After writing "Advice for interacting with busy people", I was asked to write a follow-up on advice for newly busy people. So, here's a quick list of tools and mental models that help me prioritize.

This list is by no means comprehensive. It's just the tools I know and have loved. Take what's useful, and drop what doesn't fit your brain and life.

1. Prioritizing between projects

a. Apply the Tomorrow Rule.

When someone asks you to join an exciting project that's due half a year from now, it is very, very tempting to say "yes". You'll immediately have a vivid imagination of the shiny outcome, while the workload is far enough in the future to not cross your mind. To mitigate this tendency, it makes sense to apply the Tomorrow Rule. It goes as such: "Am I committed enough to this that I'd clear up time in my schedule tomorrow to make it happen?"

b. If things get too much, do a Productivity Purge.

If you already have too many projects on your plate and can't make reasonable progress on any of them, you might want to go through a round of Cal Newport's productivity purge algorithm. The steps:

"When it feels like your schedule is becoming too overwhelmed, take out a sheet of paper and label it with three columns: professional, extracurricular, and personal. Under “professional” list all the major projects you are currently working on in your professional life (if you’re a student, then this means classes and research, if you have a job, then this means your job, etc). Under “extracurricular” do the same for your side projects (your band, your blog, your plan to write a book). And under “personal” do the same for personal self-improvement projects (from fitness to reading more books).
Under each list try to select one or two projects which, at this point in your life, are the most important and seem like they would yield the greatest returns. Put a star by these projects.
Next, identify the projects that you could stop working on right away with no serious consequences. Cross these out.
Finally, for the projects that are left unmarked, come up with a 1-3 week plan for finalizing and dispatching them. Many of these will be projects for which you owe someone something before you can stop working on them. Come up with a crunch plan for the near future for shutting these down as quickly as possible.
Once you completed your crunch plan you’ll be left with only a small number

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Networking: A Game Manual

Networking: A Game Manual