Entries from January 2008 ↓

Time boxing is a simple technique of proactively allocating time for important work, personal, and social activities. It makes great excuses like “if I’d only have time…” obsolete. I adopted and adapted this technique from J.D. Meier. He explains it in his great post here - How To Use Time Boxing for Getting Results

These are examples where time boxing rocked my world

Myself. At some point in my life I realized I spend less time with my kids and wife, I spend less time for personal development like sports and reading. I did wanted to do it all but “I did not have time for that”. What a nonsense!! I have exactly the same time that everybody has – 24 hours. All I needed to make sure what I want to spend time for and how much. And so I did. I figured out what I want to do the most and I started allocating time proactively on weekly basis. I am consultant and my work achievements are measured by invested billing hours. Proactively allocating the time I know how good or bad my work performance is, should I expect troubles with my manager or find “Thank you for great job” email in my Inbox. Mixing my personal activities with work ones helps me building realistic work/life balance, prevents me from burnouts, creates anticipation for results vs. fire alarms. It removes stress completely.

Family. Time boxing helped me to get closer to my two daughters. I become true parent finally. I enjoy spending time with them and they enjoy it too. I know that – they just tell me so. I think the punch line is my wife’s recurrent “Honey, is everything OK with your work? I see you too much home”. My stretch goal is hearing complaints of this kind only.

Customers. The biggest challenge with customers I think is earning trust. Time boxing helps here a lot. Proactively blocking time for customers activities helps delivering incremental deliverables. The customers like seeing constant progress. They also like when you send an update email or make a phone call versus chasing you just to hear “ahh… ehm… I did not have time for that yet, may be next week, or month…”. There is another part – telling customer proactively “I cannot do it” up front gets you even more trust credits. I am sometimes over motivated to tell customer “Yes” just because I do not want to lose the opportunity. I regret a lot afterward since I just do not have allocated time to complete the work I’ve just committed. Time boxing approach helps me either identify available time or shuffle current time boxes to make one. Or tell the customer – “Can’t do it, sorry”.

Colleagues. Building healthy team is essential. One of the health checks one needs to make is team collaboration and sharing level. While there are plenty ways to share among the team, interpersonal communications are vital. Time boxing is of help here too. On one hand I refrain from coming to the offices – I am paid to do billable time. Being in the office does not earn my company no money, I am less beloved thus. I am beloved by my company when in the field with the customers. Frankly, this is what I love doing. What a match! On other hand I proactively block  specific time boxes to come to the offices to make personal connections with my colleagues, building my network, strengthening the connections. Why? In the moment of truth I can count on them, and they can count on me. I doubt it would be the same if the only thing we know of each other was email address.

Reports. Timely reviews are essential to make sure the work is getting done, and morale is up. Progress status can be obtained via informal talks or sporadically calling reports. This is not effective and efficient. It is stressful too. When specific time is allocated in timely basis it becomes a habit to either parties. Less time spend for preparation, for meeting itself, and then for the follow-ups. My basic agenda is: “what’s good”, “what’s bad”, “action items”, “personal asks”.

Managers. Same as with reports only up the chain. If the manager has the habit of timely focused meetings – good for you, if not – train her. Show the downside of not doing timely and focused progress meetings. Downside to either party. See Reports part in this post.

Sounds easy? It is. The trick is practicing it rigorously until it becomes a habit.

Even before you finish one project, the next one is already waiting for you, because the first one creates the conditions in which the second one will emerge. So, time for family and yourself cannot be found. You have to take the time. Regard this time just as you would a religious holiday…

… Work always creates more work. It never, ever ends. You must take rest when the seventh day arrives. Period. - Ichak Adizes

…and you must stop using excuses. Start proactively allocating time – JUST DO IT!

Warhawk Matt Scott in Nike ‘No Excuses’ Commercial

How many items do you have in your Inbox? 10, 100, 1000? I have 0 [Zero] or at least it is my daily ultimate goal – having my Inbox absolutely clean.

How. There are 4 simple rules to follow to keep Inbox clean with your Outlook [or any other email client - short cuts would vary]. It all depends on the Inbox items’ purpose.

• Rule #1 – Spam goes to trash. Never leave unnecessary items in your Inbox. Viagra SPAM, Dilbert cartoons, jokes. Anything that does not fall under the rest of the rules goes directly to trash.
• Rule #2 - Action mail, block time in your calendar. Action mail can be task assignment from your manager, personal ask from a colleague, personal note [I do not use tasks feature in Outlook rather I post posts directly to my Inbox using ctrl+shift+S]. Anything that requires time to invest – either to plan or execute falls into this category. Once the time blocked – delete the item from Inbox. It is useful to put the item inside the calendar to have immediate context once the time comes to execute.
• Rule #3 – Knowledge nuggets go to personal KB. I am subscribed to distribution lists for different areas – technical and personal. Sometimes I got real gold nuggets directly to my Inbox. I usually do not read it in depth rather file it into my personal KB [Knowledge Base] for future use. Move it using ctrl+shift+V shortcut in Outlook.
• Rule #4 – Route, do not block the traffic. If you are SME [subject matter expert] in some area you get quite few emails like “can you tell me who/how/what….?”. Usually such email do not require too much time to invest to reply. Un-bottleneck the traffic by replying immediately. Just hit ctrl+R to open reply message, type short relevant information and then hit ctrl+Enter to send the email. If the email is long to read – reply with short “Please focus me how can I help you.”. If they ask you for a favor – let them know you are of help but make them respect your time too. Once the email sent – just delete it.

