President Eisenhower once said “The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent," as a dilemma of the modern man. 

I experience this dilemma personally. 

As a PhD candidate working on my dissertation, and several creative side projects, I often battle with balancing the urgent, and the important.

I work on urgent things daily, but they do not always align with my longer-term goals. And my longer-term goals are rarely urgent.

As a result, I often feel guilty and battle with mental overload on deciding what tasks do I need to focus on daily/weekly/monthly.

Then I discovered the concept of time theming from Mike Vardy, a productivity expert during the second Linking Your Thinking conference that took place in August 2022.

Time Theming has helped me eliminate the feeling that I am only focusing on short-term goals. Instead, practicing time theming ensured that I am also giving attention to my longer-term goals.

Time theming is a productivity method in which you designate a specific focus theme or area of focus in your calendar.

You can time theme in three ways.

• Daily Theming - You designate each day of the week to a specific area. Example: Monday - Communication work, Tuesday - Committee meetings, Wednesday - House chores.

• Horizontal Theming - You designate a specific time frame every day for a specific task. Example: 7:00 - 8:00am - Creative Writing.

• Monthly Theming - You designate a specific focus for each month. Example: January - Decluttering. February - Financial Audit.

I realized that time theming has helped me remove the mental burden of deciding, "what tasks do I need to work on today?"

When you practice time theming, you still can make room to work on the urgent tasks that pop up. Once you are done, just return to your theme and refocus.

If you feel you are not dedicating enough time and energy to all your areas adequately, you can try time theming your days/week/month.

Time theming is one of the many frameworks from Mike Vardy's Time Crafting tool kit. To do a deep dive, you can access the whole kit here.