There are many theories online and books about how to get things done and here I am not going to introduce one or several of them. During the past years, I have kept thinking how to have things more effectively done in a day, only a little measure of several hours apart from necessary routines. I want to start with you my personal experience.

        When I was a little girl, I began with my plans by writing down all the things that I had to finish in a day. If I had finished an item, I would draw a strikethrough on it. Always the result was, I started with the easiest thing and ended with the easier thing, and what’s worse, they were not that important. So ever night before I went to bed, I found that, oh, my god, I had finished feeding the cat, tiding my desk, taking out my exercise books, but hadn’t done my homework. How come? Before realizing that, I felt accomplished. Look at the red strikethroughs on the paper. Okay. Except for doing homework.

         As I grow up, I began to realize that if I want to achieve efficiency, I had to take the sequence of importance into account. So I went on exploring new methods. Then I came across the law of two to eight, also known as the Pareto’s law. I think most people are familiar with it, so I don’t intend to go further. It offers an excellent illustration about how to maintain the sequence of importance when it comes to get things done. Honestly, I tried it. As you can expect, usually I managed to finished those both urgent and important things in time, such as the homework due tomorrow. But problems came. After finishing the first column, I went for the second column, those urgent but less important things. Such as the sudden class party or the sudden dating. So usually when a day drew to a close, I found that I hadn’t start my third column, those important but not urgent things, such as writing blogs, talking on the phone with family. I felt a loss. How come? I tried to manage things in sequence but I was not happy.

         So I started to ponder over those problems again and tried to create a new look. During that period, I read a book named How To Get Things Done, a book with complicated but practical ideas. However, I tried and failed. Later, I met the Pomodoro Technique on the Internet which is well-received, especially in foreign countries. Unfortunately, I tried and failed. I felt disappointed. I began to doubt the way I dealt with these methods.

         Things changed before I knew it. At my junior year, my friend told me, “you have more time for movies, blogs and things you like now. You remember, you were a busy bee when you were a freshman and sophomore !”

I am not going to advise you to adopt my way in getting things down. So I just omit the part about what my changes are. To conclude, I develop my own way in getting things down effectively by making the methods that I had tried suitable for myself.

In my view, there is no perfect rule or principle that you can straightly apply in your life to achieve the best effects. Usually, they are designed perfectly only for the authors. My advise is, never stick to a certain principle in a rigorous way. Just find your own way to high efficiency and make your life more fulfilled.