So today is my birthday and this week I treated myself to a new toy. I am terrible when it comes to buying things because I never want to spend money on things… But I decided I had some money from my b-day and I had thought about it quite a bit and I figure I can use it for a lot of things so I decided I’d go for it. So this post was written on my brand new iPod touch.
I read an article last night that gave me some very good ideas. It started with a poem:
I always eat my peas with honey
I’ve done it all my life
They do taste kind of funny
But it keeps them on my knife
- anonymous
In IT we are often doing the same things as eating peas with honey because we are using a knife. What we need to do is not create solutions that make bad things bearable, but that actually fix the root of the problem - getting a spoon instead of using a knife.
So I went through my projects today to see how many of them could be considered “honey projects” - probably half of them could go away with a good CRM solution.
Even better, not only would they go away but they would be easier to maintain in the future. I’ve started, instead of looking at my projects a entities in and of themselves, looking at them in the whole scheme of things and whether they only are a band-aid to cover a problem, or if they are actually fixing it. Its a good change and I anticipate that looking at things this way will help to make projects in the future more productive.
Piggybacking on my post from last night I thought I’d share a website that was brought to my attention that I’ve used a bit at work. Its called nowdothis.com The idea behind it is that you go in and setup a list of tasks and it gives you the first task on the list. Its just a blank screen so there is very little distraction. You hit the page and get your task, work on it, and then mark it done and you get the next task. When you’re all finished it has a happy message about being all done! Its quite a simple idea really but it can be a great help to keep reminding me what I’m working on (or supposed to be…). I even experimented with having it in my side bar in firefox but I decided I didn’t need it to be there all the time. The page serves as a great reminder of what I’m supposed to be working on if I think I’m starting to get off track. There is no registration required and I think (not 100% sure) because it uses cookies and javascript you could actually pull it up and then go offline and use it so you could disconnect yourself from the web if that is one of your time sinks. Go ahead and give it a shot!
Tonight I was given a reason not to multi-task and I thought I would share it. See I always have this problem, TONS of things going on all the time in my head. What this usually leads me to do is work on bits and pieces of a bunch of things. I’ve been trying to take some of Leo’s (from Zen Habits), as well as other’s advice and just pick one thing and work on it.
Well tonight this proved useful. Today was actually quite productive as I focused on one thing, got it done, and moved on. I just got back from a computer reset however. This interruption was quite sudden. I guess one of my drivers threw a stop error which shut windows down quick! Well this is where the working on one thing was a great help. First of all I didn’t lose any parts of things I had been working on because as I moved from one project/task to another I uploaded the files to the server. All I would have lost was a few minutes of work - so there was no fear about lost data when it went down. The other thing is I knew exactly what I was doing when it happened. I didn’t have to go open 12 files and remember what I was doing with each one. So, not only does working on one task help you move through your list easier, you have less chance of losing work!
So yesterday, halfway though the day, I was having trouble getting myself motivated to do ANYTHING at work. I work as a web application developer (full time and freelance) and I am constantly in the middle of a bunch of projects. Lately, I’ve been struggling to keep on track or work on what (I think) is the most important project for me to complete. So I tried a new idea that might work for those of us with a bunch of simultaneous projects.
First, I went through and wrote down all of the projects that I have at work. This included the ones that were to be done “sometime”. I figured then I could see the big picture of what I’m looking at. Next, I went through and prioritized each item on the list so that I could get a feel for what was my most important project. Then, I made a third column on the side for tasks that were the most important thing to get done that day. Yesterday, knowing I only had a few hours, I just put one task each for 3 of the items. (These may be something as simple as attend the meeting that you have for that project.) This way, if you get through every thing on your list (starting with the highest priority project) you have been able to move forward on every project that you are working on. This may not be ideal if you have a deadline approaching for any of the projects, but in that case you may just use a regular todo list for that single project. The important thing here is that since you are making progress each day on the project, you don’t loose momentum and have to take time getting back into it. The projects are all fresh in your mind because you have been working on them each day!
The other thing I may do is sometimes I may put an upper level task on the list - something like make this part of the site do that - which may mean a whole bunch of little tasks. While other days I may just put the specific small task of change this page to say that. These items are based on the priority of the project, but this way you can get the most important things taken care of first! This new todo list idea was inspired by an old post on Zen Habits which I recently read. I’ve heard the basic idea of the post before, but this time it took me in a new direction.
Here is the steps again to using this list:
- List out all projects you are currently working on.
- Prioritize these projects (taking into consideration due dates and your bosses thoughts)
- Add an item to each project until you feel your day will be full (don’t make these too hard as you need to shoot to accomplish them all in one day.)
- Start working on the highest priority task.
