A Creative Way of Managing Tasks [Palm]

Editorial Note: This post was written by guest author Rod Jones. When Rod emailed me recently for my comments on his way of managing tasks, I thought his write-up would be of interest to you. Rod has a very creative way of managing tasks, and whether you use a Palm PDA or not, I think you’ll appreciate the creativity of his approach and may find some thoughts you can apply. He’s done a fine job writing this up in detail, and I sure appreciate him sharing this with us all.

Many modern methods of time management are based on variants of Dr Stephen Covey’s (SC) 4 Quadrants, and David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD).

The basis of the GTD system is that tasks are categorised/grouped together by similarity (e.g. all PC work in one category, all telephone calls in another) and the human mind then prioritises tasks at the time a new task is selected to be done.

The GTD system is vulnerable to missing a time-critical task; this is especially true [in my experience] where 1. you are tired; and/or 2. there are many, many tasks to be considered, and only a limited viewing screen (such as on a Palm organiser) to see all tasks resulting in extensive screen scrolling. You also need to be able to remember the importance of each task in the overall ’scheme of things’, which gets increasingly more difficult as the number of tasks grows – and can result in valuable time being wasted as you have to refresh yourself as to what the original task was.

The SC modus operandi is to rank tasks by 1 of 4 quadrants:

QI – Important and Urgent
QII – Important but Not Urgent
QIII – Not Important but Urgent
QIV – Not Important and Not Urgent

The SC system groups all similar-priority tasks together even though the tasks may be widely different (e.g. making a prospecting approach in person and typing a letter – both could be prioritised as ‘important and urgent’). This can result in inefficiency of time as you change from one style of work to another.

Unlike the GTD system, the SC system does take into consideration deadlines (or Urgency) in its ranking system; this helps avoid missing time critical tasks; the drawback is that it also means you need to continually reassess your rankings for as you undertake your tasks the time passes, and what was non-urgent yesterday could now be a an ‘urgent’ task today.

So my solution … The Electronic Palm Variation (EPV) method – as I’ll call it; a hybrid of the SC and GTD methods. This is how it works.

Taking the 4 SC quadrants these can be rearranged to:

QI – Urgent and Important
QII – Urgent but Not Important
QIII – Not Urgent but Important
QIV – Not Urgent and Not Important

You will notice that the 4 quadrants are exactly the same as the SC system, just in a different order – and they make ‘urgency’ the primary consideration. Now …

The standard to-do list on a PALM has 5 priorities. All new ‘to-do’ are always ranked 1 by the system. So I rank/prioritise all my to-dos 2 to 5, depending upon whether they are ‘urgent and important’, ‘urgent and not important’, ‘not urgent but important’ and ‘not urgent and not important’ respectively.

None of my to-dos are personally ranked 1. For each task I add a target ‘due date’ – this is the date by which I should have started the task and not its completion date. (Although this is strictly not necessary with tasks that are ‘not urgent and not important’ it does mean that a task that is ‘not important and not urgent’ will, at some point in the future, become overdue – and thus by definition become ‘urgent’; when it does so you can review whether it is worth retaining on your list and in which case you reschedule the ‘due date’ to some future date, or if it is so unimportant that actually it should not be on your to-do list – and remove it.)

All tasks are categorised by work type – as per the GTD method. I use ‘0 Tasks’ (these are tasks that do not fit into any of the other categories), ‘1 Daytime Calls’, ‘2 Evening Calls’, ‘3 PC Work’ (these are all the tasks that can be done when sitting at my PC), ‘4 Visits’, ‘5 Personal/none work’, ‘6 Waiting’ (these are the tasks that I am waiting for someone else to come back to me; the ‘ball is in their court’ as it were). The remaining categories are projects, goals, and visions – and differentiated by a starting letter e.g. A. Vision statement, B. Long term goals etc. You choose what is relevant to your style of work.

Tasks that are repetitive I set up as repeating. e.g. those key activities I need to undertake to achieve my sales targets. I know if I achieve these my pipeline business will be maintained. All these activities are set to repeat, so for example ‘Call 10 businesses today’ repeats tomorrow once it has been ticked off today as done. It is in the ‘1 Daytime calls’ category, with a priority ranking of 4 i.e. ‘Not urgent but important’. I know though that I must achieve those calls today. If I fail to hit target on a particular day that ranking is lowered [manually] to a 2 on the next day, reflecting that making those calls has gone from being ‘None urgent and important’ to ‘Urgent and important’.

