Time Management - Part 2
In my last post, I told you about a new time management system I'm trying out. I thought I would tell you a little bit about the "heavy lifting" I do each week to arrange and prioritize my tasks. I tried to keep the post short, but it covers the hardest part of the work.
I keep my tasks on an free online service called ToodleDo. During the week, I'm adding things and clicking things that I've done, but at least once a week - for me, I do it Sunday night - I take a chunk of time to really go through the list.
I've said it before: this really isn't about time management - it's about attention management. The trick is to organize your list so that the stuff that you should be paying attention to is in front of you and everything else is hidden. "Out of sight, out of mind" is a good thing in this case. So, the basic planning process is to brainstorm everything and then carefully start to hide everything but the important bits.
ToodleDo let's me classify tasks in a few different ways, which is important because using different categories let's you hide things creatively.
Brainstorming by Folder and Project
I think about folders as the different "hats" I wear. I have one folder for "participant experience" - all the things I have to do to make sure participants in the Emotus Operandi are taken care of. I have another for "outreach" - marketing and promoting the system, etc., etc.
The first thing I do is go through the folders to brainstorm to make sure I'm not forgetting any tasks. If you have client specific projects, you might also want to do the same thing by project. This is just a brain dump - I put down everything and anything that I can think of.
Due Dates and Duration
I then go through and assign an estimated amount of time to get the task done.
An important rule of thumb we use is that no task should take more than 4 hours (probably 3 hours is safer). If you think it will take you longer than 4 hours - break it down into small tasks. Preferably, you should be able to get a task done at one sitting.
I only assign due dates to tasks that have an absolute external due date - which means that most of my tasks don't have due dates. There is nothing more demoralizing than having to backdate a whole slew of tasks because you underestimated how long they would take or failed to anticipate the computer suddenly dying or the phone suddenly ringing.
I do use "start dates" freely though. If there is something that I can't or shouldn't work on until I certain date, I add that in so I can hide all those "future" tasks until I need them.
Contexts
While I'm adding adding duration, I also code tasks for contexts - the "headspace" that I talked about in the last post. After a lot of experimentation, I've learned to keep this pretty simple. I use "dedicated time" "heads down" "tasky" "errands" and "email / communication." This is a completely subjective thing based on how I've discovered I work. I bet everyone has some similar categories if they think about it.
Priority (aka Importance)
This is really the heart of the process. If you set the priority (aka importance) right, you really won't have to worry about the deadlines as much.
So... how to set importance? Remember, importance has NOTHING to do with urgency. Just because something is due tomorrow doesn't mean it's important. I use three levels of importance - high = essential for accomplishing my goals, medium = helpful in reaching my goals, low = not really goal related. It's takes some practice to get the hang of this, but sometimes it helps to ask if anyone would really notice if didn't happen. Really.
Status
The next step is going through the tasks sorted by status. ToodleDo has a ton of built in statuses. I only use 3 (plus 2).
"Next Action" are the things that I'm really committed to getting done this week. I try to keep the list to about 10 or so things and I pay attention to the total time that ToodleDo provides at the bottom of the list. Even if I'm planning on working 40 or more hours this week, I KNOW I won't be able to get 40 hours of work done. Not even close! For me, I try to focus on about 10 or 15 hours of high priority work. Sometimes I get more done, but with my schedule, and with all the piddling little tasks that still have to happen or unexpected problems, 10 to 15 seems realistic to me.
"Active" are all the things that I'm secretly hoping to get done this week. Again, I try to keep the list pruned, but it's usually a bit longer - both in number and in estimated time. I also pay attention to the total time estimated on both lists.
"Hold" are things that I'm hoping to get to next week, or maybe the week after. OK, hold items often hang out for months. But that's part of the reason it's there. They are things that aren't important or urgent enough for me to think this week. They can hang out in hold until I need them.
I start with the "next action" list and downgrade things that don't seem as important all of a sudden and make the hard choices to get the list down to something like 10 items and 10 to 15 estimated hours.
Then I move on to "active" tasks, upgrading those that seem like they deserve it, downgrading others.
Then I review the "hold" list to see if anything either needs to move up in status or just get deleted because I am finally willing to let it go.
I also use "delegated" for those items that I can delegate (sadly, I don't get to use this very much) - and take a look to see if I need to check-in on progress for something. And I use "waiting" for items that are dependent on someone getting back to me. These are the "plus 2" because they're really just different forms of holding bins.
The first few times doing this took me a lot longer, but now I can sit down and take care of the prioritizing pretty quickly. Then I'm set to actually take a look at my week and make a little action plan. I now have the list in a easy to use format so that I can sort and hide all sorts of stuff and just ignore that it's there - which is exactly my goal.
More on that next time.
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