An introduction to time management

 Introduction

This text tries to give an introduction to time management. Since I work as a developer my examples are taken from IT work. In the first part, classical time management — based on the Getting Things Done process — is discussed.

I am strongly influenced by the Getting Things Done process, which has many well thought-out ideas (but can overwhelm for beginners). The text should be read by people who have little to no experience with time management so far and is intended to give them an introduction.

How work arrives

My past work includes development, QA, project management and architecture. The job is exciting and you can rarely complain about boredom —to say “no” is not always an option.

Typical tasks include:

• Work with source code
• Writing documentation
• Analyse problems or change requests
• Gather requirements
• Sit in meetings or workshops
• Reading emails and do phone calls
• Doing interruption requests from your manager
• Business trips
• Developing own ideas about improvements
• A really lot of reading (Emails, Blogs, News, …)
• Drinking tea & coffee with my colleagues
• …

Sources of Work

This is the basis for the following conclusions:

1. You must have an eye on several channels
2. There is probably much more work, than could be done by me. It will not get better, you just get used to it.

Keep an eye on several channels

So first I will try to bundle all work in a single, unique place and try to separate the wheat from the chaff: What has to happen immediately and what can be overlooked.

Follow this three basic rules to keep an eye on the tasks, you are responsible for:

1. There is one calendar in which all your events are visible! In best case this includes your private and work events.
2. There is exactly one inbox, where you collect all tasks. This inbox must be accessable to you every time. Therefore emails are not a good choice. They are not accessable everywhere (e.g. if there is no internet connection available) emails mix pure information and tasks.
3. Tasks are organized later in several project task lists.

Source of work moved into inbox, lists and calendar

You should concentrate on managing your tasks and not managing your tool. Therefore I suggest to start with the simplest tool: Pen and Paper —a lot of paper — and leave digital tools slightly to the left. Therefore you should use

• an inbox where everything arrives initially and
• project lists where tasks are organized into, in case they have to been taken care of.

After a time you are familiar with managing your tasks. Then you can decide which digital task planner or notebook support you in a proper way.

About the calendar. This is different for me, since automatic reminders are a huge advantage and most people are used to have a digital calendar at work. So you do not need an additional analogue calendar, but try to include all calendars in one user interface.

How to use those lists is explained later in the text.

Priorize tasks

There are mathematical frameworks depending on effort and risk or things like WSJF, which can be applied on user stories.

However, a few pointers are sufficient for daily use tasks:

Selfish reasons

• Will finishing the task make my future doings more easy?
• Will I get punished for not doing it, if yes how hard?
• Would it be fun to do it, or would the result be satisfying?

Objective reasons

• Is there a fixed deadline — or a high time criticality?
• Will my customer (and therefore the company) get a big advantage from doing it?
• Has doing the task a positive / negative impact on my team?
• Is there cost reduction related to this task?

Usually you spend eight hours (or more) a day at work. This also justifies that selfish reasons are important :-).

Tools

Your Calendar

A calendar view with several sources included.

Your calendar contains just 1 type of informations: events!

An event is a task, which must be done during a specific date and on a specific time. These are e.g.:

• Birthdays
• Meetings
• Holidays

Because you are working with task lists, your calendar does not contain any tasks or maybe even reminders to do tasks. Reminding yourself can be done by the review your lists. This process of reviewing is explain below.

Most programs are able to include several calendars at once. In the one above, There is the family and business calendar included — as well as occupancy of our vacation home.

Instruction to include several calendars into Google Calendar

Instruction for subscribing to a public calendar in Outlook.

Paper, Stickys, Folders

If using pen and paper, you have two ways to organise your tasks:

1. Either use a Daily Task List. As a speciality: print a page from your calendar with all today’s meetings. Write by Hand your planned tasks to this page.
2. Or put each task on a separate index card and store them in a folder.

Although point 1 is more easy to adopt, I would favour point 2, since it make handling tasks easier, which cannot be finished today. There are two naive ways of task managing, which lead to frustration:

1. Work with sticky notes to write down your tasks, then put them on your desk. If this is all, it will be too much. This method work fine for a few days, but you will loos focus over time!
2. The eternal list of doom. You take a notebook and write all tasks in a long ever growing list. You see each day this lists is getting longer and sooner or later you will become frustrated for not finding an end.
   This effect is the reason, why the daily list has to be written new on each day and why index cards must be reviewed each week.

Personally I started to use the daily task list in my first steps, but switched to a digital variant of index cards during the last years.

Daily tasks lists

Example of a daily task list. On the left you can add a priority and effort, on the right you see your core working time.

A daily list contains all the tasks to be completed in one day. These are noted on the list. It can be extended by properties, such as the expected length, etc.

At the beginning all tasks to be completed on today are transferred to the list. What is not completed during the day goes back into the task pool.

The next day a new list is started.

