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For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

You can tell when it’s been done in a hurry

What­ev­er you choose to do, gets done. And you choose what to do from the tasks you see and that are in front of you. Many peo­ple only see the tasks that need to be done rather soon, that are more or less urgent. They appear in the shape of mes­sages, ques­tions, and emails from oth­ers and can feel urgent since some­one is wait­ing for either an answer or for you to take some form of action. The tasks you see are also those on today’s to-do list which are either the things due today or, per­haps, those that were due yes­ter­day or a while ago.

Impor­tant but not yet urgent

If you were to choose to do tasks now that need to be done some­time much lat­er, you would then, when ​“lat­er” comes, have few­er tasks that were urgent. Your work­days would not be as stress­ful as they per­haps are now and you would have more time to do more tasks with good fore­sight. For this premise to work, we are assum­ing that the tasks you do with greater mar­gins than usu­al are the impor­tant tasks that soon­er or lat­er would also have become urgent.

If there is not enough time, there is not enough time

Does this sound eas­i­er said than done? Do you have so many urgent things to do today that it is near enough impos­si­ble to do any­thing that is not? I com­plete­ly under­stand. But you have to start some­where, even if it is just with a small step. If you do not have enough time to do what you would want to, do what you want to have done with the time you have. There should be fif­teen min­utes some­time dur­ing the day you could spend on some­thing that is impor­tant but not yet urgent, right?

Do this

If you want bet­ter fore­sight than you cur­rent­ly have, do the following:

1. Some time today set an alarm for 15 min­utes and allow your­self to put what­ev­er urgent task you were work­ing on aside.
2. Find a task that is not due for a while. Take a good look at the bot­tom of your list or flip through your dig­i­tal to-do list until you reach the task that is due fur­thest into the future from this moment, but which you could start work­ing on now. When you have a few to choose from, select a task that is so impor­tant you know it needs to get done soon­er or lat­er and will even­tu­al­ly turn up on your dai­ly to-do list.
3. Do the task and enjoy the fact that you com­plet­ed it already.
4. If you feel you have a few of the 15 min­utes you des­ig­nat­ed to this left, select and do anoth­er task.
5. Once the 15 min­utes are up, allow your­self to return to the urgent tasks. After all, you do not only have to work with good foresight.
6. If you liked this way of sneak­ing fore­sight into your day and work, repeat these 15 min­utes every day for a week. If you real­ly like the method, make it 20 min­utes next week, and add anoth­er few min­utes the week after that.

Less stress and more appreciation

If you do more tasks with good fore­sight — even if it ini­tial­ly is only one a day — you will expe­ri­ence few­er stress­ful days in the long run. More of what you need to do will get done before it is due and you will deliv­er with bet­ter qual­i­ty than you cur­rent­ly have time to. There will be time for a last run-through and adjust­ments of the mate­r­i­al before you send it off.

You will most like­ly receive more appre­ci­a­tion from those you deliv­er things to as well since it can be very help­ful to receive what we need well ahead of when it is need­ed rather than last minute.

What’s your way?

What’s your way of ensur­ing you get to do things with good fore­sight? Write to me share your tricks and tips. I am very curi­ous about all meth­ods and prac­tices that help us shape our days into how we real­ly want them — and I am sure oth­er read­ers are as well.

(Look­ing for more strate­gies to meet your dead­lines with­out stress? Take a look at how to make ​”lat­er” into ​”now”, and get start­ed faster!)