Honestly, I was inspired by the latest ‘issue’ of Capt. Varchar(MAX) and the Pagelatch Posse to write about how I manage my workload.
I used to scribble tasks down on sticky notes and stick them to the bottom of my monitor. This worked when I was only working on one project/task at a time and could break things down into linear tasks. As my workload and responsibilities increased, this method fell apart pretty quickly. Before long, my monitor looked like a sunflower made of sticky notes. Changing the priority of a task meant rearranging the sticky notes and heaven forbid that I have to take them all off and rearrange them and drop them on the floor in the process.
From the mess of sticky notes, I switched to using a pad of paper and making to do lists. This rapidly turned into a “wish I could do” list and I stopped using this technique, in favor of trusting my exceptionally rusty memory.
A few major mishaps later it was determined by everyone involved that my memory couldn’t be trusted. This is around the time that I found out about Getting Things Done. I attempted to work the GTD magic fully and it didn’t really work well for me. Something about it never clicked, maybe because I’m not an email person for tracking tasks – most people will send requests for 4 or 5 things in a single email and that makes it difficult to track my work load.
These days I use a 5×8 spiral bound notebook. At the beginning of each week, I start a new page and write the date at the top. Every to do item gets an empty box drawn next to it. When I finish that item I check it off. I carry this notebook everywhere I go, so this method works well for me.
Just to make sure I hold myself accountable to the people who request work from me, I use outlook tasks. When a request comes in via email, I immediately mark that email for follow up today. Tomorrow it will turn red in my in box and I can readily see which tasks I should have already finished. I don’t mark the task as finished until I’ve actually emailed the original person and told them that everything is complete. This works particularly well for tracking stored procedure/database change requests.
It’s not the best system on earth, but it works for the moment.
Any better ideas out there? Let me know in the comments.
I’ll add to your plan in that I also take any email-based requests that require work and drop them into a folder named “To Do”. My mantra is to tap that folder so it is clean as it can be daily and empty by Friday.