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I've been feeling ADHD at work this week.
My prioritization system is based on the time it takes to complete a task. The quicker the task, the sooner I work on it. There are long-term tasks, projects with due dates at some specified or unspecified point in the future - days or weeks. There are short-term tasks which could take up to a day, usually one to four hours. And there are immediate tasks, that would take less than an hour to complete, though they're often only minutes.
This has always worked well for me. I always get my stuff done on time, and I can't figure out why other people can't. I reserve time in my week for the long-tern tasks, and reserve time in my day for the short-term work. Then I handle the immediate tasks as they come in. Mornings are typically devoted to the more immediate tasks as other people are gearing up for their days and sending out requests. I typically work on the longer-term tasks late in the day when other people are slowing down or checking out.
But this week, I don't know, there seemed to be an overabundance of immediate tasks. And I kept jumping from one to another as priorities shifted from moment to moment. One day, I had several things that needed to be done, and was working on one, and then I got pulled into a meeting, and after the meeting I decided to work on the thing that came out of the meeting because it would be very quick and it was still fresh in my mind.
One of the reasons I do the immediate things as immediately as possible, is to get them out of my inbox. I want to keep my to-do list as short as possible, and I don't to risk losing items (either forgetting to add them to my actual list, or losing them in my e-mail because the list is too long). But also, having so many things on my to-do list is a distraction. So there's the ADHD thing again.
I guess this came to a head this week because it was so busy. Not only with a lot of work, but with tight deadlines on it. And I may have misprioritized some short-term tasks as immediate. I actually worked overtime this week. I need to slow down, take a breath, and make sure my priorities are correct.
I said that I didn't understand why other people can't get their work done, but that's not a fair statement. Usually, those other people are managers. I get extremely frustrated when a manager (usually my own) can't respond to me or get me an answer, for days or never. But I think the root cause is not time management so much as it is financial priority. The boss is overwhelmed, but that's not a personal problem - we need more people on the team.
My prioritization system is based on the time it takes to complete a task. The quicker the task, the sooner I work on it. There are long-term tasks, projects with due dates at some specified or unspecified point in the future - days or weeks. There are short-term tasks which could take up to a day, usually one to four hours. And there are immediate tasks, that would take less than an hour to complete, though they're often only minutes.
This has always worked well for me. I always get my stuff done on time, and I can't figure out why other people can't. I reserve time in my week for the long-tern tasks, and reserve time in my day for the short-term work. Then I handle the immediate tasks as they come in. Mornings are typically devoted to the more immediate tasks as other people are gearing up for their days and sending out requests. I typically work on the longer-term tasks late in the day when other people are slowing down or checking out.
But this week, I don't know, there seemed to be an overabundance of immediate tasks. And I kept jumping from one to another as priorities shifted from moment to moment. One day, I had several things that needed to be done, and was working on one, and then I got pulled into a meeting, and after the meeting I decided to work on the thing that came out of the meeting because it would be very quick and it was still fresh in my mind.
One of the reasons I do the immediate things as immediately as possible, is to get them out of my inbox. I want to keep my to-do list as short as possible, and I don't to risk losing items (either forgetting to add them to my actual list, or losing them in my e-mail because the list is too long). But also, having so many things on my to-do list is a distraction. So there's the ADHD thing again.
I guess this came to a head this week because it was so busy. Not only with a lot of work, but with tight deadlines on it. And I may have misprioritized some short-term tasks as immediate. I actually worked overtime this week. I need to slow down, take a breath, and make sure my priorities are correct.
I said that I didn't understand why other people can't get their work done, but that's not a fair statement. Usually, those other people are managers. I get extremely frustrated when a manager (usually my own) can't respond to me or get me an answer, for days or never. But I think the root cause is not time management so much as it is financial priority. The boss is overwhelmed, but that's not a personal problem - we need more people on the team.
