Posted by Doug on December 8, 2008
Photo: orinrobertjohn
Most of us, at one time or another, find ourselves in a place like this: our work has piled up, for whatever reason, and there is so much to do that we don’t even know where to start–it’s paralyzing, in a way. This probably happens to some of us more than others, depending on a variety of factors. I’ve had whole days when I got essentially nothing done because I simply couldn’t figure out where to start.
How did I get here?
Whether your work overload is a rare thing or a consistent pattern in your life, it’s helpful to consider how you got into that situation, provided you take steps to keep it from happening again. Sometimes the reasons are entirely beyond your control–a supervisor suddenly assigns you a massive project with an unreasonable deadline; you become seriously ill and unable to work for an extended period of time; your business experiences a rapid, unanticipated growth spurt; your business partner suddenly quits, leaving all of her work in your lap. I suspect, however, that much of the time, the work piles up for reasons that you probably can control: procrastination, disorganization, bad prioritization, and yes, even laziness. Perhaps you just took on too much work–it wouldn’t be the first time someone bit off more than they could chew.
But you probably already know how you got into this mess. The question is, what do you do now? How do you get off dead-center, or push past the paralysis that has settled in on you, making the problem worse all the time?
The answer is the same as the answer to the old proverbial question, “How do you eat a 500-pound banana?” One bite at a time. Here are some suggestions for how to begin chipping away at the mountain:
Assess your situation honestly.
Photo: castironskillet
When a debt counselor works with a client who is drowning in financial obligations, often one of the first steps is to do what the client has been avoiding–make a list of all of the money he owes. Likewise, if you’re drowning under an overwhelming pile of backed-up work, you need to sit down and make a list of everything in the stack. Like the person in debt facing up to what they owe, you may find this to be a daunting, unpleasant task, but it is the only way you can begin to get back in control. List everything, including the big projects, the small projects, and the routine tasks.
Break the big tasks into smaller pieces.
A task like “plan the conference” is too big and broad to be helpful to you. Break every big item on your list into several smaller, more concise tasks. Yes, it will make your list longer, but you’ve got to know what you’re up against, and when you begin prioritizing, you may find that there are some little tasks within those big tasks that might require higher priority than the bigger task as a whole. For example, “plan the conference” is a big task, but “book the conference venue” is a smaller task that has a much higher priority than many of the other bits of the larger task.
Prioritize the list as best you can.
Illustration: doug
Do it in several passes. On your first pass through the list, identify the tasks that are absolutely the most critical, if-I-don’t-get-this-done-I’m-fired sort of things. It isn’t always the case that the highest priority tasks are those that are the most overdue or the oldest deadlines on the list–in fact, some of those tasks probably have become irrelevant, and you should cull those from the list. Set yourself no more than three or four priority categories–every item on the list should be assigned to one of those categories. When everything is divided into those priority lists, prioritize the items within each of those lists.
Delegate what you can.
Granted, for most of those of us who work in home offices, there may not be anyone to whom we can delegate anything. “Delegating” for us might mean outsourcing. As you look through your lists, are there things that you would normally do yourself that would be worth paying someone else to do, under the circumstances?
Begin working the list one task at a time.
Photo: kyshuttergirl
Take a deep breath and tell yourself that today you are going to begin to turn this thing around. Begin with the highest priority item on the highest priority list, and focus on that task as if it were the only thing on your plate. If you let yourself think about the rest of the list, or the other lists, or the size of the workload, pretty soon you’re going to be paralyzed again, or at least so distracted and discouraged that completing the work at hand is going to be much harder.
The difficult thing here is that when the work piles up, your brain will try to remind you that the time you spend working on one task is time that you can’t spend on the others, and that those other tasks are just going to fall further behind. This is absolutely true, but you can’t let yourself focus on that. It is better to get one thing done than to get no things done, and the sooner you get that first item on the list done, the sooner you’ll get to the second item.
Work hard, but be reasonable.