Pros

• Handy. There is only 1 note to take with you.
• Better overview than loose cards.
• Easy to use

Cons

• Extra writing effort
• No Details can be attached to tasks

When you choose to work with a daily task list, this is your inbox, where you write everything on, you need to do. The next day — when you review your daily list — you empty your inbox (here: the daily list) automatically. This is because you need to write them new.

Moving tasks to project lists is just writing new notes and put them in the folders. I leave it open to you, how to do this best: A big sheet with tasks on it, tasks grouped by context (development work, documentations, planning, …) or just as with the index cards below, one task on one piece of paper.

Index cards

Index cards, A6 or A7 are handy to use.

When using index cards you should write one task per card!

Pros

• Haptic feedback, if handling the cards becomes confusing, you have to much to do and should reduce your stack.
• Easy Support for tagging (Priority, Complexity, Type of task, Constraints)
• Use back of the card to describe it, e.g. why need this to be done
• Reusable. Use a card as a little checklist for recurring processes without need to rewrite them.

Cons

• You need space to work with them.
• It is getting complex when working with many tasks
• Searching can be hard
• You need a very lot of cards. This is not green IT

Handling a new task

Work arrives on your desk.

Imagine you receive an ticket with a bug report. There are two steps, you need to perform for a first categorisation of this task:

1. Decide if immediate action is reasonable or required? If yes, do it at once or check if you can delegate it quickly to a more suitable person.
2. Otherwise store it for later planning in your Inbox.

There is a special thing in the image above: Optimization. In another story I will try to explain, ways to reduce effort on necessary tasks and to make necessary tasks more fault-tolerant.

Doing tasks at once

The two minute rule: This is pretty simple, if a task can be done in two minutes or less, do it at once. Two minutes is the average time to note a task :-).

Urgent tasks: Of course there are things, that require immediate action. According to my experience this is a system incident or some phone calls, when quitting them is too impolite.

Delegate or plan

Delegate: Regardless if you have Human Resources Responsibility or not, there is possibly someone available, who can handle the task better than you. When you delegate a task, ask yourself if it makes sense to acquire the know-how to complete the task as well. Your colleague can involve you in the process or you can take the part of documenting the solution.

Delegating is not intended to move unwanted work away!

Plan a task: Simply write down a sentence about the task and put it in your inbox. This is briefly described in the chapter about the inbox below.

Archive or throw away: If it is not a task, but information, you can decide to put in to your references (an archive). If it has no value for you, do not store it. Put it to the rubbish bin.

Inbox: collecting tasks

Storing a task for later is what happens to most of your tasks! The channel how a task arrives is not important — be it email, phone or ticket systems.

There is exactly one Inbox, where your tasks are stored! This should be accessible in every situation.

If you are able to store a task in every situation — at lunch time, during car driving, in a meeting or even in bed, then you can take the idea from your head and do not worry about forgetting it.

Storing tasks does not mean your tasks have to be processed or even finished. It is just note them down and forget. Most people — according to personal experience — does not expect a immediate solution. They are mostly satisfied, if the get a feedback, there task is acknowledged. Just answer shortly to an email, or if they are next to your desk, write the task on an index card, say “I will take care about it” and put the card in your inbox. If you think giving a deadline makes sense, note the deadline on the index card as well (Incase you use a daily list, you can write it on your daily list. You will review it latest on the next day, when writing the next daily list).

You will see the card on the next morning latest, again.

Instead of putting every ticket you are assigned to on an index card, it might be useful to write a card “Check My Supporttickets”. You can add important or long running tickets additionally to your index cards.

How to write tasks?

Write in imperative. Instead of “fixing bug in order-application” write “fix bug in order-application”. Writing in imperative makes the “What to do” more clearly automatically.

If you do not take care of a task a few days or weeks, write down the “Why”. This will help you remember the context.

If there is a deadline, it should be on the card as well.

Tagging an index card is not mandatory, but sometimes useful. Use coloured tags. Some possible tags are:

• constraints (e.g. place where task can be done, or people needed)
• needed time (e.g. less-one-hour, multiple-days, less-half-day, quick)
• high priority vs. normal

The order of tasks is implicitly set by the order of the cards. Tags are strong, if you have 15 minutes between two meeting, and find open phone calls quickly — just select the index cards with the coloured tag phone-calls.

Organise and plan tasks

Inbox is on top, then different lists: Next, Waiting and several project lists.

Organising means keep your inbox empty and move the tasks to project lists. You should be able to find the actual tasks easily in your lists. The process of emptying your inbox must be done you regulary:

• Once per day read your inbox and move the cards either to your Next list, a project list or the trash bin. These lists are explained in the following chapter.
• Once per week go through the project lists and check what you want to achieve during the next week. Put Those index cards from the project list to the next list — or remove them from the active projects and put them either on a will do it later list or to your references.
• Do a yearly or half-yearly results review. This review is for the big overview. Use it to cleanup the later lists and references. You will have to take some time for this. The easy part is just go through every list and check if the task is still valid (as a rule of thumb, if it has not been touch the last year, it is outdated and can be removed). The hard part is to check if your situation is aligned to your big goals: Are you right with family, freetime and job situations or will you head to the wrong direction somewhere?

