Hello, devs! After trying out various tools and systems people use to organize their time and projects, I think I finally found a simple yet effective technique that works for me. And I'm happy to share it with you.

Step 1 — Find out what you actually should do

So you have a goal. You vaguely imagine what steps you are going to take to achieve that goal. But if you don't know what you actually should do, you might end up simply going with the flow and working without a clear direction.

Let me provide an example. There are lots of people who want to learn English. But most of them fall into the common trap. From time to time, they need English and realize how many opportunities it opens for them. They get super excited, start reading books, learning grammar, etc. However, as time goes on, they find out how much effort is needed to learn English and start thinking: "I've managed just fine without English all this time..." Consequently, their learning comes to a halt, only to resume when the same cycle repeats itself.

I'm not a native English speaker, and I used to fall into that trap too. So don't make this mistake. Find out how much effort is needed at the beginning and make a firm decision.

Divide that big goal into the smaller ones that you can achieve in a week or month. This way, you will be happy to complete the goal and feel motivated to pursue the other ones.

Step 2 — Make it a routine

Having a concrete plan is good, but you won't go far if you don't take action. It's always recommended to take action consistently and make it a habit.

But I don't really like the word "habit". That's because a habit is meditating every day, going to bed at the same time, giving up smoking, and so on. You just do the same action consistently to, hopefully, improve your life. To track a habit, you don't need much information. You either completed the task or not. That again reminds me of going with the flow.

Whereas "routine" refers to a habit with a concrete goal and a plan. To track a routine, you should know what you actually did and at what pace you are going.

So allot a separate time to consistently move towards your goal. Make it a routine, and make sure that you complete the planned amount of tasks each week.

Step 3 — Track your progress

I prefer to always know the time frames. Deadlines may not help because it's often difficult to estimate the time required for each task.

I propose a different approach. Transform the tasks you set in the previous step in a way that they take roughly the same time. And just start doing these tasks. You'll eventually determine the pace you are moving at and will be able to roughly estimate the date of the completion day.

This way, you'll be motivated to continue doing the tasks. That's because otherwise, the completion day will get further from you.

This also helps when you want to do some other things for which you don't have enough time. Knowing how much it's going to take will help to rationally allocate your time among the routines.

For example, I often initially imagine small-scale projects, but over time, they tend to grow more ambitious. If I were to go with the flow, I would immediately dive into developing new features. However, adopting this approach forces one to think whether it's reasonable to start doing that at the present moment. Maybe it's more appropriate to add the desired features later when the core is ready.

Implementation

To give you a real picture of how it works, I'll provide an example.

Last time I've been learning Kotlin. The first thing I did when I started was find good learning resources and make a plan. Then I decided to dedicate 6 hours of work each day to this goal and started working.

As I knew Java, it took me approximately a week to learn the essentials of Kotlin. But then I estimated the time needed to learning the higher-level things. I found out that it'll take me another week or even more.

But I planned to learn Jetpack Compose. And dedicating nearly the whole workday to learning the advanced Kotlin stuff didn't seem so attractive. Putting Jetpack Compose off may have led to burnout since I wouldn't get much closer to building my Android app.

I knew that advanced stuff wasn't so necessary to understand Jetpack Compose. So I decided to dedicate 4 hours of work to Jetpack and only 2 to higher-level Kotlin instead.

That's why estimating the time is the most important thing here.

Conclusion

I believe that if you use this simple technique, eventually, it will be easier to determine time frames. The work will become habitual. And you may magically complete your goal on the desired day without even realizing how you reached that point.

But remember that no organization tool or productivity technique will help if you don't like what you are doing.

If you have a goal that excites you, productivity will come from alone. [author]

Spend time doing what it takes not searching for the best tool.

That's it for this article. I hope it'll help you! What are your thoughts about this? How do you get organized? I'd love to hear from you in the comments!