Get Everything Done

Because it's year end now where I work, the volume of email and crises has grown exponentially as the crises coming from other departments has increased (on items that should have been dealt with months ago before I came here - we're cleaning up stuff from 2005!!) and AF doesn't deal with this well as all of this stuff has a finish date of March 31.

It also appears to be extremely difficult to get things resolved in the environment I'm in now. In the past, I used to be able to send an email to someone to do something and in my mind it was finished. That doesn't work at this job (note to self - never work at a non-profit institution with union employees again). Thank goodness I only have 9 months left on my contract to deal with this madness. We're also going through a major process improvement exercise for all of finance/HR/payroll etc. - and for some reason the consulting team for that is reviewing the processes the week before year-end. That's idiocy! It's fine for non-accountants to do that to accountants, but for accounting types to do it to their own profession is insane and indicative of the dysfunction of the whole institution.

I've only been using AF for ~ the last 3-4 weeks at work, and it's not working as well for me here as it does at home, although it seemed to be working in the first week or two. I'm not sure if that's because it's yearend and therefore the volume is too much and all this old stuff is becoming a crisis for other departments, but I find I am not getting to everything as quickly as I would like and not filtering as well with AF as I did when I filtered with a mental "this needs to be done right away" attitude.

Since I've only got a few working days left before March 31, I'm going to start filtering on "year-end" and put everything else in the AF list to be dealt with after year-end is over. Next quarter, I'll put extra time into determining what the possible crises from other departments will be and working ahead on these things - starting right after this year-end is over. AF will be perfect for working ahead on these things I think.

It's occurred to me that this must be how other people work all the time, and I can't imagine living this way.

So for now, I'm moving to a daily task list and moving everything that doesn't need to be done this week into my AF list to be addressed in the normal AF fashion after March 31. Next quarter end I'll have some more experience with both AF and this job and I'm hoping I won't have to do this as I feel like I've failed the system somehow. :-(

Looks appropriate to me. You're basically moving into a week where you have no discretionary time, so treating it as an extended meeting and resuming your AF lists later seems exactly right.

If you do have any time, you'll naturally want to focus on your reactive systems: schedules/ contact lists/ progress reviews/ issue lists/ status reports/ escalation routes and so on.

As Mark pointed out in DIT, fireman don't need their time management systems to determine how to respond to a call. But they do rely on a strong call management system.

Hi Jacqueline

Unfortunately a lot of industries do work that way and the biggest stress factor is the feeling of lack of control. When outside factors impose a ridiculous level of work on us that "has to be done" and done by a deadline, then effectively you have no discretionery time and must work exclusively on that project until the deadline. You may be able to create project specific AF lists but in my experience so far this is one of those "grit your teeth and get on with it" occassions. I have no doubt that AF can manage things but sometimes we have to be in the right frame of mind for to allow that - when in situations like this we are not always willing to take the risk, or to push aside the frustration to relax with AF sufficiently. We are after all human :-)

At least you are looking at a fairly small window of time - just get through it and then get back to AF - you will be in a better frame of mind without the immediate stress to see how to manage future events of this type.

Hi Jacqueline,

Welcome to my world. As you have seen from many of my posts before, I deal with so many hard deadlines and my workload is immense -- 65+ hours per week. But I agree completely wilth the post from Will -- you just sometimes have to go into a reactionary management mode and put AF aside. I do my best to block off time during particularly bad moments to do just my AF lists.

Here is what I do when things get this bad as you have described -- I schedule tasks onto the calendar and I protect that time at all costs.

Good luck....will be thinking of you!

-David

David wrote:
"I schedule tasks onto the calendar and I protect that time at all costs."

This is how I use AF too. I believe it's consistent with the AF instructions since for all intends and purposes the tasks concerned must be done at a specific day/time and, therefore, they deserve to be put on a calendar..

Jacqueline

In this situation I think there is little you can do except prioritise by urgency - I seem to remember Mark giving that advice previously. This does mean putting af to one side temporarily.