There you go! A project based daily todo list! As a bonus, if during the day you just need to cross something off the list, you have a group of small tasks that you should be able to jump into and cross off so you can feel productive.
I just read an article on how important mornings are to the rest of your day. I totally agree with the idea of this post. I might even say the same thing for a week. I was actually just thinking about it this weekend. Last week was a rough week for me. It really started with Sunday night. I had something I was working on and I let it take more of my time than I should have. I was up later than I should have been and come morning I didn’t want to get up. I ended up getting into work later, and I didn’t want to be at work. I left before I had finished all my work, and this perpetuated through the rest of the week. In the end I was a few hours short and had to use some personal time to cover it. The main problem was that I had trouble getting up and moving in the mornings and this made my whole day less productive. This perpetuated through the whole week. In contrast, on days when I get up, exercise, and get going I am so much more productive! And as a bonus, I usually get into work earlier and can go home earlier!
In the past I made a morning plan that I was going to stick to. I did for a few weeks but then I got sick, and then we moved, and I let it slip. This week I am going to revisit that plan and make sure it is what I should be doing. I have been getting back into the exercise thing so that is a big step in the right direction. My main problem is that I feel my nights are more productive as far as side projects than my afternoons are. Maybe I need an afternoon plan too… I’ll report later in the week to see if we can come up with a good plan.
The other day I read a short article called “The Fifteen-Weed Formula“. The basic idea of the story is that there was a lady who suffered from multiple sclerosis which made it difficult to do physically demanding tasks. One day she noticed a whole bunch of weeds in her back yard and noted that she really wanted to pull them out but it would take her weeks to recover from the physical activity. She decided that she would limit herself to only pulling fifteen weeds a day no matter how good or bad she felt that day. By the end of the summer she had pulled the weeds twice because they had started growing back in. She had accomplished her goal of weeding the yard.
Often times we have good and bad days in life. If we set simple goals that allow us to do just a portion of our tasks that we would like to get done we will eventually get everything done. This is a great lesson that we should all take to heart. Don’t overwork ourselves when we get excited for a new goal, take it slow, and spend just a bit of time on each task, and soon you will realize you got a ton of stuff finished.
This past weekend my wife’s family had a reunion. We drove out to the mountains and stayed in some cabins out in pretty much the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t really rouging it, but it was a good deal of fun! One of the things I had the opportunity to do was late Friday night. Everyone had gone to bed, it had gotten colder, the fire had burned down, and I decided it was a great opportunity to lay in one of the hammocks and reflect on my current state of life and the world. While laying there I had the opportunity to see hundreds of stars, a beautiful moon, a shooting star, an airplane, and a few satellites. What I found was some great peace. Here are some of my thoughts:
I determined that my life is pretty perfect right now. I would only want to change one thing and that is to be completely free of debt. I’m working on that, and it will just take some time. I love my life and I’m trying to be positive and excited for each day as it comes!
So I graduated in April, and started full time work. It has been tough working for 8 hours a day. My work is very flexible in what times I need to work, and I started with the best intentions of getting in early and leaving early. Well it has been really really difficult to keep myself motivated enough to do the work solid for 8 hours a day. This week however my work has been running a conference, and as one of the IT guys I have been in charge of making sure that things are recorded and working correctly. This led to early mornings and late afternoons, and even though I took a vacation on Monday (Memorial Day) I have already worked over 40 hours - and I still have a couple left today. So this has led me to some realizations:
I recognize that this frame of reference will dwindle as time goes on, and I have no desire to work 8 hours a day the rest of my life, but for now, I can do 8 hours a day. Hey, it will feel like a bit of a vacation compared to this week!
Well, a few weeks back I found a program called RescueTime. Cleaning out my RSS feeds today I found that JD at Get Rich Slowly had a similar post earlier this month discussing this program. I decided that I wanted to chime in myself. What this program does, is run on your computer in the background recording the programs that you are using (only the active one, not all the ones you have open.) It then updates this information to your account on the website - where you can view your statistics. I installed it on my work computer because I wanted to see how much time I spent doing what at work. I felt like I was wasting a lot of time and not working on what I was supposed to be working on. Turned out, I was spending a lot of time on my computer not doing work!
Now its not gonna be perfect because if you walk away from your computer it still records whatever is open. One way I found to increase the accuracy of the reporting was to assign a particular website as “Meeting”, “Out of Office Business”, or even “Not At Computer” (for bathroom breaks, or other things) and I just click a bookmark that points to the particular page when I am leaving the computer - then when I get my report it is more accurate.
I really like this product. It seems to do a great job at reporting the information and from the first day that I installed it I have been more careful with my time because I know that it is being recorded! (And I’ve realized how much I spend!) I think I’ll set it up on my laptop here too.
