1. Get Todoist (free). I like it because i can add priorities, due dates, and projects quickly to invidual items by typing shortcodes (e.g typing "p1 every day 6am #meditate Do meditation" quickly creates a recurring everyday task at 6am in the Meditation project to meditate.
2. Take all your projects. You've probably got a dozen to a hundred.
3. Grab a coffee, tea, whatever, go to the bathroom, shut down Facebook - eliminate distractions. Commit an hour to moving forward as hardcore as you can.
4. Set an alarm for ten minutes on your screen (basically the Pomodoro technique). Spend ten minutes making progress on the top priority item for each project. When time's up, add a todo item for the next day, and move on to the next project.
5. Every hour (so every six items), get up for five minutes, walk around, do some pushups, go to the bathroom. Relax, prioritize, get read to execute.
6. Every two hours, take five minutes to meditate, clear your head, refocus. Yeah you lose five minutes, but being focused helps you be more efficient.
7. Once you've spent ten minutes on each project, use your leftover time to dive deep into a long task on one of them (1-10 hours).
7a. Before each mini-task during the long period, write down exactly what you're going to do for the next ten minutes.
7b. Focus on that. Knock it out.
7c. When the timer goes off, adjust your plan as necessary or move on.
Benefits of doing it this way:
1. You don't forget about projects - every day you get a quick look at them, and can connect dots in new and novel ways.
2. You don't become overfocused - it's easy to spend four hours doing something that should take one hours, because you got way too focused on one little thing that doesn't really matter.
3. Short, ten minute chunks mean you can go at 100% on that task for ten minutes with no distractions. If you spend an hour on it, you inevitably start slowing down and becoming less efficient, start answering texts, wander off to find food, get bored...
4. Forcing yourself to take longer breaks every hour or two lets you relax, step back, re-evaluate what you're doing. You're a human, not a robot, so you need water, food, and proper activation / stress management in different parts of your brain (which meditation helps with) to work at the highest capacity.