I faced a similar situation at work where i was a Head of one third of the finance department for a large UK group. I joined this organisaiton to find that the workload was insane. I felt like the conductor of an orchestra who was expected to play half the instruments and then received criticism when the tune wasn't up to standard. To give you a flavour keeping up with the day job was a challenge because there were not enough staff. My boss thought of new tasks every day and claimed that everything was a priority. He was rather aggressive about the whole thing. At the same time we were selling off a third of the group and trying to implement new systems across all of finance. Anyway you get the picture.

I put up with this for 2 years and did my best. But for a person who likes to be professional it was depressing. I tried several time management systems (this was pre AF) but that wasn't the problem it was the culture. I put on about 40 pounds in weight and decided my health was suffering and resigned. Timing wasn't great with the credit crunch. My health is coming back (now I have time to go to the doctors etc). And soon I will start my own business.

I am glad you only 9 months left of the contract. Can I suggest you save a few pennies for a break to recover at the end. Without you health you can't do anything.

I've been there too. All I can say is that all you can do is give honest feedback to management, smile as you insist on priority, then do your best and expect only criticism in return ... all the while looking for a new job.

A tip, perhaps ... don't ask irrational management for "priorities". They hear that (rightly) as deciding what will NOT get done. Rather ask what they would like you to do FIRST. Even in their cottage cheese brains there can only be one FIRST.

A second tip ... this kind of thing never gets better. It is a reflection of the corporate mentality and will always be there. The only solution is to leave.

A final observation: Gresham's Law states that "Bad money drives out good." This is true of people as well. As the number of idiot managers increases only the unqualified people remain ... because they find it hard to move. The really good people bail at the first whiff of this kind of thing because they CAN.

"Will the last person to leave, please turn out the lights!"

Mike - couldn't agree more. In my old place there were a handful of senior people (of which I was one) who were very well paid to put up with the rubbish. There were unionised folks who'd all been there for ever at the bottom. And in between newly qualified accountants - all temps just stopping off to earn some some before continuing their travels. Looking for alternative employment is the best option.

I agree with Mike. Vote with your feet and leave. Far too many organisations are pushing their staff to the edge. Strange as it seems, some of us do have a life outside work and don't particularly want to work 10 hours a day.

Hi Jacqueline

There is a lot of excellent advice there. As I said above it is the lack of control that creates the most stress and in that type of environment, if there is no potential for you to gain a sense of control, then Mike is absolutely right when he says " ... this kind of thing never gets better. It is a reflection of the corporate mentality and will always be there. The only solution is to leave." Most organisations go through periods of stress and where they are short lived it is fine, but if not your health will suffer and I can personally relate to the comments Man of Kent made above - it's just not worth it - but it's hard sometimes to gain perspective when surrounded by the mess.

Mike is absolutely right when he says "don't ask irrational management for "priorities". They hear that (rightly) as deciding what will NOT get done. Rather ask what they would like you to do FIRST." Just keep in mind that there is a danger in this - by creating a situation where the "irrational management" is forced to take responsibility for a decision there can be a backlash as they may realise they have been caught out and react by making life very unpleasant!

Mike I think you are being overly optimistic that the location of the light switch will be recalled the "last person" :-)

Thanks guys, this is my last "tour of duty" before retiring, so I'm not dependent on this job by any means. It's not frustrating enough to walk out, I think I just miss having everything completely under control and knowing what was coming. At this point, although I sound and am frustrated, it's an achievable challenge I think. To do what I can do, protect some time boundaries and not expect to get everything resolved, even though it is year-end. Obviously if some issues have been hanging around all year, or for the last four years, the world won't end if they don't get resolved.

I always tell people that I work with - we're not doing brain surgery here, nobody is going to die on the operating table because we didn't book a journal entry. Put it in perspective.

I have been in the position where you were Man of Kent. I had that job that was insane about 6 or 7 years ago, doing the work of 3 people and not allowed to hire anyone. Taking more on because I didn't want to overload my staff. Every day when the VP Finance would leave at 5:00 and say "don't stay too long", I felt like waving goodbye with my middle finger up and asking her to stop by on her way home and say hi to my kids since I wouldn't be seeing them that night. I stopped exercising and put on 30 pounds in 6 months and the last straw was when my hair started falling out in patches - no bonus was enough to compensate for that. And a couple of people that reported to me left after one of my staff died of brain cancer at only 50 y.o. - that put it into perspective for all of us that you need to be somewhere where you're happy because it could happen to you at any minute. There was a complete turnover of the whole finance group in 3 months, from what I hear though, management is still abusing the new people...

