Do Dates coupled with Due Dates

[00:00:00] You are listening to the Daily Five, an experimental podcast by Aurooba, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? So I learned about this idea from August Bradley, and I'm finding that when I have a lot of daunting tasks I need to accomplish. Seeing their due date, which is often just the date they must be done by, is not actually a very useful piece of data, at least not on its own.

[00:00:37] Instead, August Bradley recommends assigning a DO date, so a d-o date, not a D-U-E date. The date when you'll actually be doing the task rather than the date the task must be done by. On the surface, these two types of dates don't seem that different. After all, couldn't you set the due date to the date you'll do it on? But in practice, I've found them to be useful pieces of data, especially when you combine them together.

[00:01:13] There are often tasks that need to be done by a certain date. However, doing them on that date is not necessarily the best or most productive approach, because as we've covered recently, your first draft is never your best work. And in order to do your best work, you need to leave room for revision and iteration.

[00:01:35] So you keep in mind the date that task must absolutely be done by and with that relative date in front of you, you plan out when you'll actually do the task among the myriad other things you have to do in your life. The date you do the work might change and shift as you work on your tasks on a day-to-day basis.

[00:01:57] It's the mutable date, you know, the one that you can adjust to your needs. That date is not the one that it has to be done by. Right? The date it has to get done by is typically immovable. You cannot adjust that. It just simply is. And ideally, you leave a few days of space between the time you do the task and the time the task needs to be done by so that you can iterate if you need, change things around if you need, or at the very least, stay ahead of the game a little bit and give yourself some relief.

[00:02:37] If I'm completely honest, probably if you're a busy person, instead of having those days for relief, you will probably just stack it with other things you absolutely need to get done. But I like to think that we could maybe schedule a little bit more space for ourselves if we have the dates we have to get things done by and didn't only do things on the date [00:03:03] it has to be done by. Honestly, if you're a planner like I am, sometimes the hardest thing to do is the actual execution. And you know, I have covered some techniques in the past about how to get yourself to stop doing things at the last minute. I will link to that episode in the show notes. That's not to say that I never do things at the last minute.

[00:03:28] In fact, I literally did a big thing this morning at the last minute, which was edit a podcast episode that needs to be released tomorrow. Not this one. Another one. Life happens, and as you juggle the zillion plates that make up the many parts of your daily life and juggle the many different roles you have for the different people in your life, you will inevitably have times when you do things under the gun.

[00:03:57] In fact, I bet there are certain seasons or triggers in your life that lead to such times, for example, a really big event that's happening in your family, or you know, something major happened and you need to give your friend some support. I know that I certainly have those seasons and those triggers, but if you assign DO dates, so that's d-o dates, hopefully that happens a little less or at least comes with a little less stress.

[00:04:33] And now that I've talked for nearly five minutes about these dates, I'm gonna go assign them to the remaining tasks for launching my little course, right? Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.