger or more complex the task, the harder it will be to estimate it in the first place and enlarge the time budgeted in the second. Happy budgeting!