As always, excellent advice from Christine B!! Hi Christine....hope you are well...

-David

Hi David

Thanks for the kind wishes - I'm having a very productive week with AF! Hope you're not working too hard .......? Lots of thought provoking comments on overwork above ..... :-)

The sad thing is that I got 3 emails back from people today saying "thank you for your prompt response..." Apparently that doesn't happen very often in this organization, so people are surprised when someone actually provides them with their solution within minutes of their request. Things like this make it all worthwhile sometimes. :-)

No system will enable you to do more than you can do. AF does help avoid/reduce self-generated overload by having a formal dismissing process.

All systems, though, have to have a way of coping with externally generated overload unless you are one of the people that never happens to; I'm not comfortable with the idea of having a system and then having to suspend it when the going gets tough. This may mean using due dates (and electronic implementations have an advantage here for people with lots of pages, since they can filter all pages in one go) or priority tags; when you can predict an overload (as with year end), you may need to reserve time availability and make sure other decks are cleared as you approach it (awareness of this and AF may be sufficient to do this).

For myself, I also don't like a system which excludes project management - much of what most of us do can be split into subtasks that may be done at different times. Again not a problem to do this with many electronic possibilities (just needs the option of hierarchies of tasks and subtasks with many levels available).

I'd also note that we all must have a review of what we will be doing today - if only to check the calendar. I'll also have a general idea of what I would like to do today (may be influenced by the weather since I have a number of tasks to be done outside), informed by the process of going through the pages. So it isn't such a big step to make this more definitive when there's a host of stuff that HAS to be done today.

What I'm really saying is that it is possible to find a way of working AF so that it deals with these situations within the system and do it as well as (or better than) any other ystem.

Dm, I'm not comfortable with abandoning the system right now either - but I don't feel that I am abandoning it really. I've got 5 days left until March 31 with about 10 fairly significant 1/2 day projects that have to be done. I'm writing everything new that comes up that doesn't need to be done in the next 5 days into my AF list. It will be ready and waiting for me on April 1 - as always.

I'm not driven by "project management" at work for something like a 1/2 day project involving only a couple of people and myself - I believe some people need to break this stuff down on paper for themselves - I just don't. We're all different, and quite frankly, I generally think through something fairly quickly and dive in - you can plan and map and diagram all you want, when you start working on it, half the time your plans are thrown out the window. I don't want to imagine dependencies where there are none, I want to get stuff done as quickly as possible with the minimum of effort.

I firmly believe that had I spent a previous year end at this institution or at least gone through one quarter and had some awareness of how the place operated, I wouldn't have been blindsided like this. But it's still a manageable situation, just not how I like to work.

I have my items listed in AF to go through when I sit down with the predecessor of my predecessor after YE (my immediate predecessor is on maternity leave) to determine what can be dropped in this role, what's busywork, what are the redundancies - what's the bigger picture? She's moved on to "central" so has the distance and the knowledge to be a great resource to me, and I fully intend to use her as much as I can. I've already identified some things, but I want to be sure I won't be dropping the ball on anything that appears irrelevant or redundant to me, but may not be for some reason.

In the meantime, I'm working on things that are obvious to me that are duplication (or triplication!) of efforts in my department.

eg. a journal entry is typed in an email by my predecessor and sent to a clerk, entered into an excel spreadsheet by the clerk, then entered into a JE in the system by the clerk (who has no accounting background - but is a smart girl). So the SAME information is essentially typed three times? This is - no other word for it - stupid.

So what's my goal for this small, yet annoying situation? a) teach the clerk the basics of accounting so I don't have to see the J/E at all until it comes time for approval; b) get the entry done in an excel template (that they've never used - OMG - it would take 1/2 hour for IT to set it up!) that can be uploaded so the info. only has to be entered once. This is how I work on a system at the most basic level to free up time to tackle the big things and lessen the work load of everyone involved.

