The Bright Method Can Help You Better Plan Your Day

In 15 years of reporting on productivity tools, I thought I’d tried them all: the Pomodoro Technique, Getting Things Done, the Bullet Journal Method, and so forth. Then former litigator Kelly Nolan, a time-management strategist who works mostly with high-achieving women, surprised me with a deceptively simple system: scheduling tasks in a digital calendar, which converts them into time, the actual currency of your days. No need for a separate to-do list, paper planner, or app. She calls it the Bright Method, which comes from her slogan: “for bright women seeking bright lives.” (“Bright” being the opposite of the darkness that can descend upon anyone with a lot to do and not enough time to do it.) The method has solved my issues of being chronically overbooked and under rested. After you’ve picked a digital calendar, here’s how to get going:

Make sub calendars. For work, I have Events (meetings, conferences, interviews), To-Dos (calls, emails, administrative stuff), and what I call “Doing” (e.g., “write Bright Method article”). My non-work ones are Life Tasks (errands, appointments), Ari Time (socializing), Self-Care (sleep, showering, meals, food prep), Exercise, Nanny, Whole Family, and a separate calendar for each family member. Nolan suggests color coding to prevent visual overload. For example, family members get different shades of green.