Planning Big Projects or Papers with Toodledo and Google Calendar

Hi, everyone! This is Lara Hammock with the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share how I plan big projects out using Toodledo and Google Calendar.  

Okay - you have a big project looming and you are doing EVERYTHING you can to avoid getting started. Where do you even start?  We all know that awful saying about how to eat an elephant.  Well, of course that is how you have to handle big projects — one bite at a time. 

So, the first thing you do is give yourself a 30 minute task — today or a couple of days in the future — to sit down and break down the individual tasks making up the project. I do this on a Google spreadsheet — I’ll link to a sample of the one I use for brainstorming.  You need to break it down into doable tasks and estimate how long each will take. 

Let me give you an example.  I have a 15-page term paper due for one of my grad school classes this semester.  It’s about 5 weeks out from the due date, so I think it’s a good time to start planning.  That probably seems like a long time, but between now and then I have Thanksgiving, other papers due, and Christmas shopping, so I don’t want to leave it all to the end.  I get stressed out when I think stuff is hanging over my head, so planning things out in advance eases that anxiety for me. 

Okay — here is a slightly abbreviated list of the things that I would like to do for this paper:

• Finish reading the book and highlighting important passages (3 hours)
• Pulling the highlights out of the book (30)
• Begin to build an outline (60)
• Create a list of studies to read (30)
• Read and make notes on all of the studies (6 hours)
• Write half of draft (5 hours)
• Write other half of draft (5 hours)
• Reread paper and make edits (4 hours)
• Make appointment with writing resource for the next week (10)
• Appointment with Writing resource (60)
• Rewrite and edit (4 hours)

Now I go back and estimate how much time it will take to do each task.  So, I look at my calendar and block off time for each thing. If the task is 30 minutes or less, I don’t necessarily need to block the time on my calendar, but anything over that I definitely do.  As I determine which days I’ll do the tasks, I block off the time and I put that date on the spreadsheet.  

Why Break Projects Down?

Just a quick aside before we go onto the next step — this is just my way of taking pressure off my brain. Facing a 5 hour block of time to write 6-8 pages is no big deal if you’ve already done an outline and highlighted the research that you want to use. In fact, at the end of that 5 hour block, you may just feel like powering through and doing a little more.  But sitting down to start a 15 page paper that is due in 2 days is not only super stressful, it also isn’t going to produce great results.  Your brain needs time between writing and researching to come up with creative ideas.  Also, this is definitely a conservative approach, so make sure you aren’t scheduling everything in at the last minute.  You need cushion built in just in case some tasks take longer than you expect. 

Why do you need a Calendar and Task List?

Now, I’m going to import these tasks into Toodledo.  You are probably thinking why would you need to put them in 2 places: your calendar and a task list?  And the answer is — for the same reason I use both in everyday life.  Task lists helps gather together all of the things that need to be done — today and in the future. Calendars help determine when to do them. The problem with using only a calendar is that we aren’t always great at estimating how long something will take.  And on the calendar, the things that haven’t been completed don’t carry over to the next day.  Using both may be duplicative in some ways, but they perform different functions AND back each other up. Also, these tools ONLY work if you look at them every day, so that is an important habit to build if you plan to use this system. 

Okay — let’s get these tasks from our spreadsheet into Toodledo.  There are two ways to add multiple tasks to Toodledo for the web. Both of them have merits. Let’s start with the more straightforward method. 

• Multiple Tasks - if you hit the orange Add Task button, one of your options is to Add Multiple Tasks.  Clicking on that brings you to a screen where you can cut and paste your tasks.  Each one has to be on a new line and Toodledo will make each into separate tasks. So, I can go to my spreadsheet, copy these tasks and paste them into Toodledo.  Now, I’m going to want to assign a special tag to these so that I can bring them all up together later.  I’ll use the new tag Term Paper for these.  I think you’ve probably figured out the drawback. There is no way to add the date field or length, so you have to edit those manually.  Hit save, go into Tags and find your new tag and edit the due date (and perhaps the length) of each task.  I prefer this method for shorter projects since it is relatively easy to edit manually. For longer projects with lots of tasks, you may choose to use the
• Import file option - I’ll put a link to the template I use in the comments section.  Open up this CSV import file in Excel or whatever spreadsheet program you use, cut and paste task name, due date, tag, and length (in minutes) from your planning sheet and save it. I always just call it toodledo_import.csv.  Now go back into Add Task and this time select, Import Tasks.  Look for CSV Import/Export and click on More Details. Now under the Import section, click on Choose File, find your file and hit Upload.  Toodledo will give you a preview on how it has parsed the data — it should be fine — once you’ve okayed that it will add your tasks along with the specified tag, due date, and task length. 

Now, whenever you want to see how things are progressing or if you need to switch some dates, go into Tags, pick the tag for your project and make whatever changes you need. I use this planning method for lots of things: party planning, paper writing, home projects, research, decision making, YouTube videos — you name it!

Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!