I've seen these kinds of situations everywhere I've worked. People make things so much harder than they have to be.

My ultimate goal is to not have anything that *has* to be done today - because I've made sure it's done before today.

Hi Jacqueline,

Some very good responses and empathies in your thread.

Having been there, done that etc. All I'll add is that when I worked in finance/accounting a US multi-national subsidiary. Our US Finance Director was a bully - to those who never stood up to him.

When he went into a spin and issued multi-priorities (usually just before a visit - the Second Coming, we used to call such visits - from US corporate head office), I just stood my ground and say, "Mr H, you have given me five pieces of analysis to do, I will do them one at a a time. Tell me which ONE you want first and i will do it first. Then we will discuss the next ONE."

He never fired me, we got on well, but the serfs who cowed before him hated him and he despised them.

Such was corporate life, why did I tolerate it for so long before starting my own business in 1997????

Hi Jacqueline

I didn't mean to imply that you were abandoning AF - even temporarily - what has to be done has to be done.

What I was trying to say was to those who advocate a 'multitude' of systems - AF + Project planner + scheduler + Today management when there's a lot of stuff that has to be done as if that is the only way to manage within AF. I find having a lot of systems overloads me. I have to have a diary, so I have that. I also have AF. I can wrap project management into AF, I can wrap urgent potentially overload situations into AF (a quick check on tasks with near due dates tells me when this might be happening) - so I do. I have to have some idea of what I hope to do today when my diary isn't heavily booked; these thoughts come naturally and automatically (and I can't believe that isn't true for everyone) and the stuff I am likely to think of comes 'intuitively' from within the AF pages but without formal review - or in overload situations it comes from the tasks that need doing now. I never worry about getting stuff done that might be on the 'wrong' page - but when I do go through the AF pages, I do it as Mark has described. This gets everything entered done in its due time. I never worry about doing stuff immediately when that is necessary or easier. I also never enter tasks I will do anyway into AF (eg dishwasher, picking the kids up, making meals); if my mind is keeping tabs on it (or the environment is reminding me often enough) I don't waste extra time by putting it into AF too. With an electronic system, checking on due dates does not take more than a minute, and deciding if stuff needs to be done today doesn't take more than another minute - and this does not have to be done every day or every week or even every month but only when there's a situation developing. Possibly not a purist's AF, but it does allow me to deal with my workload using AF for nearly everything except the diary.

On a specific problem you mentioned, at least you can track those outgoing mails for completion easily. I do log sent mails in AF and close them when I get a reply.

Do you use IM? much easier to track to fast closure.

Yesterday I counted 20 exchanges in one conversation in an hour and a half.

I'm sorry Dm, I misunderstood - I'm with you, I tend towards oversimplification and sometimes the simplest thing is to do things right away. It comes in, I know it's urgent, ergo I just do it immediately. No need to clutter my mind - or my AF list - with it. DIT never felt right to me although I thought it was a good concept in theory, I think my work was too project oriented and self-driven to benefit.

I use my calendar for meetings only at work. If the calendar and email were synched together, I would use my calendar more because I used to be able to pull an email request into the calendar. I don't have a lot of "this has to be done today or even tomorrow" as much as "this has to be done this week sometime." So the items are still discretionary - within the week. I used to also be able to pull the email into a task list which was handy when I delegated things out, but that's not possible anymore either.

Will, we don't use IM at this job - we used to at my old one and it was handy, although sometimes it was nice to have a log. It's not normal to me to have to be checking up on people to see if they've done what I've asked. I may do as others on the forum have done and cc myself on those types of requests (where I don't trust the person I'm sending it to) and file them in a separate folder in my email. Then I'll know that everything in there is a request that I've put out and I need to check to see if they're done.

Part of my issue is that prior to this new job (and AF), I worked with my email as a to-do list of small tasks (and my goal was to keep it always empty, ie. done) and my work was basically large, multi-day / week projects. This job is more of a task environment, and my brain isn't used to this. I always wanted to respond to requests from my staff immediately because they needed quick answers to proceed on their own multi-day project that was a part of the overall big project. I've worked towards an empty inbox for so many years I think that I get anxious just by seeing email in there. I'm going to go through it today and pick out year-end issues and move the rest to the .AF folder I set up a couple of weeks ago.