There’s no way around the fact that you’ve got a lot of work to do, and it’s going to be difficult to get caught up–you’re going to have to bust your tail for a while. But with that said, it’s also important to remember that the quality of your work suffers when you’re exhausted, and trying to “binge work” your way through the list will probably end up badly for you. Maybe you will have to work some somewhat longer work days for a while, but if you don’t get enough rest, relaxation, time with your family, or other diversion, you won’t be able to do your best, and you’re likely to end up sick, or going nuts, which doesn’t do anyone any good.
Put up a “breakwater.”
Photo: 22189609@N08
The mouth of a harbor is often protected from the waves of the open sea by constructing a breakwater, a long barrier that helps break up the waves before they can get into the harbor. Your breakwater is whatever measures you can take to stem the tide of incoming tasks for a while, so that the overwhelming pile of work doesn’t just keep growing. Your temptation, as a freelancer, for example, might be to accept any and all incoming jobs, to keep the cash flowing, but unless you’re making a lot of progress on that backed-up mountain of work, is this wise? As hard as it might be for you, until you get things a bit more under control, you might need to tell a potential client that you’re swamped at the moment, but that you want to work with them and will get back to them in a month (or whenever).
Let the machine get it.
Photo: kleinman
Unless your contract with your clients or customers dictates otherwise, you really don’t have to answer the phone every time it rings. You could put a message on your voicemail or answering machine that says something like this: “I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now. However, I should be able to take your call or return your call between three and five this afternoon. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you.” You can do something similar with your email: instead of checking your email every ten minutes, agree with yourself to check it once or twice a day, at most. These tactics may get you some additional uninterrupted time to get caught up.
Get something done.
If you’ve made your lists and you’re still overwhelmed and can’t get started, find something else to do for a while–do a housecleaning chore, replace a burned-out light bulb, go around the house and test your smoke alarms, clean a toilet, rake some leaves, change the oil in your car, run a few errands–just do something so you can at least tell yourself that you haven’t wasted the day. The fact that you accomplished something may boost your self-esteem a bit, and that may help you get moving.
Clean up your surroundings.
Photo: djbrady
I’ve seen this tip in multiple places, because it seems to work. If your physical work space is as stacked up and cluttered as the pile of work you’re facing, it can be hard to be productive. Whenever I’m beginning to feel like there’s just too much to do, it always helps to clean up my office and make some space on my desk and in the room. I hadn’t thought about it until just now, but perhaps doing the same with your computer desktop might be equally helpful, if you use a computer for your work.
I’ve been in this situation more times than I care to admit, but I have learned that a mountain of work looks scarier from a distance–when you get up close and see what it’s made of, it’s just a big pile of individual things that you know how to do. Figure out where to start, and you’re well on your way to reducing the mountain to something that will fit comfortably in your inbox.
Posted by Doug on December 3, 2008
Photo: ikoka
If you are still jotting your to-do lists on paper, and if that’s working for you, great. But if you’re looking for a new way to organize your work and stay on top of the stuff you have to do every day, you might want to consider trying out one of the many free, online to-do list manager applications listed here. There are others out there, and you can find applications that will do a lot more than just manage your to-do lists, but these are the simplest ones (in my opinion), and they are free. (Most of them require that you register for an account.)
There are some sites out there with a higher level of functionality–project and task managers and such–and we’ll talk about some of those another time. For our purposes here, I have tried to focus on sites that have to-do list management as their primary function. My bias in this article is toward Web-based to-do list managers that are free, fairly simple, and fairly intuitive. First we’ll take a look at the list, and then I’ll give you my top choices, and my recommendations.
http://blablalist.com
Bla Bla List is one of the simpler, more intuitive to-do list sites out there. Once you’re logged in, you can create various lists and add items to each one. Adding new lists or adding items to existing lists is easy to figure out, and the list lives in a small browser window that is created when you sign in. By clicking on the “Share” button and entering one or more email addresses, you can share your list with other people, who will be sent a link to your list and have the ability to update the list themselves. This could be a useful tool for delegating tasks to various members of a work group. (Or to a spouse or child!)