Why. When Inbox is clean you know what you know and you know what you do not know. That means you know what to do – either execute what you know or make sure to research on what you do not know. When Inbox choked with tens, hundreds, and even thousands of emails [I’ve seen that too] – you just do not know what you do not know. And that is bad situation to be in. It means more unpleasant surprises, and more fire alarms. It is fine in case you like fire alarms. Do you?

“When one reads Bibles, one is less surprised at what the Deity knows than at what He doesn’t know” - Mark Twain

So, how many items do you have in your Inbox today? Will it be the same tomorrow?

"Where do you get the time to write another blog? I wish I had as much time as you do."  - These are common responses when I share my posts with my friends.

In fact, blogging saves me time. This is why I proactively block one hour a day dedicated for blogging. Totally 5 hours a week. 25 hours a month of planned investment. What is the return on the investment? Following are few examples [and counting…]

Myself. It is matter of simple reuse. I journal what’s helpful and then use it again and again until it becomes a habit. To make sure I reuse the same techniques over the time I need to write it down somewhere. Blog is the best place to do it . I save time on searching these techniques. It serves me as my personal del.isio.us. I can spend 2 to 15 minutes searching for specific topic. I might doing it 2-3 times a day. 2 to 20 hours a month of saved time if blogging.

My customers. A customer called me another day and told me he has a technical problem. I manage technical blog where I journal my tech nuggets and insights I got from customers interactions while resolving technical issues. I sent him a link to a relevant blog entry and in few hours he replied that the issue was resolved based on the technique described in the blog. I saved 2 hours on traveling and earned more trust. I might have 1 to 3 such cases monthly. 2 to 6 hours saved monthly if blogging.

My friends and the family. Over the time my best friends and the family got scattered geographically, some of us are now even in different time zones. Blogging helps me sharing what I am at today. Emails are great but less durable than blog. For example, I could send this recipe via email to my mom, but in few weeks my friend would like me to share it too. Searching email would take time or I could even delete it. When it is on the blog it is fast to find and share. Hard to estimate here… Let’s assume I’d spend 10 minutes each day to send my updates to my private social circle. It would roll up to hour a week and 5 monthly hours.

My colleagues. I specialize in specific professional area. I would say I have expertise in that area. I like sharing my knowledge either reactively [on demand] or proactively [spamming :D]. I had a colleague asking me to meet and explain specific topic. Sending relevant blog entry saved us both time on setting a meeting at least. I may have 4 such monthly request on average. The meeting may take half an hour. Assuming I ignore context switching time, it rolls up to 2 monthly hours.

Totally monthly saved time - from 11 to 33 hours. 22 hours on average. 3 hours left uncovered….

Blogging gives me huge joy of satisfaction. 3 hours a month for satisfaction is an acceptable price I am ready to pay.

“I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.” -  Oscar Wilde

J.D. Meier has cracked the secret behind GTD [Getting Things Done] success.

J.D. Meier writes:

Have you ever wondered why some things you can do on "auto-pilot" or without thinking, while other tasks are mentally draining? Your thoughtful tasks are using your working memory (prefrontal context), while your repetitive, familiar and routine activities are using your basal ganglia, which doesn’t require conscious thought.

From David Allen’s definition of GTD:

It [GTD] includes:

• Capturing anything and everything that has your attention
• Defining actionable things discretely into outcomes and concrete next steps
• Organizing reminders and information in the most streamlined way, in appropriate categories, based on
  how and when you need to access them
• Keeping current and "on your game" with appropriately frequent reviews of the six horizons of your
  commitments (purpose, vision, goals, areas of focus, projects, and actions)

The only "right" way to do GTD is getting meaningful things done with truly the least amount of invested attention and energy.

Simply put, David Allen created the technique of building checklists, task lists, outcome lists. He applied it in practice and proved it works while making bunch of money. J.D. Meier found out why it works. This how our brain works.

My examples of checklists that work for me:

• Shopping. When I go without a checklist to a supermarket I either forget buying something and then spend time to return and buy it any way or buy something I did not plan thus spending extra money I could save.
• Application assessments. I am consultant and big part of my work is assessing applications written by others. I have checklists for any case. It streamlines my work, creates expected results. Save a lot of time on warm-ups and context switches.
• Time management. My calendar looks like big checklist. I block time for daily tasks on weekly basis. Each morning I open my calendar I know exactly what I am to do today. That way I know what my weekly outcomes I can anticipate.
• Task management. My inbox is my pipeline of my tasks. It is organized in such way that I know exactly what to do next. Always.
• Project management. I manage simple list of projects I am involved with – work, personal, social. I see many people have hard times to answer simple question “What projects you are involved currently?”. I do not have that problem.
• Outcomes management. I see many people having hard times to answer simple question “What are you doing? What is the end result?”. It is because many of us are task oriented. I am not. I am outcome oriented. This helps me make sure I achieve results and not just complete tasks. How? I have simple finite checklist of outcomes.

When it is on the list the mind is free and not overwhelmed.

Yesterday I was at customer’s and one guy approached me by the end of the day and asked me seeking for support “Do you have sometimes a feeling that you have 50 tasks to complete but by the end of the day you look back and realize you complete nothing?”. “No, I do not” was my answer.

I plan my day with simple checklists and then stick to it. As simple as that.

What checklists do you have?