Calendaring and Preparation Fight Bad Multi-Tasking on Projects
Becky at www.myorgnanizedbiz.com recently wrote about the value of calendaring your “biz” and your life. One thing that stuck out was her proposal to try a two week experiment that could change your life:
Becky: Try this for the next two weeks: each day, figure out the five most important things that you need to accomplish that day. Then schedule time for them on your calendar. Schedule it around meetings and e-mail and errands. Actually block out time where you concentrate on that task.
And when that time comes, work on the task. If you only have a 1/2 hour, then see how much you can get done in a 1/2 hour. Don’t answer e-mail. Don’t pick up the phone. Just stick to your calendar.
Didn’t get your task done in the allotted time? That’s okay. Did you make progress? That’s the important part.
My response to her post was to link this thinking to project management best practices, preparation, and actually doing more by doing less:
PM411: Becky- really like the “capacity planning” emphasis. Many are great at calendaring but end up going from one activity to the next being unprepared. I find that lack of preparation means a lot of what I call “stops, starts and redos” which waste a lot of time. We almost need to do less in a better way to cut down the bad multi-tasking- this is what I love to write about at http://www.projectmanagement411.com, i.e., the ways good project management practices enable efficient prioritization of projects and alignment with strategies- whether it be on a personal or business level.
How about you? Do you have examples of doing more by doing less? The Theory of Constraints (Goldratt) deals with issues like suboptimization, slowing down certain activities to actually get more done because of the alignment with rates of other processes- do you see an application for this in your office? Your Plant? Your personal life?
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Hi Bob, a couple of years ago I wrote abut research done in 2003 showing that multitasking resulted in doing both tasks poorly; the human mind just wasn’t designed to work that way. The post has links to other research on the subject. (Please excuse the extra link:)
What I’ve found useful is honing the ability to switch focus, i.e., being able to jump from one item to another and focus productively with little rampup time.
Hi Miki- appreciate the comment and the link. Never hesitate to link- I’ll probably post this as it goes to the heart of poor project management. The ability to switch focus, for me, is pretty good but I always have to re-review notes, strategies, and next steps which takes a lot of time. The key is for me is to be engaged with the project in a way that I can be productive and innovative.
Bob, helping clients hone their ability to productively switch focus meant finding a way to reduce the time needed to get back to where they were.
We do this by creating a summary that they update wqith a few quick notes before switching to the other task. They do this even when it means asking a caller to “hold just a second” while they jot some quick notes.
If you or your readers need some additional help with this feel free to call me at 866.265.7267 or email me at miki@rampupsolutions.com.
For all you readers out there- Miki is the real deal. She has dealt with business people from CEOs on down and really understands the cultural aspects of excellent business practices. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to one of her CEO clients about his business and the help Miki has provided. Thanks for your valuable contribution to this blog Miki!
Good grief, Bob, you have me blushing:) Thanks for the kind words.
Bob, I think one of the keys to transitioning is to work on a project frequently enough that you don’t have a big ‘ramp-up’ period. I find that if I don’t touch a project for a week or two, I spin my wheels while I figure out where I was. But when I touch it every couple of days, it’s much easier to start where I left off.
Becky- keeping the mindshare going is important or you simply lose it. I’m also a fan of cutting down on the number of projects you do in order to do better on the ones you keep. Thanks for commenting!