What do you do when the inevitable happens and all your systems for time management collapse?
Typically this happens when you get an unexpectedly high work load, or you go away for a period and fail to get going again on return. Or perhaps your computer crashes and it takes three days to fix - and everything else gets thrown out of the window. Or perhaps you’ve just goofed off for a day or two and are now experiencing the knock-on effects.
Under all this pressure, you tell yourself that you’ve got too much of a crisis to be systematic. In fact you may well tell yourself “I can’t get the system going again now - I’ll wait until things settle down a bit”.
This is of course exactly the wrong approach. When things are really tough is the precisely the time that you most need to be systematic. When you find yourself in a crisis, you need to tighten up on the system not let go of it. Because it will be the system that enables you to get through the crisis in good shape.
Remember: When the going is difficult is when you need your system the most.
It can however be very hard to get the system going again because often people don’t know where to start.
With the Do It Tomorrow system it’s easy - provided that you focus on the right place. And that is to get your Will Do list ready for the following day, or if possible even for the current day.
Everything else can be dealt with by making a Backlog of it. Make the Backlog the first item on the Will Do list and you are on top of your work again.
So, to sum up, when things get out of hand don’t try to struggle on and catch up. Declare a backlog, and focus on getting your Will Do list going again.
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