http://www.tadalist.com
TaDa List is another very simple to-do list manager that provides the essential functions and not a lot more. TaDa List also allows you to share your lists with other people via email, and you may either grant them permission to change or update the list, or simply to view it without editing capability, depending on what your needs are. It’s easy to use, and the user interface is intuitive. Like BlaBla List, TaDa List allows you to create and manage multiple to-do lists.
http://www.taskbin.com
If you need more than just the basics, TaskBin might be more what you’re looking for. There are plenty of options for prioritizing items, and individual tasks can be shared with other members of your work group. A history log is kept for you–you’ll have a record of all changes made to a list, which can be handy when several people are working on the same list. You can add another group member’s list to your list page, and keep track of their progress. You can chat with other members of your group, and you can theme your to-do list page in one of several ways.
http://www.toodledo.com/signin.php
Although packed with features, compared with some of the others in this list, I have to confess that I had a little trouble with Toodledo’s user interface. Once I was signed up for the free account, it took me a little while to figure out how to add items to a to-do list. For some users, this may not be an issue at all, particularly in light of all the other stuff Toodledo does (although some features are not available on the free accounts). Some of the additional functionality includes public sharing, a calendar (you can also use Google Calendar if you prefer), a personal goals section, and you can also print out your list in a format suitable for folding into a little booklet. Additional features are unlocked when you upgrade to a paid account.
http://www.orchestratehq.com/
The user interface for Orchestrate is different from most of the other to-do list apps out there, but fairly intuitive once you figure it out. You can create as many lists as you like, and they are stored in the form of little boxes on the left side of the window. To work with a list, you drag it onto the open area in the right side of the window, where the list expands for editing. Aside from the unusual, but simple user interface, Orchestrate is very straightforward–it does to-do lists without adding any other bells and whistles.
http://todoist.com/
The first Web-based to-do list manager I ever used was Todoist, and it’s still the one I use most. Todoist allows you to create multiple lists, and there are some fairly sophisticated features for organizing those lists, but using them requires learning the tags and codes that you enter when you create a list item. The premium (paid) version adds some additional functionality, including expanded labeling capability and e-mail and other reminders. There is also a Firefox plug-in for Todoist that makes it a little easier to access and edit your lists.
http://www.rememberthemilk.com
One of the cool things about Remember the Milk is that it has an API that has encouraged developers to integrate Remember the Milk (RTM) with other services. RTM is a very popular to-do list manager, and it is full-featured, as well. There are many ways to organize and configure your lists and list items, and there are many ways to set up reminders–via email, SMS messaging, instant messaging–AIM, Google Talk, Jabber, ICQ and others are supported. You can create smart lists that compile lists of tasks based on criteria that you specify, such as priority or due date, etc. You can even add tasks via email.
http://www.tasktoy.com/
Some people are wired a bit nerdier than others, and Tasktoy strikes me as the sort of application that a true nerd might like a lot, because it is fairly straightforward and simple, but it is also user-customizable. To understand what Tasktoy is, you really need to read the About page–this explains the many ways that you can use Tasktoy to manage not only your to-do lists, but other kinds of information as well, such as notes, URLs, etc. My first impression of Tasktoy was not great–it didn’t seem intuitive–but once I understood what its intended purpose is, it began to make a lot of sense to me.
http://sproutliner.com
I’m not entirely sure what a “supercharged, structured to-do list” is, but that’s what SproutLiner purports to be. Essentially, SproutLiner allows you to create lists with columns that you define–for example, if you wanted a “notes” field next to your list items, you simply create one, and now you can add a note to each item in your list. You can add columns in one of three forms: text, list, or checkbox. You can set them up pretty much any way you wish. I’ll admit that SproutLiner probably frustrated me more than any other of the to-do list managers I tried, but give it a look, because chances are there is gold there that I just wasn’t smart enough to mine.
