Entries in Time Management (3)
What can be done now?
Mark Forster
in Productivity, Articles, Do It Tomorrow, Time Management
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This adheres to the basic “Do It Tomorrow” principle that prioritising should not normally be done at the task level. It should be done at the project level.
What tends to happen is that when people get under pressure they tend to try to prioritise tasks. This is rarely very successful because all that happens is that tasks get put off to days in the future. But those future days are going to be just as full as today is.
Keeping on top of projects is the best way to ensure that you are forced to prioritise at the project level. If you can’t keep on top of all your projects, then you need to look at your current projects and decide which ones should be de-activated, either temporarily or permanently.
Before I wrote DIT, I used to recommend people to use the question “What needs to be done now?” with reference to projects. In full the question would be something like:
If this report is going to be written by the end of the month, what needs to be done now?”
Nowadays the question I recommend is:
If this report is going to be written by the end of the month, what can be done now?
The effect of the first question is to push action back until it needs to be done. This makes it very vulnerable to unexpected interruptions. Actually there’s no such thing as “unexpected interruptions”. Interruptions are a fact of life. Leaving action until it needs to be done tends to result in deadline pressure and over commitment.
The second question on the other hand has the effect of encouraging you to start action at the beginning of the time available for its completion. This gives you much more leeway if things go wrong (which they will). It is also a strong disincentive to over committing yourself.
Getting Back on Track
Mark Forster
in Articles, Do It Tomorrow, Time Management
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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.
Related articles:
Wikipedia Entry
Mark Forster
in Time Management
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I’ve just discovered that I have a Wikipedia entry!
I wonder how long that’s been there?
October last year apparently.
And who wrote it?
“Wirefree” - no other details.
The writer’s done a reasonable job but there are a few inaccuracies.
Never mind!