Gaining control of your tasks - Part 2 - Controlling the growth of new tasks
Hi!
Last newsletter I shared about declaring , and making sure our organisation systems do not end up as a source of stress. Declaring bankruptcy would be useless if we did not make changes to try and prevent being overwhelmed again.
Since coming back to work, I have been thinking about how to keep this under control and avoid the feeling of having too much to do. I want to share some of these thoughts, hopefully to inspire readers to improve their task management, or for those who are more efficient to help me improve.
I primarily use the GTD system, which focuses on having reliable ways to capture inputs, and then processing everything into lists. Most of my thoughts revolve around trying to reduce the size of those lists without adding more hours of work. This system might not work best for everyone, and the Doist blog has a nice summary of all the different personal productivity methods you can try.
Cardinal Rule: If it remains on the mind, then it should be organised
Any productivity system must help to reduce the stress of storing tasks in the head, allowing us to focus on immediate tasks. Thus, no matter how unimportant something may be in the big picture, if it surfaces in my mind outside of the right context, it has become important enough to be organised and dealt with. What I need is to train myself not to let my mind wander randomly to possible things to do (especially since this wandering has no sense of prioritisation or importance).
All actions must be accountable towards achieving an important goal
It is better to have done the important things well, than to have completed many unimportant items. If something is not important, it gets none of my time at all. Deciding what is important is the hard part. I realise that importance is always tied to a person. Either something important to me (e.g. meeting my career goal), or important to a person who I am accountable to. In both cases, there is a distinction between what they really want, and what is merely good to have. Spend time finding out your own top aims and those who work with you, and you can find the things that would cause panic if not done.
Maintaining integrity
Everyone knows the importance of keeping their word, to mean it when they say something will be done. Agreeing to do something we never intended to do creates stress from the consequence of it being left undone, or wondering how to find time to do it. If we say "yes" to complete a task, it has to be a "hell yes", otherwise say no.
Integrity is also needed when refusing. If I were to backtrack on my refusals and give in later, others would realise they can push me into agreeing if they are bothersome enough. I rather they prove to me that whatever they want is important to me too.
Remove all items that are "someday/maybe"
The GTD system has a concept of someday/maybe tasks, the things that are on our to-do list to complete "when we have the time". I used to keep this list of all the things I thought I would want to spend some time improving at a later stage. Now I do not bother and discarded the whole list. To be able to do it at a later time meant it had so little benefit or accountability to others that it was likely of little importance. I still think about all the things that can be done, but treat them merely as brainstorming practice for future ideas.
Let those with the greatest interest keep track
I used to think that being organised and productive meant that I was always on top of everything moving around me, knowing what I was waiting for, or what is the latest status on things. I thought it kept me accountable. Eventually there was too much to track and it was slowing me down.
I realise now that I only need to be confident that I have done what is needed, and I can say that nothing is in my court. Most of the time, another person is most interested in getting a task to its completion, leave it to that person to re-trigger the task once you have done your part. For example, once I have given my inputs to a document and sent it to my users, I let this fall completely out of my mind and let them be responsible for taking it forward or bringing it back to me if they need more.
Structure correspondence to reduce open ends
We are now used to correspondence with quick replies, such that we say too little in each interaction. A chat could go : " hi" ," hi", " would you like to have coffee", " sure". " when are you free", " tuesday, you? " , "tuesday is good, 3pm?" , " sorry I cannot do 3, any other time?", and on and on. This takes up too much time and creates uncertainty.
Cal Newport has a solution which I really like. He suggests that we should spend more time in each correspondence and make process centric replies. This means we spend time to add as much details as are necessary so that each email or instant message can close off the matter within the minimum number of replies.
It is hard to get into this habit, but I want to do it more often as I think it makes communication much more efficient.
Clear small tasks quickly, even if it means interruption
Small (usually low value) tasks are one of the hardest parts of a productivity system. The advice is often to try and avoid or delegate away these tasks since they are of low value. However, many low value tasks add up into high value, and constantly ignoring them might be counter-productive. Small wins like these are often also a good chance to build relationships and show ability with little risk.
Rather than try to get these organised, I think the best approach is contrary to most advice, and not being afraid to interrupt work to complete something small and fast. Often, we were already interrupted by having mistakenly seen some alert or notification that brings this to our attention. So might as well finish the interruption instead of add more tasks to the queue.
On a higher level, it is important to cultivate the skill to focus and not be interrupted. But, distractions occur to all but the best of us, better to give in to them than try to act like we were able to focus.
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Most importantly, no matter how organised, some things will fall through the cracks. We can only set up a system to minimize the problem as far as possible given the resources we have. Regardless of what others seem to expect, the truth is that none of us are perfect, and definitely not lesser for missing things out now and then. Accept this as a part of life, roll with the consequences, and move on. Stressing over mistakes and being paranoid about unfinished items is far from helpful.
I hope these have been helpful to anyone trying to rethink how they organise their work or lives. Love to hear your views or advice on how I can do even better!
Have a great week ahead!
James
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