http://voo2do.com
This to-do list manager is one of the more full-featured ones I tried–not quite on par with Remember the Milk, but there’s definitely more functionality in Voo2do than there is in, say, TaDa List. Voo2do has the expected to-do list functions, plus you can track time spent and time remaining on a task, add tasks via email, publish your task lists (read-only Web pages), and there is an API for those who want to integrate Voo2do with other apps.
http://jott.com/default.aspx
Given the criteria I listed at the beginning of this article, I’m not sure Jott belongs in this particular list, but Jott is such a cool tool that I thought it deserved to be mentioned here, plus it integrates with Remember the Milk. Jott essentially allows you to add items to a to-do list, or create text notes, or send email notes via your phone. Once you’ve registered for the service, you call Jott’s phone number, you speak your message into the phone, and Jott converts your message to text, which it then sends wherever you choose. Jott works not only with RTM, but also with Facebook, Google Calendar, Twitter, Amazon, Blogger, Wordpress, and more. Premium (paid) Jott users get even more options. Say, for example, you’re out picking up the kids at school, and you remember something you were supposed to do, but you forgot to put it on your to-do list, and now you’re away from your computer, and you’ve got nothing to write on, and you’d probably lose the note, anyway–with Jott, you just call, say the message, and when you get back to your desk, the e-mail is there waiting for you. Very cool stuff, indeed.
My preferences
As I noted earlier, I’m generally biased toward simple applications that are easy to figure out, but this clearly isn’t always true, as I am a long-time Todoist user, and while Todoist is not that hard to figure out, it is a bit more complicated than TaDa List, for example. (The other evidence of my internal inconsistency in such matters is my preference of Emacs over Pico, but we’ll not go there just now.) Nevertheless, if there was one of the list managers above that would cause me to re-think my loyalty to Todoist, it is probably Remember the Milk. It is powerful and relatively easy to learn. The user interface is attractive and not difficult to navigate. The integration with other applications is extremely cool and handy.
My recommendations
If you like simple and plain, try TaDa List or Orchestrate. If you’re looking for a little more functionality and don’t mind tweaking a few “nerd-knobs,” try Todoist. If you’re looking for a powerful, feature-rich application that can do a lot, definitely take a look at Remember the Milk. (And if you try RTM, be sure to check out Jott, as well.)
Update
There is a really nice article about how to use a to-do list effectively at LifeHacker: The Art of the Doable To-Do List.
So what (if any) online to-do list manager do you use? Why do you like/hate it? I’d be interested in your comments.
If this article was helpful to you, I’d appreciate any Diggs or Stumbles! Thanks!
Posted by Doug on October 13, 2008
Photo credit: dogwelder
I’m not entirely sure why this is, but it seems that one of the facts of life that is lost on many people in our culture is the notion that small things can add up to big things over time. Just the other day I bought a little pack of breath mints and noticed that the shape had changed slightly, reducing the amount of “mint material” in each mint just a little bit. The price of the box was the same as before–I just paid the same amount for less product. It might not seem like a big deal, but if the manufacturer saves two cents in the cost of materials in a box of mints and sells 10 million boxes at the same price, that’s $200,000 of increased profit.
A long time ago I heard a story about Leo Fender, the famed creator of Fender guitars, who was walking through the production shop one day and sifted through a pile of dust and dirt that had been swept up and found a couple of resistors in the pile that had fallen onto the floor. At a penny or two each, it probably didn’t seem worth it to the worker to bend over and pick them up, but Leo did, and admonished the workers that those costs add up over time.
When something is small, you tend not to think of it as consequential, but the simple fact is that small things can add up to big things, faster than you might think. If you can think in terms of the long haul when you consider costs, you’re going to make wiser choices about how you spend your money.
