How to: Get things done and claim back your life
- 6 October 2009
How to: Get things done and claim back your life - Running a small business involves a constant stream of little jobs that aren't part of the reasons you started the business. Even a successful small architect still needs to get clients invoiced, suppliers paid and the office cleaned. Little tasks can accumulate and stop you getting more substantial work done, adding considerably to the stress you feel. Managing those little tasks and planning the bigger pieces of work can be an enormous challenge. Big companies tend to hire project managers and administrative staff to handle this kind of overhead, but small businesses have to sort out their task management themselves.
It's easy to get stressed about the amount of work you've got when it's unmanaged. Seeing hundreds of small tasks in your queue can be daunting. But once you're able to analyse the workload, you might discover you've got just a day's worth of boring admin work to do, then you can get on with some of the more interesting and meaty tasks.
In a sheep shearing shed, a roustabout's job is to ensure the pens for each shearer are never empty, so the shearer doesn't have to wait for the next sheep. Roustabouts are careful to ensure that they only refill the pens when the shearer has started on the last sheep, otherwise the shearers feel like they're not making any progress through the work. Breaking down your work into manageable pieces can also help you understand the workload, and feel like you're always moving through it.
One method of controlling your tasks has become wildly popular among online geeks. David Allen's book Getting Things Done describes the idea of getting all the tasks you have clogging up your brain's temporary storage and into a system you can rely on to help you remember what else needs to be done. With your tasks outside your head, your mind is free to focus on your current tasks without having to worry about future tasks and deadlines until you get to them.
Achieving this state of task nirvana isn't necessarily easy, but it is said to result in a feeling of freedom that stems from being in control of your activity.
Allen's book has been the catalyst among a certain type of geek to examine their own productivity, and develop online and offline software tools that implement the ‘Getting Things Done' (GTD) methodology, as well as other productivity systems to help them manage their own workloads.
The methodology Allen describes isn't for everyone, and could be more complicated than you need. Many tools are available, using GTD or other systems, to help you manage your workload.
There's probably as many approaches to managing tasks as there are businesses. Some are decidedly low-tech, like a big whiteboard or panel of sticky notes. Physical lists like this have the advantage that they're easy for anyone to understand at a glance. I've used the sticky note method myself to manage a complicated and ever-changing workload. Anyone could add items to the end of my workload, but if they wanted to re-organise priorities, they had to talk to my manager.
I would work on the furthest-left task where I had everything I needed to start. The system broke down when multiple people decided they had the power to re-organise my priorities.
One problem common to physical solutions are their limited space. To get tasks out of your head, it's important to get absolutely everything into your system. You might have a task that isn't due for three months, but it's still important that it gets done and that it gets out of your head. One approach would be to write it into your diary so it ends up on a to-do list at an appropriate time.
Electronic solutions don't suffer from this clutter problem. You can add tasks as they occur to you and they'll show up at the appropriate time so you can get them done.
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1. Paper to-do list
The classic to-do list is a simple and easy way to get your workload under control. Limited space can mean it's only suitable for a week's tasks. If you're using this method, your first task each week should be to make a new list, incorporating anything missed from the previous week, and checking the calendar to see if there's anything coming up that needs to be on the list.
Advantages: quick, cheap, see what's outstanding at a glance, portable
Disadvantages: gets cluttered, limited space, slow to reorganise
2. Whiteboard
A dedicated whiteboard holds all your upcoming tasks, in order of priority.
Advantages: quick, cheap, see what's outstanding at a glance
Disadvantages: quickly gets cluttered, limited space, slow to reorganise, only available in one location
3. Sticky notes
Similar to a whiteboard, tasks are held on sticky notes and moved around to indicate priority. Colours can indicate the type of task.
Advantages: quick, cheap, see what's outstanding at a glance, quick to reorganise.
Disadvantages: can become complicated and confusing, only available in one location, sticky notes curl in humid climates
4. Office software
Task management has long been a feature of desktop office software. Microsoft Outlook, a component of the most commonly used office suite, includes a collaborative task management tool so you can define tasks; request tasks from other people; set due dates, priorities and statuses; and see what's on your plate. You can synchronise your tasks with your mobile phone to ensure your tasks are always available, wherever you are. You can use ActiveSync to synchronise with Windows Mobile phones, Nokia PC Suite for Nokia phones, and BlackBerry Desktop Manager for BlackBerry phones.
Advantages: can be synchronised with other devices, collaboration and task requests.
Disadvantages: expensive, can be complicated, collaboration requires Exchange server.
5. Online tools
There are many web-based tools, some of them free of charge, to help you manage tasks. For example, Remember The
Milk
is a small Australian company that obsesses over task management. A range of add-ons makes your tasks accessible from your mobile, desktop calendars and mail
clients. You can keeps things organised in different task types, like work and personal, and send tasks within your team to quickly assign and share work.
Advantages: quick, free, SMS and email reminders, offline access, synchronises with calendars and phones.
Disadvantages: separate from email.#
