Monday, July 11, 2011

Time management - handling paper

Back in the 20th Century, I learned a technique on a time management course. 'Each time you handle a piece of paper, place a small red dot in the top right hand corner with a Biro. The accumulation of dots will show you how many times you handle the document.' Multiple red dots would indicate the symptom to diagnose the underlying problem (procrastination, poor filing habits, the need to escalate the issue, and so on).

In the 21st Century, this technique is less applicable as the physical object - your screen - is generally the same for all of the information that you handle.

Back in the 20th Century the cost of creating a paper document was high in terms of cost, time and effort. In some organisations, sending a letter meant handwriting or dictating a draft, and passing it to the typing pool. The draft would be mailed or, if it contained errors, corrected. In the 21st Century the cost of creating a virtual object containing information is much smaller. By comparison, minuscule. The result: a greater number of bits of paper (or the virtual equivalents) arriving on our desk(tops).

If we could 'red dot' the information, the accumulation of dots would reveal a symptom: we spend a large amount of our time repeating information - or aspects of it - to different formats. The agenda, the phone calls, the e-mails, the minutes, the tasks, the project plan, follow-ups, reminders and reports - each one creates another file. What if all of these could all be held in the same document? Sure, it could not be done in a paper document, but with a computer...why not?

For all the advances we have seen in the 'information age', many knowledge workers are stuck in an outdated paper culture. The agenda, the phone calls, the e-mails, the minutes, the tasks, the project plan, follow-ups, reminders and reports are all separate because, in a paper culture, they have to be. For many people, coping with the large number of documents is what their work has become, rather than work governed by their desires, objectives or goals.

Sadly, without the 'red dot' to reveal the symptoms, it is hard to see what a waste of time this is.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Problems of the "to do" list

Lists are a great way to focus on the essentials and prioritise what you are going to do, however, the format of your list can create problems for you. For instance, in our connected world, the paper list quickly becomes out-of-date. This may not be a problem if you use it to focus for a short period, but it can be inconvenient if writing it takes up a large amount of time and you have to re-write it frequently. 

To overcome the problem of the paper list, some use software and electronic devices to capture and monitor tasks. Again the format creates problems. For example, limited screen-space means you cannot see all of your tasks at once and if you can each one is too small to quickly read. Another problem is that each item has a similar visual weighting, meaning that urgent, important tasks look the same as less important (or even unimportant) tasks. If you have a long list and cannot see all the tasks in a single screen, it is hard to get the essential overview of your work.

To deal effectively with these limitations, you need to have a clear idea of what the list provides:
  • quick summary
  • focus
  • robust support to get the essentials done
and the problems it can bring:
  • inflexible
  • time-consuming
  • quickly out-of-date, so does not support getting the essentials done

Having done this you need to decide on the method system which brings you the greatest amount of benefit with the least amount of problems. You need to understand the problem that arises from attaching the information to a particular format, rather than just suffer because of it.

A bucket is a useful metaphor to explain the problem: a bucket is a device to holds things together for storage and transport. The bucket keeps these things away from other things. In this way, paper and writing is a useful way to cluster information for storage and transport.

When we use only a few devices or formats, our world is fairly well ordered and we can cope.

Each time you use a different bucket, however, you complicate the picture. Creating separate written documents, or recording information in different formats (such as apps, software or file types) means that you create a problem in which the administration of the separate buckets becomes the purpose of your life, rather than working on the problem that caused you to use a bucket in the first place.

I have found mind mapping a useful way to deal with this issue. Electronic versions allow me to attach information to a map to understand and process it and enable me to translate it to the appropriate format.

The essential thing, I believe, is that you become more aware of the benefits and limitations of the different formats and choose carefully. Choose methods that reduce your bucket problem.