There's also a lot of cc'ing going on in this new job - I think because people aren't sure who can give them answers. The purpose of the re-engineering process that's going on now is to centralize. They're all scared, but I'm saying "it's about time."

One of my other concerns is that I have found after just 3 months here that the department managers are already seeing me as the person to go to when they need to get things done - things that are really their responsibility to manage. Great for my ego, but not for my workload. I used to take these things on in former jobs because it was good for my career to be the 'go to' person - but I don't want a 'career' anymore. :-)

I feel that AF is a good system to deal with this type of task-oriented environment, so I'm glad that it came along when it did. But I really was more efficient when I used my email as a to-do list. I will probably keep that as a separate "AF page" of its own. My goal is to not have any more than 5 or so active pages in my AF lists either at home or at work because I feel such a sense of non-overwhelm at that state. Any more than that means I'm taking too much on and not resolving things quickly enough. Other people on the forum are comfortable with non-resolution, I'm just not.

I suspect I'm in a similar environment.

That's why I keep my work AF in Outlook. I clear my inbox by dragging any mails that are going to need later work into my task list.

And I do flag mails for follow up (one click) and use the "for follow up" search folder on my sent mail.

Jacqueline, one thing that can help manage the cc'ing in your inbox is color coding, if your email system supports it. Use one color for emails that you're a CC, and another color for emails that you're a TO. That way you can concentrate on the TO messages before the CC messages, or vice versa. (In Outlook 2003, it's under Tools, Organize)

Will, how do you flag for follow up before you send it out? Are you going to your sent folder right after you send it and flagging it then? I was thinking I could set up some kind of rule on my sent email to automatically move it to the AF folder. This email system doesn't let me do the kind of search on the "related messages" / string that Outlook does. It's a very basic system, I swear hotmail is more powerful than this thing.

Jacqueline,

Check this:

http://www.taglocity.com/

You can send mail with tags included and the reciever can filter on those tags.

Hi Dm

Going back to your 2:16 post above, my experience so far is that AF is well able to handle overload but in my case I have had to move away from "pure" AF in order to do it, simply because of task volume. If a situation arises that requires prompt action on a number of items that exceeds the number of items that will fit on any one page, then the only solution is to work outside of AF or to increase the size of your closed list. By using the "expanded closed list" method AF is handling my current situation unbelievably well, despite adding a total of 141 items to the list yesterday. Although I have an electronic implementation, with tagging, I hardly used it - my notebook was more than adequate. You could argue that perhaps it was unnecessary to enter all tasks into AF but it was that very entering that enabled me to action tasks and to feel in control.

I understand what you say when you state that you don't like the idea of a system that excludes project management. I think that all comes down to definition - back to Mark's comparison of managing a project and managing yourself within a project. For me AF handles everything - my schedule, my general tasks, my projects - just everything. The external tools (diary, calendar, accounts package, filing cabinet, dishwasher) still exist, but the management of everything is within AF.

I certainly believe it to be possible to work AF so that it deals with these situations within the system and as well as (or better than) any other system. My current situation has proved that in no uncertain terms. What is great to know is that it doesn't just deal with it but enables the identification of methods to improve upon or eliminate problems areas for the future. I would have felt totally lost if I couldn't have put my overload into AF - I would have felt overwhelmed and out of control, and no way would I have got done as much as I have ...........

Jaqueline wrote:

"So for now, I'm moving to a daily task list and moving everything that doesn't need to be done this week into my AF list to be addressed in the normal AF fashion after March 31"

Sounds good. I suppose after year end the emergency AF list can be added onto the end of the normal AF list.

Jacqueline,

In vanilla Outlook 2007, on the mail window there is a big button with a picture of a flag on it. Though to be honest, I often forget and tag my sent mails afterwards.

