Scheduling
I’ve had one of those weeks when — out of nowhere — you get a sudden flurry of new tasks to do, which all have due dates for the end of this week, and all of which are important. Normally, I don’t schedule my day, or micro-manage tasks. I schedule what tends to be known as the ‘hard landscape’ (meetings, lectures, tutorials etc.), but just fit other tasks into the gaps left. However, many of the things I have to do this week will take more than a day to complete, and I need to make sure that I make progress on each of them every day, rather than being tempted into doing the easy ones first and then having a massive panic over the hard ones on Friday.
So I printed off a stack of David Seah’s excellent Emergent Task Planners, and have been using them to schedule work on my tasks during the week. There is an example of how to use the form on the page, but basically you list the things you want to work on today, estimate how long each will take (by colouring in blobs, which is quite fun in itself), then block out time periods as appropriate to do those tasks. I don’t think I’d do it every day, but it has been really useful and enlightening this week. I’m slightly hesitant about revealing what I’ve learned about myself, for fear that people will point at me, laugh and call me an incompetent wimp. But the hope that someone might say ‘me too!’ and make me feel better about myself, here we go:
- I am utterly useless at estimating how long a task will take. I’ve compared my initial estimate to the actual time I’ve taken, and I’ve underestimated by up to 100% in some cases. I’d like to think that this is because I’m an optimist, but it probably just means I’m bad at estimation.
- I can only work effectively on things that require a lot of concentration and deep thought for a maximum of 4 hours each day. True, I can spend the rest of the time getting little errands done (sending emails, organising course material etc.), but there’s only so much grant writing, manuscript writing and idea creation that I can do in one day. This is obviously bad news when you have a deadline looming.
- I’ve been doing a daily review while using the Emergent Task Planner, reviewing the day’s sheet at the end of the day, filling out the sheet for the next day by carrying over any uncompleted tasks, and adjusting my time estimates based on how appallingly inaccurate I’ve been today. This has been really useful, allowing me to hit the ground running the following day, and also getting things out of my head so that I can relax for a bit.
I’ll be really happy and really tired by the middle of next week.
1
Your empirical discovery is spot on, I recently read a paper/article on the subject. If you ask 90% of people how long it will take them to do something new; as opposed to a repeat of a known sequence; they will underestimate by 1/2, I see it all the time at work, and allow for it, the difficulty is remembering to include oneself in mistiming process.
by Jonathan Briggs @ 16/01/2007 8:59 pm • Permalink •
2
You seem to be in good company. If I remember correctly in "A Mathematician's Apology", Hardy said that he could only work for 4 hours a day.
by Dave @ 17/01/2007 8:54 am • Permalink •
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I agree in part. I find some tasks require concentration but are dull and repetative. These I can do for more than four hours but I break them up by emailing, grabbing a cuppa or reading a blog/news for 5-10 mins. But, if it requires thinking AND concentration then I also have the 4 hr limit. Oh woe! I like the idea of the ETP- I use the Palm Calendar in the same way.
by Ian @ 17/01/2007 1:38 pm • Permalink •
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Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.
by Jannine @ 17/01/2007 1:45 pm • Permalink •
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I find that with stuff I've done before, I underestimate but with stuff where I've never tried it before I overestimate by up to 100%. This rarely completely balances out a project but it does give me breathing space!
I can squeeze more concentration out of a day by doing dissimilar tasks - so I can do, say 3 hours CSS web design stylee stuff followed by 3 hours of technical writing but not 6 hours of technical writing. In practice I find 4 is about my limit on any given thing and 6hours total in a day.
by Jo @ 19/01/2007 12:24 pm • Permalink •
6
Thanks for the link to the Emergent Task Planners. What an interesting idea; I've always been slightly over-obsessed with organization/planning processes. How long have you been using this method?
by Debbie Ridpath Ohi @ 19/01/2007 4:34 pm • Permalink •
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Jonathan Briggs: Phew :-D That said, I have improved a bit with practice over the week.
Dave: Yay!
Ian: Yes, I was mostly talking about 'creative' tasks (for want of a better word); tasks where you have to generate something from nowhere, rather than following a process. As a scientist, I often have to spend hours doing dull and repetitive tasks that nevertheless require concentration, and I'm OK with that (particularly if I have an iPod or radio handy!)
Jannine: Hehe
Jo: Yes, breaking it up a bit can help, though there is a trade-off if switching tasks makes it harder to get back in to the difficult tasks again.
Debbie Ridpath Ohi: I've tried out a couple of David Seah's PCEO forms before, but this is the first time I've used the Emergent Task Planner - so I've been using it a week. As I said, I'm not sure that I'd use it routinely, but it's an enormous help when you have a very busy period.
by bsag @ 20/01/2007 6:25 pm • Permalink •
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Wait a minute...why aren't you using Tracks??
by mahalie @ 02/02/2007 6:14 pm • Permalink •
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mahalie: Oh, I am
It's just that I have many more actions in Tracks than I can get done in a day, so I was looking for a way to pick a few of those actions and schedule them within a day. To focus my attention on them. Actually, I've been thinking lately about how to handle that within Tracks. Anyway, Tracks is always the master list and my 'trusted system'.
by bsag @ 02/02/2007 10:30 pm • Permalink •
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