On Time Management & Getting Things Done

Time management comes up often in conversations lately. After years of trial and error, here’s what works for me.
Slow is fake. Momentum creates clarity.
The Essential Tools
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Sunsama: Gather tasks from all sources, prioritize them, and timebox them onto a daily planner
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Notion: Daily log and notes
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Apple Calendar: Calendar events from all sources in one place
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Apple Mail: Emails from all inboxes in one place
Core Practices
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Keep your communication channels clean, like still water. If you’re not engaged, unsubscribe.
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Only check channels outside your immediate team during morning and afternoon triage.
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End each work session at 90% completion - lunch, evening, whenever. Your returning self will thank you for the momentum.
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After 6pm, my mind wanders. But at 5am—Brahmamurti—everything flows. Find your ideal working time.
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Break your focus with movement. I use Pomodoro intervals as signals to rise, check on family, and walk. The body remembers what the mind forgets.
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Make time for strength training - it creates energy and keeps the desk worker’s demons (back pain, shoulder issues) at bay.
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Keep a running log of your day’s journey:
- Knowledge for future reference
- Maintain an unbroken record to keep yourself accountable
- Victories and lessons
- Fuel for the LLM analysis
Task Management Rituals
Drawing from Sunsama’s wisdom, here’s my approach:
Morning Triage (6:30am)
This ritual takes at least 45 minutes. It’s worth every moment. No shortcuts.
Review each communication channel:
- Emails
- Slack
- Calendar
- Jira
- Trello
- Git platforms (Bitbucket, Github, Gitlab)
- Yesterday’s notes
- Left over tasks in Sunsama
Follow this process:
- Read/assess each item
- Takes < 5 minutes? Do it now
- Use a system like the Eisenhower Matrix to decide:
- Not relevant? Archive/delete
- Important? Add to Sunsama
Task Processing
Once everything is in Sunsama:
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Time Assessment:
- Estimate how long each task will take
- Break down anything over 2 hours into smaller tasks
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Today:
- Assign highest priority tasks to today
- Move others to tomorrow for fresh review
- If not for tomorrow, move to backlog
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Timeboxing:
- Fill today’s available hours
- Group work of the same domain
- Add buffer time between tasks as needed
- When a time block ends, move on. Be strict and move forward without hesitation. Like the turning of a page, each timeblock must yield to the next. If it’s truly important, it will find its proper time tomorrow. This rhythm becomes freeing with practice.
Master your capacity before expanding it. 100% of 6 hours brings more joy than 70% of 8 hours.

Afternoon Triage (1:30pm)
- Review progress and adjust time boxes if needed
- Check communication channels
Weekly Review
Reflect on your week’s journey and let this insight guide your next steps. Share your daily logs with Claude to help extract patterns:
- Key victories
- Challenges faced
- Next steps
- Lessons learned
Your process should flow and adapt. What works today may shift tomorrow - reflect often, adjust gently.
Review your backlog and ruthlessly cull what you haven’t touched and won’t touch. Be honest - it’s not going to get done. Let flights of fancy live in your journal instead.
Daily Schedule
Time | Activity |
---|---|
5:30am | Meditation |
6:00am | Exercise |
6:30am | Morning triage |
12:00pm | Lunch break |
1:30pm | Afternoon triage |
6:00pm | Day’s end |