It's now two weeks into my deadline-based scheduling system, and I've noticed something. Primarily, that I'm letting things slide already, and I think that's largely because the TODO list is too long - I'm trying to do bits of pieces of five or six projects spread out, instead of focusing on the few that are due next. And for some of them, that's necessary, because they are steps that will take longer than the amount of time allocated between them and the previous deadline - they need thinking time, or in some cases they just take a long time to do. But that needs to be balanced against making myself feel like there's just too much to do. If I'm tired when I come home from work, I can manage one or two things, maybe a third after dinner, but not six - even though most of them aren't more than 15 minutes' work. It's the length of the list that makes it difficult - purely a psychological rebellion against switching to so many different thought processes. I haven't missed any deadlines yet, but I'm not getting to everything I want to.

When I was at university, there were natural peaks and troughs in the workload formed by clusters of assignment due dates, mid semester breaks, SWATVAC weeks, etc. Each cycle was typically four to six weeks long, with a break after, during which not much had to be done. It made it easy to focus, because I could ignore anything that wasn't in that cycle. Future assignments, exams, etc, they would all be dealt with after the current cycle. It meant I could work in sprints - focussed and frenetic on what had to be done, with one eye on the break at the end - rather than a marathon.

This isn't uncommon, actually - researching for project management at work, I came across the notion of SCRUM - a way of managing progress in a team. It includes organising things into 'sprints' of four to six weeks, during which an agreed number of things will be completed. You can't add new objectives onto the board while a sprint is underway - they have to wait until the next sprint.

I think, especially when you're dealing with large projects, using short, intense bursts of effort is more effective. Focussing your energy on producing these one or two things right now is much easier than producing these five things that are due at various times - the immediacy gives you motivation and simplifies your decisions on what to work on.

So I'm going to rejig my work process - not the deadlines, becaue they fall into peaks and troughs somewhat naturally - where there's only one or two things due in a while, and ten due in two weeks. But I'll work more in sprints, rather than spreading the work out to a tiny bit on so many projects at once.

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Comments (2)

• |2012-01-17 23:31:47 Wyndes  - http://sarahwynde.blogspot.com/
  When you give yourself lots of things to do, you're also requiring yourself to make lots of decisions and that actually doesn't work well. There was a really great article in the NYTimes a while back...aha, I found the link. (I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to post links in comments? But here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision -fatigue.html?pagewanted=all) And if that doesn't work, search "decision fatigue" from around August in the New York Times. It's a great way to understand why the day gets harder and harder when you've got too many little things to take care of.
  Reply

• |2012-01-18 00:11:07 Sofie
  That's a very good point - rather like the "using up your discipline" problem. There was a study that found that when you use your brain extensively, either through working out problems or exercising self-discipline, you're less likely to maintain that discipline later. The group of people who had the difficult maths problems to solve chose the chocolate cake snack; those that spent three hours watching soap operas chose the fruit.
  
  I think the lesson is essentially: pick your battles and make it as easy as you can for yourself to favour your long term goals.
  
  (And yes, links work but to be clickable they need to be in anchor tags. Comment moderation lets me weed out the spam.)
  Reply

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