Working The System

In my experience a task that was important (i.e. helps achieve my own goals) when first identified is always important. A task that was unimportant (i.e. helped achieve someone else’s goals but did nothing for my own, or was a necessary ‘evil’ for my business e.g. reviewing emails, opening post, going to the post office ) rarely ever becomes ‘important’. ‘Urgency’ though does change with the passage of time. The advantage of the ‘EPV’ system is that it uses the PALM’s inbuilt diary system to highlight when a task needs to be re-prioritised because of ‘urgency’ i.e. the ‘due date’ has passed.

At the start of each day I view all tasks by ‘priority’. If I come across any task ranked 1, I know to re-rank it – as no task should ever be ranked priority 1 – as explained above.

I can also see immediately those tasks that are urgent – because they are ranked 2 (for urgent and important) or 3 (urgent but not important) – and placed at the top of the PALM’s list.

I review any task that has passed its ‘due date’ that is not already ranked urgent (i.e. they presently have a priority ranking of 4 or 5 – reflecting whether they are ‘not urgent and important’ or ‘not urgent and not important’); these tasks are nicely highlighted in red by the PALM desktop or an ‘!’ on the PALM organiser. These tasks are then either re-dated (if the task can be postponed further) or re-ranked (from a 4 to a 2, or from a 5 to a 3 respectively. NOTE: An item ranked 5 is not re-ranked 4 as this would change its importance ranking; likewise an item initially ranked 4 is not re-ranked 3.)

I then enter into my diary the time slot in which ‘not important tasks’ will be undertaken – see below for more details.

Then it’s down to work.

Depending upon the time of day (I use time of day to choose what is the most effective use of my time; prospecting tasks are made in the morning, PC work in the afternoon) I simply select the next appropriate task from my appropriate category – letting my mind choose which task is most appropriate/important at that time in line with the GTD principal – but my PALM is helping that decision making process by clearly showing what tasks are important, not important, urgent, or not urgent – so I can make an informed decision, quickly. The selected task must be ranked 2 or 4 (i.e. ‘Urgent and important’ or ‘Not urgent and important’).

Once the task is completed it is marked as done; if the task was part of a process/project the next task in the process/project is added to my to-do list. Then I select my next task…. and the process starts again.

Actioning the Non-Important

All time management systems/methods I have tried focus on doing the important tasks (and rightly so), rather than those which are not important. The drawback is that this focus [on the important tasks] is almost exclusively to the exclusion of the non-important. In my experience unimportant tasks do need to be done. (e.g. Reading your e-mails is generally a complete waste of time, but you need to read them all to identify the 20% that are important. Likewise you have to open your post just to prove to yourself that the junk mail is junk mail.) The trick, I think, is not to waste excessive time doing these tasks – but know they will be done at an appropriate time.

At the start of each day I allocate 2 half hour slots to my non- important tasks; 1 in the morning, and 1 in the afternoon. At the appropriate stipulated time I stop work on my ‘important’ work and undertake the tasks from the non-important tasks (i.e. those ranked 3 or 5) – selecting those which are most urgent first. At the end of the allotted time slot I revert back to my important tasks, carrying forward those remaining ‘non-important’ tasks for another day; they are [by definition] not important and should not therefore detrimentally effect my business.

Incidentally you should not be able to complete all your ‘non-important’ tasks in the allocated time window; if you do then you must shorten your allotted time slot – otherwise you will not be working at maximum efficiency – but coasting.

Every 14 days or so I review how many ‘non-important’ tasks I have outstanding. If the numbers of non important tasks are growing I can increase the slot duration. Conversely if a reducing trend is evident I can decrease the duration. Experiment to find what is best for you.

By allocating a fixed daily time (or weekly slot if you prefer) to these tasks you should be able to keep them under control, and your sub-conscious mind will quickly appreciate that these tasks once started need to be dealt with as quickly as possible. More importantly, by only allocating say an hour a day to these tasks you know you are spending 6 hours a day doing what is important for you; you have the peace of mind knowing that the majority of your time (i.e. 80%) is focused on doing tasks that really are important to you.

Summary

Like all time management solutions you need to use the system, and persevere with it for a period of time; this system though has so far proved workable for me. It is simple to instigate, it uses the standard PALM software (including the Palm Desktop) – and therefore costs nothing extra, and requires a simple review process at the start of the day.

I’d welcome your feedback.

Regards,

Rod Jones