By keeping your lists clear — and your head free from steady remebring and priorisation efforts— you should be able to act instead of just react and stay focused on your goals.

List Types

The chapter will explain the lists you are working with. They are nearly equal to the GTD lists, David Allan introduces in his book.

Overview of lists and reviewing your lists.

All starts in your Inbox. As explained above, every idea is moved into this list. In your folder it should be the first page and it should be reachable from everywhere ( e.g. write an Email with your smartphone or have a paper and a pen in your pocket, or have your folder with in a meeting), so you are able at every moment to put something in your inbox.

The Next list contains all tasks you want to take care until the next weekly review. It contains cards from mixed projects. Cards in this list should be ready to work on — which means you must know its acceptance criteria.

There are two special lists, I found quite useful:

1. Waiting contains cards I might send a reminder, if nothing pops up. Examples are waiting for a question asked by email, waiting for testing a ticket or a borrowed book not returned until date X.
2. Calls and Mail is my list of tasks quick to do, when I am at a computer. I use it mainly to fill times between meetings, or when I am too tired to do complex tasks.

As a developer I have a couple of projects run in parallel, if I count private and office projects, currently I have about 20, 7 at work and 12 private ones. As you see this is not a normal project definition. For me a project is something, which tool a couple of tasks to fullfill. Some Examples of my projects

• Everything related to support
• Introduce a new software process
• Everything related to software product ABC, where I am main responsible for
• Connect interface X to the insurrace system
• Update my swimming clubs wesite to a new corporate design
• Plan my mothers 70th birthday
• …

The later list contains tasks (or projects), which you are interested to do someday, but know you will not find the time in the next weeks or month. My favorite on this list is practise the harmonica more (to do more than just two songs), or learn a new programming language.

References

References contains everything, which is not something you need to perform, but want need to keep. My references setup is:

• About 28 paper folders for contracts (Folder named A for contract with companies beginning with A, Folder named A for contract with … well I guess you got it)
• A big box with manuals
• Some special Folders for things related to my wifes parent health care, or everything about our daughter.

And I have a keyword dictionary (including cross references) of everything in this folders. I thought about doing it in Excel, but realised the PC is not always on when I edit the content, so I use this instead:

My table of content for the references

Finish tasks — the trashbin

The trash bin simply a move to /dev/null. It is some kind of satisfying, to crumple up an annoying task card and just put it away.

If you a encouraged by your management to write a weekly review, you could collect the tasks as well until the weekly review. This way you know better what you did last week — maybe you can write in your report, you did remove 5mm of work this week :-).

Toolbox

Last but not least here you find a small shopping list, if you want to give it a try.

Analog tools

• A paper folder with register and corner elastics to not loose your cards
• About 100 index cards in A7 format (For me A6 is a little bit too big for a single task, but maybe you can mix?)
• Some coloroud felt pens
• A couple of paper clips (to group cards)

Digital tools

Since you are an IT guy and prefer digital tools, I like to recommend to I like:

• https://todoist.com — a commercial cloud task list for about 30€ / year. There is a free version of it, which is fine to get a first impression, but fun and effective is the payed version.
• https://joplinapp.org/ — An open source notebook app.
  
  Why do I recommend this tools (and not Evernote, Google or Microsoft) — well because I use them.

1. Both tools are always available. There are version for the desktop, the smartphone and in case of todoist integrations in MS Outlook and others.
2. Both focus on their job. Todoist is not a Caledar witha todo list integration, it is a task list, build around the GTD process. And joplin is for writing notes and not for writing and additional enhanced formatting text or selling epaper pens around the core product.
3. Both have a quite good UX. At least if you like the markdown language, which is the basic language for Joplin, and supported by Todoist as well.
4. Support respective community is helpfull and polite.
5. Both run stable and smoothly according to my experience.

I am quite new to Jopling (6 Month now) and with todoist for about 5 years.

Fazit

You read about

• the channels, through which work arrives on your desk
• how to handle incoming tasks with an Inbox and the 2 minute rule
• reviews and how they helps to keep your Inbox clean
• what types of lists are useful to categorize your tasks
• a proposal tools needed to start

I hope you get some ideas how to keep yourself more organised feel ready to fight your daily challenges. Since everything became longer then expected I hope there is one or two ideas, you can take with you.

Thanks for reading so far.

Outlook

I am planning to write a second part, which is about work types and what IT related tasks helps to reduce them. Tell me if you like this page, so I am encouraged to continue with it.

Sources

• Time Manangement for System Administrators. OReilly
  This was my first book I read about time management.
• Allen, D: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
• Jackson, T: Hoshin Kanri for the Lean Enterprise
• Forsgren N., Accelerate
• Poppendieck, (2003) Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit. Addison-Wesley Professional