This principle applies not only to money, but time, as well. Reduce the amount of time it takes you to do something that you do on a daily basis, and you’ve freed up 365 times that amount of time in a year. If I were able to find a route to my son’s school that took just 2.5 minutes less time, I would get about 30 hours back over the course of a school year. If you’re reasonably proficient with your computer, chances are you can find ways to save time by automating or scripting certain repetitive, routine tasks, and use that time for other things that might do more to add to your bottom line.
Seth Godin wrote recently about effort, and challenged his readers to free up 120 minutes of each day by cutting out things like watching television, and use those 120 minutes for things like reading, learning something new, exercising, volunteering, etc.:
If you somehow pulled this off, then six months from now, you would be the fittest, best rested, most intelligent, best funded and motivated person in your office or your field. You would know how to do things other people don’t, you’d have a wider network and you’d be more focused.
That might be a bit of an overstatement, but not necessarily, and the point is well taken–a small change every day can add up to a really big change over time. This is just the way things work–we see it in the world of investments, agriculture, manufacturing, and in our family (and business) budgets.
If you’re self-employed, working at home, you’re probably the one paying the closest attention to how you spend your time and money. I would suggest you take a small investment of time and examine both areas of your work to see if there might be small changes you could make that could add up to something big over time. Find one or two, and it will make your day.
So what small changes can you make?
Posted by Doug on October 9, 2008
Photo by Nuno Duarte
When you work where you live, you are probably going to have to deal with distractions that can break your concentration, interrupt your workflow, and derail your productivity. Young children at home, a messy room that needs cleaning, the TV, yard work, your hobbies–any of these things can scream for your attention when what you really need to do is get some work done. How do you stay on task when your office is also where you live, relax, eat, sleep and play? Lest the reader get the wrong impression, I am no stranger to being sidetracked by stuff going on around me at home, but I’m educable, and I’m having some success. Here are some things I’m doing (and trying to learn), but first a caveat: they all involve some (ahem) discipline. There’s just no way around that. But if you remain undaunted, read on.
1. Head distractions off at the pass.
Eliminate potential distractions before they happen. If the dishes need to be done, sooner or later you’re going to get to a point in your work day when the task in front of you is a whole lot harder or more boring than doing the dishes, and, depending on what sort of person you are, you may be tempted to just get up and go wash dishes instead. Washing the dishes is a fine thing, and in my role as part-time writer and house-husband, washing dishes is clearly in my job description. But it isn’t always a good idea to drop what I’m doing when I happen to think of something that needs to be done around the house. Doing those chores before my work day begins helps to eliminate the possibility that one of them will pop up to distract me from getting my work done, or interfere with my meeting a deadline later in the day. Thirty minutes or an hour of routine tidying up in the morning can keep most of the housework distractions at bay the rest of the day.
2. Obey your to-do list.
“Plan your work, and work your plan…”–that was the mantra for time management when I graduated from college, and I’m pretty sure it still holds true today. Making a reasonable, achievable to-do list is the first key, but the second key is actually using it. Whether you use pen and paper or an online to-do list application (such as the excellent Todoist, which is what I use)–it’s all useless if you don’t refer to it from time to time throughout your day.
Here are some time-worn, but helpful suggestions for making your to-do list work for you:
- Don’t let it get too long. The process of making a to-do list stimulates your thinking about all the things that need to be done, but you’ve got to be careful not to over-estimate what you can get done in one day. That said, when you’re on a roll, thinking of all the tasks in front of you, you don’t want to forget any of them, so one thing I have done is to create a “master list”—a long list of every upcoming task I can think of, and then I pick several items from that list to go on my to-do list for today—the tasks that really have to get done today. If you have 90 things on your to-do list and check off only ten of them, you can’t help feeling like you’ve failed. Your daily list should be short enough to be realistically achievable.
