Get Everything Done

Here is the next bite-sized installment of My "Deep Focus" Journey. (the last one is here: http://markforster.squarespace.com/forum/post/2267396 )

An unexpected side benefit of the Kanban/Pomodoro approach is that I feel totally in control of my calendar. I feel like I have exactly the right balance of detail in my calendar. In general, I schedule only actual appointments and meetings on my calendar. Then when planning today’s work, I only need to allocate one or two Pomodoros for clearing email and the tasks generated thereby, and count how many more Pomodoros I get to spend on my Kanban. It’s fun and easy and it seems to work really well.

It’s made me feel a lot more in control of my time. I feel like if I say I will do something at 3pm, then I *will* do it at 3pm. This has been of greatest benefit at home. I can tell my wife “Yes I can do that project with the children from 9 to 11 on Saturday morning” and actually be confident that I can do it without changing at the last minute: “oops, it took me longer than I expected to research the new insurance”. The “new insurance” is now just a sticky and I’ve allocated two Pomodoros for it. It’s just waiting for a Pomodoro or two so I can get started. And I know where I can find those Pomodoros. Maybe I’ll have a migraine and can’t find those Pomodoros exactly when I planned I would; but it is *so much easier* to SEE where the time is going, and where things are at, that I don’t need to take time away from the family to play catch-up all the time. This has been a really big win.

As was mentioned in the discussion on the last post, I've found this to be a big improvement over "time blocking" in general. Many of my favorite writers (such as Cal Newport and Ramit Sethi - both of whom will be featured in future installments of this "journey") have been advocating a fully-scheduled calendar, where all the time is given a task, and all tasks are given a time. Ramit goes so far as to say, "If it's not on my calendar, it doesn't exist!" Also, I just noticed that Melanie has a great post on the topic also! http://www.psychowith6.com/college-students-ceos-manage-time-way/

I also saw analogies to Dave Ramsey's financial budgeting approach ("give every dollar a name, on paper on purpose before the month begins"), and tried to see if there was a way to make this work: give every minute a name, on paper on purpose, before the day/week begins. But I just couldn't do it. It was not flexible enough, and because it wasn't responsive to my changing day and week, it generated huge resistance.

Back in the fall, I was blocking out "buffer blocks" and "focus blocks" on my calendar, a week in advance. The only result of that was my coworkers complaining they could never find any time on my calendar to schedule a meeting. It just didn't work.

So, I did give "total time blocking" a good run for its money.

Also, I noticed that Cal Newport had some items blocked on his calendar called "Pressing Tasks" or something like that. Hmm, that's interesting - so it's NOT all time-blocked down to the task level - he has timeslots allocated to buckets like this. But how does he know what tasks are "pressing"? He must have some other way of keeping track of that, but he doesn't discuss it in his articles that advocate time-blocking, at least as far as I can tell. So, I decided to learn as much as I could from the principles behind these methods, but strike out on my own, and find my own way to manage my calendar. The kanban/Pomodoro mix was the result.

How does this help with Deep Focus? It helps so much, just having confidence that I will do the things I say I am going to do, WHEN I say I am going to do them. If my wife or my boss needs a commitment like that for a particular task, I *can* time-block that. For example, my wife asked me to spend three evenings a week helping my son with math. Previously, I'd have a hard time keeping that commitment, since there are so many other pressures and ways I could use that evening time, also for tasks and priorities that my wife agrees are important. But all those things are on my kanban now, and I can always find a bunch of pomodoros in the evenings during the week, even if I commit time to helping with math. Since I know the other things will get handled, it's much easier to stick to the math commitment.

I guess overall, I have a much better sense of how much available time I actually have, and can see much more clearly how to allocate that time, so I don't feel the pressure of invisible backlogs building all over the place. This gives me the sense of peace that everything is under control, so I can actually calm down and focus long enough for 2-3 hours without getting worried that I am dropping something.

Thanks for the feedback, Alan! I've got a couple more "installments" almost ready, but I will slow down on the cadence a bit and see if we can get some more dialog going about what's already been posted.