Originally published on 30 November 2007, on our old blog.
In my other job as a publications officer for another organisation, I have an extremely busy time of things. I only work there a few days a week, but there are always a bazillion jobs to get done. Just the other day I counted seventy jobs on my task-list, at least sixty of which could be deemed urgent (or apparently needing to be done by Christmas). The problem, in working in a small organisation with concurrent priorities, is working out levels of importance. If one asks a colleague how important a job is, the answer is invariably that ‘it’s urgent’, or ‘it was due yesterday’. So how to make sense of this mess?
The first thing that I would say to this is: keep a check on your time management as the first step of sorting out your messy corporate life. The second thing is to try and keep a hold on the way others view their time management and how you relate to it: but that’s for another blog.
It was a great day when I realised that Microsoft Outlook can be one of your best friends in managing your time, if you use it to its full advantage. Some of these advantages include:
- less reliance on paper-based notes and other things that tend to get lost in the whirlwind of different jobs, as a result of the next two:
- the journal function
- the task list function
Customising your task list is the first job you need to do. To do this, set it to ‘simple view’ so that all your tasks are in a list. Right-click on the fields across the top and select ‘field chooser…’. From here you can create new fields, or select other default fields that may not be showing. To select them, drag them up to the fields bar. In my task list I show the default ‘subject’, ‘total work’, ‘actual work’, ‘date due’, ‘status’, and ‘% completed’ fields. The custom fields I’ve added to this include ‘requested by’, and two fields that indicate a) whether my designer needs to be involved, and b) how long it will take him – which I get him to double-check. Then you need to fill in your task list as completely as possible, breaking large jobs up into discrete tasks.
Moving across to the journal, create a new journal entry. In the subject, type ‘TASK’; in the category, type in the name of the job; I always precede the name with the status in capital letters, e.g.: ‘IN PROGRESS | newsletter’. Set the journal entry type to ‘task’. Doing all of these things makes your item easy to find again later.
Keeping notes is always important, particularly if you are often asked to provide up updates for managers or clients. The way I manage my notes is to write general notes in the journal, and specific task notes (such as what was completed when) in the task itself.
Keeping track of time – this is where things get important! The journal allows you to time how long it takes you to do a particular job, and this is VITAL. Whenever you start a task, open the journal and click ‘start timer’. This will run in the background until you pause it before saving the task. When you have finished the task, put the time it took you (from the journal) into your task list on under ‘actual work’. This will give you a working knowledge of how long you think a job will take, and how long it will actually take you.
Of course, doing this has many benefits: you can demonstrate to your employer or client how long things take you, and know that the time is accurate. It also allows you to incorporate the time taken with interruptions and so on (you can even journal them if you want to!) so that the final time shows the true
time it took you to do a task, taking into consideration your working environment.
The next time management blog will focus on how to try and manage time when other people don’t seem to be able to manage theirs. Stay tuned!