- Do it in pencil (so to speak). You’re probably not going to end up with the same list you made at the start of the day. Things come up, things go away, and you may have to roll with some unexpected development along the way. Priority escalation is a fact of life, no matter what business you’re in, and you have to be flexible enough to adjust. Some days you might have to chuck it and start over.
- First things first. Ask yourself the priority questions: What are the things that simply must get done today? Which things aren’t so critical? Can some things be moved to tomorrow’s list?
- Think 500-pound banana. “How do you eat a 500-pound banana? One bite at a time.” Break big tasks into smaller tasks. Some items on your to-do list might be so big, so broad that they are too overwhelming. A task like “Plan conference” is NOT the sort of thing you want to put on your to-do list. Break it down into smaller tasks and sub-tasks:
–Secure a conference facility
—-Call the three big hotels
—-Call the public library to check on conference room availability
—-Call the bank about their public meeting room
–Get promotional materials ready
—-Lay out the postcard
—-Lay out the poster
–etc.
You get the idea.
- Out with the old, in with the new. At the end of your work day, take a couple of minutes to look over your list. Check off any remaining items that you got done, and review what’s left. Are there things you didn’t get done that should be moved to tomorrow’s list? Take a few more minutes to begin preparing tomorrow’s to-do list. If you have a master list, review it, too. The busier you get, the more difficult it becomes to keep all of this stuff in your head. You really have to revisit your lists and keep them updated.
3. Don’t work anywhere near a television.
Unless your work directly involves watching TV, don’t keep one anywhere near your home office, or you may find that a simple check of the Weather Channel or CNN has turned into a day completely wasted watching inane talk shows. Television, by its very nature, demands your attention and focus. Maybe you can work with a TV in the background, but I can’t—it always sucks me in. On the other hand…
4. Try some background music.
What I said about TV, well, forget that when it comes to music. A little soft music playing actually helps me block out other distractions, provided it’s the right sort of music, and that is entirely a matter of your musical taste. I met a guy whose idea of “music to work by” was loud death metal in his iPod earbuds. It must have worked for him, because he was one of the most creative and productive people I’d ever met. The kind of music I listen to while I’m working varies with my mood, and with what I’m doing. And sometimes I prefer none at all.
I’m a podcast junkie, and there are dozens of podcasts I try to listen to each week, several of which are related to my work. Sometimes I’ll listen to a podcast while I’m working, depending on the sort of task I’m doing; some tasks require more concentration than others.
5. Compartmentalize your life a bit.
If your home office space is used pretty much only for a home office, you’ve got a great advantage over those whose home offices aren’t single-use spaces. When your office is a desk in the corner of your family room, or a corner of your bedroom, or in a room that is also where your hobby stuff is, or some other multi-purpose space, there is more potential for distraction than when your office space is just an office space. My home office is in a back bedroom that is away from the main “traffic patterns” in my home, and that’s great, but the room is also is home to my amateur radio station and my home recording studio, which can make it difficult for me to focus at times, particularly if what I’m doing is boring me.
If there is any way for you to isolate your workspace from the rest of your home, it might be worth it. Even putting up simple room dividers or curtains can communicate to others in the household that when you’re “in there” you’re working and not to be disturbed. If you can figure out creative ways to store the other stuff in the room that you share as a home office, perhaps you can reduce the potential for distractions a bit.
6. Bug out if you have to.
If there’s just too much going on at home some days, those might be good days to establish a “remote office” in a coffee shop or restaurant for the day. Those places have distractions of their own, but I usually find it’s easier to tune out the noise and distractions in a crowded coffee shop than it is to resist the lure of my guitar when I really should be writing.
7. Take a work break and clear your head.
When it seems like any little thing is getting you off-task, maybe it’s time for a break. Step outside for some fresh air, maybe take a short walk, or get a fresh cup of coffee, work on a relatively mindless, busy-work task for a bit–any of these things can help you rest your mind long enough to gather your thoughts and get back in the groove.
Other ideas?
Maybe you’ve got an idea or technique that you’d like to share—please leave it in a comment!
