"Classic time management"

All the methods and best practices of time management, including goal-oriented self-organization, have evolved out of calenders. There is an important way of thinking left from this:

Yearly, monthly and daily goals ...

We tend to squeeze our goals into time patterns, e.g. "next quarter 2 % growth" or "next year set up a new law office in Kuala Lumpur ..." Then we outline subgoals and tasks by time pattern too. "In the first quarter decide, who is going to Malaysia, in the second quarter find office space and get all infrastructure up and running, in the third quarter start working ... ". And then we go on, allocate tasks and decisions to single weeks and finally days. In this way by outlining step by step we get from a years goal to daily tasks. Its obvious, that You might use mZ in this way too.

Outlining time patterns

There is even a simple help for this:

The icons for time "horizons" react to mouseclicks or dragging with simultaneously pressed Alt-Key by creating an new outlining level:

If we do this on the line "Objectives next year" with the year-icon as in the screenshot, we get 4 new lines for quarterly goals (1), which we then fill with life by further outlining. Theses lines do already have the quarter-icon (3) set. With Alt +  Click on these icons we would get single months outlined and so on.

Theses screenshots were made on the 12 th of July. But at (2) we can see, that subgoal lines are starting with years end. But this is only an option. If You want to start today and be ready in a year from today, change this option in options / settings / calendar.

Now Your view on time has switched from calender patterns to the goal itself and the time You will need for this. Now the starting date (1) makes the following deadlines (2) being set exactly a quarter later.

Most times it is easy to decide, whether to see time as "rolling" or structured by time patterns. Often budgets, saisonal business, formation plans or quarter reports of a company decide about that. But if You are free to decide for Yourself, a rolling view will normally be the better choice. This allows for an immediate start. This is, how people thing, who want quick results.

This kind of outlining has a high impact on success, but goals seldom do exactly fit into time patterns. This makes time pressure to high or too low. Therefore after a raw planning do align deadlines with reality time and again.

Next: Today or go on with fighting interruptions