Istvan Meszaros October 29, 2021
SWDH is an acronym for the Someday, Week Day Hour productivity system.
The basic idea is to make a list of all the tasks we wish to accomplish in a week. We build this list from various sources the weekend before (we’ll discuss these sources in detail later in this article). Then, every evening, we take out from this weekly list the items we want to accomplish the next day, specifying the exact time we start each of them.
When a new task arises, all you have to do is check your calendar, and you will immediately know when you’ll
be
able to complete it.
This helps both you and your client, as he will also know precisely when he will receive the completed work.
Writing down everything you have to do as a someday task or a scheduled event, precisely when the request arises, will ensure that you never forget any of your tasks.
Because you prepare your daily schedule the evening before, you don’t have to start the day by figuring out what to do, thus losing precious time in the morning, when you’re the most productive. Instead, open your schedule for today and start completing the items one after the other.
There is one more significant benefit of creating a to-do list the night before. During the night, your subconscious mind will “work” on the specified items. Therefore, you’ll have much better productivity the next day because your mind is already set to complete those tasks, as described in Time Management Tips That Will Make You A Productivity Master by Brian Tracy.
Prioritize your tasks, lose the unnecessary ones It is easy to build your schedule using the Eisenhower decision matrix to ensure the most critical tasks are completed. Also, you can filter out unnecessary jobs. For example, you can use this technique when you build your weekly task list and each evening when you create your next day’s schedule.Deciding whether a task is essential can be difficult. Determining if a task is more important than another
one
can also be a real challenge. Your list of values is a big help in these cases. Simply check which task is
closest to which of your values, and you instantly have the answer.
For example, let’s say your list of values contains “my health” and “my business”, in that order. Suppose that
two tasks still need to be scheduled for the next day: “going to the gym” and “writing a new article for my
blog.” If you have time left for only one of them, it’s evident that, according to your values, you must go to
the gym and postpone the article for another day.
One of the most challenging tasks is saying NO. It is tough to say, “I cannot do that,” to a friend or
client.
Therefore, the result is that you will say YES most of the time, immediately knowing that you’ve just created
an
issue for yourself.
Having a well-built schedule is a big help here. You know precisely when you will be able to help your client
or
friend, so instead of NO, or the most dangerous issue creating YES, you can say, “Sure, I can help you out on
…”
and then specify a date when you still have some free blocks of time.
In the SWDH system, you build a weekly to-do list, from which you create your schedule for each day.
Each weekend, go through your weekly list from the week that has just ended. Then, place each uncompleted task in one of the four regions of the Decision Matrix:
Go through your someday tasks list and use the same logic to sort out the items:
Whenever a new task arrives during a phone call, conversation, email, and so on, you can use the same good old friend, the Decision Matrix.
Every evening, before you go to sleep, build your daily schedule for the next day.
The process is simple: Go through your weekly list and move the items of your choice to your next-day list,
specifying the exact time you will start working on them.
This way, your subconscious will run on them overnight, so you might even have some solutions by the time you
start working on them. Also, you avoid morning procrastination. You don’t spend your most productive hours
checking emails and social media, figuring out what to do first. Instead, you simply take your list and start
working on it.
At the end of your workday, move the uncompleted items back to the weekly lists. In time, the number of uncompleted tasks will decrease, as you will get better at correctly estimating the time necessary to complete them.
Implementing the SWDH on paper can be tricky and unproductive, as you must often move items between lists. However, if you wish to do this, the best approach is to buy a notebook with 200 pages, which should be enough for a whole year. Use the first page for your weekly list and the following two pages for your daily tasks. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are on the second page. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are on the third page.
This sheet will include:
You can even make a few weekly sheets like this if you plan for the coming weeks. The only suggestion is to keep your plans short, for three to four weeks. Otherwise, you may lose sight of some tasks because you included them too far down the road, planning-wise.
During the week, quickly run the new tasks through the decision matrix and place them in the appropriate column:
Then apply the following steps to the tasks:
Mark completed tasks (for example, like this).
Plan the unfinished tasks for another day of the week, or move them back to your weekly list.
Then, make the exact schedule for the next day.
Check whether there are unfinished tasks in the current week; if there are, move them to your weekly to-do
list
for the next week or your someday tasks list if you haven't decided when you can complete them.
Once you have done this, you can delete or archive the current week's To-do list.
Check the someday tasks for any tasks you may want to complete next week and include them on the newly created weekly to-do list.
Take the tasks from the weekly list and frame them for each day of the week, setting the time interval. Even if you do not plan schedule them all, you must do the schedule for Monday thoroughly.
However, it is preferable to set an exact schedule for the entire next week. This way, you can see immediately if your weekly list is OK, or too long, or too short. If it seems too busy, you must move some items to one of the following weeks or your someday tasks sheet. Also, you can complete it with additional elements taken from your someday tasks sheet if it is too light.
This sheet contains the list where you write down all the things you need to do but have not yet decided on a
specific time frame.
Also, in this list, you will put the activities you have already planned and that you may have given up doing
for the time being, but that you do not want to lose sight of for later planning.
You can download the SWDH System template as
Implementing the SWDH productivity system using a time tracking and planning program is a lot easier than using an Excel template. This is because the program will automatically perform some of the steps for you. You don’t have to keep copy sheets and workbooks.
I will illustrate how you can implement the SWDH system using the PlanArty time management system.
This item will appear at the top of your weekly calendar view, so it’s effortless to identify it. In this item, you will save all the tasks you wish to perform in the given week.
Then, you simply take each line from this list and transform it into a to-do item, specifying the exact day and time when it starts. After that, you can quickly move these tasks directly into your calendar using your mouse.
PlanArty will also immediately show you if there are overlapping schedules.
You can also transform a to-do list into a time track record with a simple mouse-click, as seen in the above image. For example, I planned to work on this article starting at 13:00 hours. Instead, however, I started the work at 12:39.
If a to-do item remains uncompleted, just put its text back on the weekly list or in your someday tasks list.
Every weekend, set the start and end dates for your weekly list to the first and last days of the coming week. Then you already have the following week’s list.
In PlanArty, you also have your someday tasks list.
A someday task is simply a to-do item without a specified starting date and/or time. Therefore, it’s super easy to move items between these two lists:
I hope this simple yet powerful productivity system will help you as much as it helps me every day!
I’m always looking to improve this system, so if you have any questions or suggestions about the SWDH productivity system, please don’t hesitate to drop me an email at istvan@planarty.com.