If you have to use horrible bloatware you may as well use a few of the bells and whistles

I'm guessing that the GTD trick of CC'ing yourself on the mails you want to follow up on may still work. Then you can scan mails from yourself in your inbox.

or something.

Incidentally, I bulk copy (ctrl + A ctrl + X ctrl + V) my inbox to a "process" folder before working on it. Then when I go through it, top to bottom, I can bulk copy to my reference folder without worrying whether any new mails have come in that I haven't seen. A lot of mails get ignored based on subject line. I started doing this recently and it has saved me about an hour a day (horrible bloatware + old laptop: not a great combination! individually saving/deleting was taking 10- 15s per mail, with knock on effects on concentration and general efficiency).

Hi Will, thanks - I just set up a rule to place everything that is an email from myself to myself into a folder called ".Follow up" - the period at the front keeps it right at the top. I've got my emails separated into batches based on my mini-projects for next week and things are looking rosier again. Funny what getting better organized can do. I always clean my desk before starting anything that requires concentrated thought and a clear mind. :-)

Smileypete, there won't be any emergency list after this year-end is over. :-) I'll keep my lists though to review what type of surprises occurred so I can anticipate. And I've been taking the time to make some contacts in the other departments so I get in the loop on these things earlier.

Hey all - anyone using Outlook 2007 should check out the "February 2009 cumulative update". It includes some major rewrites of internal Outlook data structures, which makes things *much* faster if you have lots of emails or a slower PC. It's going to be included in the official SP2 later this year, but the performance benefits are significant enough that it was released early, as a hotfix.

You can read more about it at http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/03/24/450881.aspx

Then go here to request it: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961752/

(Yes, you have to explicitly request it, and then get sent a download link - this is a requirement for hotfixes).

Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft. But not in the Outlook team. I just like that they've given my Outlook its speed back :-)

Hi Jaqueline,

Just to tell you how i am with you. I have been working for 22 years in many kind of firm.

Some were small others huge. The last one was a very well know company. For 5 years they stressed me ans push me until i was so fed up that i quid or be fired for my great pleasure. Coming in this company and living it were in my life for the moment he best things wich ever hapened in my professinal life.

Later i created my own company and i realised that what i thought beeing hard was nothing more than a ride on hollidays !!!!!!

The situation has changed. My habits too. I needed to focus or disapear. No choice.
Also, I nedded new tools... i had to adapt me to the right situation.

So i discovered GTD for a while it helped me. Giving me more peace and helping me to know what were the basis and doing things at the right time. But if Gtd was perfect for planing and thinking it was very difficult for the common things and acting was very hard for me. I think it was too stright for me. To hard to respect.

Then about a month ago i discovered AF. And then it a new rush and it helped me to focus on the right thing to do at the right time. Of course it was very difficult to respect. I had to understand it, it's not so easy, and i had to change my habits.

So, My advices will be these.

-First put a clock or a wathch on your desk
-secont decide each day how much you accept to work
-Third live at the time you decide finished or not (except if something is so important than you absolutly need to finish it. Question of live or death.
-Fourth read getting things done
-Fift do and respect AF in it basic method no tags no context, no color nothing.
-Sixt see who take you time or interupt you and why and try to block him if it is for unecessary reason
-seventh put of the automatic reception of email and read your email 2 or 3 times per day
-eighth at the end of the day do a meeting with yourself. Nobody must interupt you. Make a daily fast review read your list of all the most important project you have to do and check what you done and what is left to do and when
-nineth report all dated task in your diary. If you have color use them ie blue appointment, waiting green, task black dont use outlook task and so on even ominfocus use AF
tenth
-eleventh in the morning read your goal, your project list and all task of OF one pas withoutt willing doing anything. do it with a pen if you read something unusefull you done it , you dont want to do it cross it. You can also read it again and if you see very important things undone in the begining of pages cross them and report thenm in your last page.
-Twelve find someone to delegates things you think they will do better than you. If there is no one then try to externalize it with a virtual assistant (india....) it cost nothing.... its perfect for task with dont needs your cleverness.
-thirteens if all that things dont work may be because of the process of the firm then dont think it s because of you or others just act, find a new job, take some money if you can, and simply quit.
Hope this help.