Transcription
On Sundays, I tend to do two weekly resets, one for work and one for my personal life. This is my workday reset, and we're going to be starting here on my Notion total life operating system. I have a work dashboard, and we're going to start off there today.
Rather than having an elaborate system of reviews and resets for work, I rely almost exclusively on a weekly reset to keep me organized and on track at work. Let's start with cleaning your physical space. If you're new here, hi, my name is Dr. Jamie. I'm a licensed clinical psychologist that works with individuals and organizations focusing on performance optimization. Someone working in that area of applied behavioral science may not be able to film in their office or screen share on their work computer. But here's what it might look like.
At the beginning of each week, I clean out my physical space. I start with wiping down flat surfaces, ensuring I sanitize things that I touch frequently, like my mouse and my keyboard. I'm also physically putting items away. If we were doing an experiment that required some equipment, I want to make sure that is put away. More likely, we were using surveys or I was out in the field collecting notes or using a tablet. So, I want to make sure that I wipe down and reset all of that stuff. Since I tend to move around a lot and move from organization to organization, it always surprises me when I fall in on a desk that has a thick layer of dust or it's clear that no one has ever cleaned out the inside of a desk drawer. So, that's the first thing I do when I move into a new office space. And it's also something that I upkeep every week.
Next, I clear out my email. I work every day to try to get to inbox zero, but I don't always get there. My weekly reset is the perfect time to ensure that I've cleared out all of my emails. If there's one thing that's contributed the most to me feeling organized and on top of my work, it's my ability to manage my email inbox. I manage my email by using a triage system where I place all emails in one of four buckets. When an email comes in, or during my designated email time, if an email requires an immediate response, meaning it'll take me less than two minutes to answer the question and get back to the person, I'm going to immediately respond and move that email out of my inbox and out into my reference section. If the email has any sort of scheduled event, things like a meeting or where we'll be going for a data collection, anything like that goes immediately into my calendar and the email moves again into my reference section. Every now and then, I get an email with information that I might need in the future, but it doesn't have a specific task that I need to accomplish, and it doesn't have a specific scheduled event that I need to take note of in my calendar. Those are pure reference emails and they get moved directly into the reference bucket. Finally, there are emails that have tasks that are going to require a few steps or are actually mini-projects because there's several tasks that need to be done before I can successfully reply to the email. Those things are going to be moved over to my task management system.
And so far, all of the emails I've talked about have ended up in my reference folder. All of the things that required some sort of entry into my calendar and all of the purely reference emails have all ended up in the reference file or an archive of sorts. These open tasks are the only thing that go into a separate folder. I call that my task or my to-do folder. And it just gives me an easy way to be able to reply back to those emails when I actually start doing the task that's required of me. This leaves me with a clean inbox and two folders for old emails. I did an entire video on how I organize my email for work. I'll leave that linked up above. And it's a little bit outdated. So, if you're interested in an updated email management system, leave a comment in the comment section down below.
All right. Now that I've cleared out my emails, I still need to sort all of these tasks. So, the next item on my weekly review is to sort those tasks. Let's scroll down to this section of my work dashboard. Anytime that I get a task, it could be from emails, it can be an input on my work bullet journal, it could be part of a conversation that I'm having with people, I have multiple places on my work dashboard where I can put that task in. All of these areas on my work dashboard are actually different views of the same database. So, if I get a task and it doesn't have a scheduled date and I'm just trying to input it quickly into my system, it will likely end up here under schedule these tasks. Let's just say I have to read the blue folder. I don't know what date it is. I don't have a particular due date. I haven't taken the time to think about how it fits into my larger workload or work priorities. I just need to get the task into my system some way, somehow. I'm going to throw it into scheduled tasks.
Now, in the event that I knew that I had to shred, let's say the red folder by Friday, I could go right here to this week's work tasks. I have a calendar view and I've limited the view to just this week. I'm going to go into Friday, click add an item, shred red folder, and that will appear right there. And I know that I have to do it by Friday. Another area that I can put in a task is right here into my task matrix. I stratify all of my tasks by level of importance and level of urgency. I define urgency as things that need to be done this week, and I've defined importance based on the priority of projects or responsibilities related to that task. So, let me show you how these views work together before I show you how I go through and review and sort all of my tasks. Since I placed Shred the Blue folder here into schedule these tasks, this is the only place where it shows up. It's not going to show up with a specific date and it's also not going to show up on my task matrix. It is going to be listed here under uh not or no my priority because I have not given it a priority on my prioritization matrix. So if we scroll down here, you'll see shred blue folder is there waiting for it to have a specific priority. You'll also see that shred red folder, even though I placed it into the calendar here on Friday, I haven't given it a specific prioritization category within my task matrix. So that should be here as well under no priority. And we see it right here: Shred the red folder. I also have these sorted by date. So things that are due first are higher on the list.
