Decide up front when you’re going to finish your day, then work backwards and allocate time to every task on your list.

We’ve all been in situations when we’re under pressure and we need to do a little extra work in the evenings or on weekends, just to get over the hump. And this is perfectly acceptable. But it becomes a problem when working overtime, every evening, and every weekend, is your default behaviour.

Cal Newport’s idea of fixed schedule productivity states that you:

1. Choose a schedule of work hours that you think provides the ideal balance of effort and relaxation.
2. Do whatever it takes to avoid violating this schedule.

Newport acknowledges that it’s not easy to stick to the second rule, and that doing so may require drastic action. You may have to:

• Cut back on the number of projects you’re working on.
• Cull inefficient habits from your daily schedule.
• Risk mildly annoying or upsetting some people in exchange for gains in time.
• Stop procrastinating (this may have been the one I found hardest to address).

Taking this step isn’t easy but it is simple; it just requires that you take a ruthless approach to evaluating your workload, and possibly making some hard choices along the way. In the rest of his post, Cal gives some examples of what some of these choices look like.

I’ve been using this approach for many years, and it’s very rare that I need to work in any additional time to get through my workload. And when I do, it’s usually because I’ve added some personal tasks to my schedule for the day.