Posted by Mike on March 18, 2008
I’ve been reading Getting Things Done
by David Allen. In it, he presents a concept of asking yourself, “What’s the next action?” when you have a project or task to move forward. What if we applied this to our work? On your assigned tasks, ask this question. On any issue you raise, ask yourself this question. It only takes about 10 seconds and it is really powerful to know what the next physical action you need to take for the work that is in front of you.
Some of the power lies in the knowledge that you have a next action ready to go when you are looking for something to do. Perhaps you have a 10 minute gap of time. Scan your next actions. Is there a quick and easy one in there that you can knock off? What if you are looking at a block of time in your afternoon? Is there a next action that fits that time-slot and your energy level?
Now that you’ve read this, “What’s the next action?”
Posted by Mike on March 13, 2008
I started a work from home trial. Here is the contact for my team to help my working remotely be a success.
I will be working from home on Fridays during March and April. This is a trial to see how it works.
Here is some information to help us work together when I am working remotely.
- Call is you need anything.
- 999-999-9991 cell
- 999-999-9992 home
- Meetings: schedule me, I will join by phone.
- Check my work from home wiki to see what I am working on.
- Planned schedule: 6 AM to 2:30 PM.
What do you think? It’s short and to the point.
Posted by Mike on March 11, 2008
I have always viewed mail that is sent to me as a CC: recipient as informational. I think of this for email as well. If my name is in the TO: field, I assume there is some action being requested of me (even if it is only, “Read this email!”). If my name is in the CC: field, then it is being sent to me so that I can be informed about something, but no action is expected of me.
Last fall, I received a letter in which I was in the CC: list. Skimming the letter and then filing it, I assumed that I didn’t have any action to take. I was CC’d! I came to find out almost six months later that the sender did need me to do something!
It is important that if you require action of some kind that you include the person in the TO: field. It is equally important that you specify what you want them to do and when.
It is also ineffective to ask for something to be done and then send this to several people. Who is supposed to do it?
For more information read To, Cc and Bcc.
Posted by Mike on March 5, 2008
The more I think about it and experience it, setup time is something to minimize. Any complicated task requires setup time to get you into the task. Any time that is interrupted, you have to go through some level of setup again.
One key to getting work done is to arrange blocks of uninterrupted time. This allows you to complete setup and focus on productive work.
This brings up several questions:
- Why don’t we block out time to get work done?
- What criteria do you use to decide when to have a meeting and who to invite? Does respecting work time play into it?
- Can’t we say no to a meeting in order to get work done?
Multi-tasking works against productivity too. You may look busy, but you probably aren’t accomplishing much.
Posted by Mike on March 4, 2008
Today, I am concentrating on prep. work for three planning sessions I have scheduled for Wed., Fri., and Mon. The goal for these sessions is to identify the remaining tasks that we know of, for interfaces and forms, on our project. Next, we are going to prioritize and schedule these tasks into 4-week sprints. Once this is done, I will add any new tasks into the project plan.