So going back to my weekly review, I have sort tasks. For me, sorting tasks is moving them around in my prioritization matrix because I utilize the matrix to do the next step, which is scheduling those tasks. So let's say shredding the red folder is a high-priority thing, high priority and high urgency. I have to get it done this week. Financial review with Lee. Some of these are my actual things that I have to do for work today as I'm starting to close out at this job and preparing to start my new job. So, financial review, I'm doing a review with someone who is going to be the interim director of the behavioral health research lab, which I currently run. So, they're having an interim person as they prepare for the new director who is expected to start somewhere in the fall. So this is a, I would say also a high-priority, high-urgency item. Write evaluations. Those are things that I have to complete before I head out probably in the next week or so. You'll see that many of my things are going to fall into high priority, high urgency. Since I am closing out at my current job, a lot of things are going to have to be done either next week or the following week since my last day is the 23rd of May. So, I have like a two-week period in which to get all of these things done. Okay. Shred the blue folder. I'm going to go ahead and delete that since I was just putting it up there as an example. So, let's delete that. I do have two interviews for replacement research assistants for two of the scientists. So, I'm going to move that over into again high urgency, high priority since I do need to get those scheduled and done before I leave. Complete awards. That is something that probably I can get done not next week, but the following week. And I do need to uh have my closeout evaluation with my current boss. And that is going to be kind of, I could do it at any time before I leave.
All right. You'll see that I have no low-priority, low-urgency tasks because again, heading out. So really those are things that I would delegate to other people and I've already delegated all of those things out. Um no low-priority, high-urgency tasks. For me, those tend to be administrative asks from the organizations, things like required training or something like that. And since again leaving, those things are coming off of my plate. So now what I have left are these tasks that all need to be done probably this week or next week. They're all high importance because I've let go of all the low-importance tasks. And uh let's see. I have not scheduled some of these things. So, I haven't scheduled signing my evaluation. Let's go ahead and delete this red folder since that was just an example. And let's move on to next week. Sign my evaluation. I would like to move to Monday. Now, this is one of the reasons why I really love the Notion system because I love to be able to drag and drop things. So, I moved it from being unscheduled to being scheduled. And now it automatically has a date. And when you scroll down here to schedule, you'll see that sign my eval now is at the very top of the list because that's something that I'm going to be doing on May 5th, which is this coming Monday as I'm filming this. So then I have these two interviews. I actually have already scheduled an interview with this person for Wednesday. This has still not been scheduled. And I do have to complete awards. What day might be good to do that? I think that the 6th might be good for that because I also need to write evaluations which I don't see here anywhere. Write evaluations on the 13th. I think I'd like to move that up to the 6th and turn in my cell phone. I can move that up to last Friday because I did that already. So I am going to see that.
All right. So I have sorted all of my tasks. The only thing that I have that I haven't scheduled is that one interview that is still outstanding. Everything should have a date. So I'm coming over here. Everything here has a date. This one does not have a date and it's still on the unscheduled list. Everything here should have a date. I'm looking at that. These are empty and everything has a priority. So, whatever doesn't have a date is clearly stated there. I can schedule that. All right. I've sorted my tasks. Next, I have scheduled tasks. Since I've done this so often, I was kind of doing that as I was sorting the task. The only thing that I haven't scheduled is that one interview that is still outstanding. So, scheduled task check.
Next is review overdue tasks. If I scroll up here, I have a list called my outstanding tasks. And this is a list view of the same database. And it's simply filtered for all tasks that had a due date prior to today. So, technically, all of these things are overdue. I'm going to review it. And what generally happens is I haven't caught up with my system just yet. Ideally, as I'm doing things, I'd be checking them off, but sometimes life gets away from you, which is why it's really nice to do these weekly resets. Now, I don't usually have the date that they were due on, but I'm going to go ahead and turn them on for this video so that I can show you why they're falling under overdue tasks. So, in properties, I'm going to show the due date here. And you'll see that I was supposed to have a financial review with Lee on May 5th, and that actually happened. So, I'm going to click it, and it's going to disappear from my outstanding tasks. You'll also see that down here for last week. Now, that has checked off as done. So, it's just a way for me to be able to check off outstanding tasks in a variety of different places. I can check it off here. I can check it off in the calendar. Either way, everything will be updated. I was also supposed to review the file management plan that I had set up for the interim as I'm leaving the lab. And I did do that. So, that is done. I was supposed to turn in my company cell phone. I've already done that. I was supposed to change myself as the primary investigator of record within the IRB, the institutional review board. That is a group that ensures that we are treating people ethically as we are doing studies on humans. They want to make sure that we are acting ethically and that everyone is appropriately consented to participating in these performance optimization studies. So I currently am running two studies and I oversee a lab where we're running about 28 different studies at the moment; we gained a new one over the last week even as I'm leaving. So I had to change the scientist that's in charge or the scientist on record within those administrative systems and I did do that for both of those studies. There was also a report that was due and that is no longer going to be completed by me or anyone else. The actual reporting agency said that we didn't have to do it anymore. It was an old requirement. So when that happens, I actually go into the task and I change the status archived and that just tells me that I made the conscious decision or, you know, circumstances changed, but I decided not to do this particular task and I actually document like why that was; in this case, the funding agency no longer required that report or like there was a misunderstanding and we didn't actually have to do that task, anything like that. It just helps me for my own evaluations. And when I'm talking to my bosses, I can tell them very clearly, here are all the tasks that I've completed. I can also tell them here are the things that I purposefully did not do and here are the reasons why, rather than just like I didn't know I had this report to do. I also wanted to update my CV and that is to update the recent peer-review journal articles that were published, presentations that I did, anything that happened while I was the director of this research lab. I did start to do this. So, it is in progress, but I actually want to change the date to next Friday because I want to just double check it and make sure that I have moved all of the things that should be on my CV onto that CV. For those of you who are not familiar with a CV, it's kind of a resume for academics or scientists. So, it lists all of the things that I've done, all the projects that I've worked on, publications that I've had in medical journals, and things like that. So, I want to make sure that that is like current and up to date. And I will move that over to Friday. So, all of my overdue tasks should now be gone. I have scheduled the ones that I want to schedule. I'll also archive the ones that I've decided not to do.
Another option that I have with overdue tasks is actually delegating those tasks to other people, which is why I have this list over here, which is my waiting on list. So, I do have some projects that I wanted to totally close out. A new scientist wasn't taking over the study and I've fully completed it. So, rather than working on closing out something like that myself, I asked my research assistant to do that. So, when I move a task to someone else, it's essential for me to actively follow up on that task. And I take this ability to follow up consistently and know what kind of do-outs you have out as a sign of organization in my own staff. And it's key to me feeling like I'm organized at work. So now that I've cleared out those overdue tasks, I'm going to look at this waiting on list and I'm going to follow up with all of the individuals. So I want to confirm with it that my phone was disconnected. I have a few things to turn in like I have an individual printer that I have to return. I have lab books that I'm required to appropriately archived within their respective institutions. I also need some of my staff to sign off on their evaluations since I've already completed some of their evaluations and I can't fully sign out of my job like in good faith until I have closed out all of the evaluations of the scientists that I supervise. So, everyone on this list is going to get an email or a phone call, and I'm going to continuously follow up until I have no one left on this list.
Finally, I'm going to clear out my desktop. It's always nice when I hook up my computer for a presentation and I get compliments on how clean my desktop is. On the contrary, I get a little anxiety when someone connects their laptop and there's 500 icons on their desktop. Now, no judgment, they might totally like their desktop like that, but for me, I require order and I value equanimity, calm. So, it's important for me to clear out my desktop every week because inevitably my desktop gets filled with attachments, things that I had to sign and return, email attachments, screenshots. I try to clear all of those out every week. When it comes to organizing those files, I use Thiago Forte's PARA method where I place everything in a series of folders that fall under the labels of projects, areas, resources, and archives.
The last thing I do is review my bullet journal. I review the notes and see if there's any outstanding tasks that need to be routed into my task management system. In the past, and especially when I start a new job, I actually transcribe the information that I handwrite in my notebook into a meeting minutes section in my work dashboard. But since I'm winding down, I'm just going to identify any outstanding tasks and enter them into my system. It looks like there's nothing to add. So, I'm going to head off to do my personal weekly reset routine. And if you're interested in checking out that video, it'll be linked right here when it goes up next week. Or check out this video that YouTube thinks you'll like.