Last week's Time Management Tuesday post dealt with an article from the Coaching Positive Performance website. So I went back to take a look at what other time management bits I could find over there and, lo, I came upon this post on decision-making. I promised back in August, 2012 that decision-making would be a long-term study topic here. And, look! I'm carrying through with that!
Why Is Decision-making Part of Time Management?
Decision-making takes time. And it's time when you're not doing anything except thinking about what you're going to do. It's time that doesn't produce much.
You want to spend as little time deciding what you're going to do as possible, so you can spend more time on real work. How to do that?
How To Decide What To Do?
The CPP folks talk about knowing which of the tasks you have to do will give you the biggest payoff. That means knowing your
goals and objectives. You have to have those in mind all the time. I like to make them at the beginning of the year and check in with them regularly. I've been doing it weekly this year.
The CPP people also talk about figuring out what you can do and how much time you have available. That's always going to change. And why? Because everything is
situational. Our situations are always changing, so we always have to work out what we can do with the time we have available.
A case in point? Last week's
Time Management Tuesday was
about managing sick time. With that we're definitely dealing with a specific situation, different from the situation we were dealing with before we got sick, and different from the situation we'll be dealing with after we're back to what passes for normal. Getting anything done in that particular situation requires making some decisions.
If All Else Fails...
Do something. Anything. Again as the CPP writer says, the only way you can fail is to do nothing at all.
Remember, that's the reason decision-making is an important part of time management. You don't want to spend too much of your available time thinking about what you're going to do instead of
doing something.
I decided what I was going to do this week yesterday morning. So now I'm off to do it.
Last week I had a I'm-coming-down-with-something-hysteria day and spent the morning in bed with my laptop in order to deal with that situation. So you can understand why How to Enjoy a Productive Day When You Feel Bad grabbed my attention when I stumbled upon it at Coaching Positive Performance.
The CPP blogger says, "One of the most important aspects of improving your time management is to enjoy a productive day even when you don’t feel like it. That does not mean that you have to complete a massive workload; it simply means that you have to complete some important work which takes you closer to your goals and objectives."
There's great stuff here:
- How to get started on a sick workday: Identify the three most important tasks you need to get done. These tasks relate to your most important goals. Then choose the three next most important tasks. After you identify that second group, you're not going to even think about them again that day. That's kind of brilliant. It eliminates a major distraction. You won't be overwhelmed by all the things you have to do.
- How to choose what to do first among your three chosen tasks: Do you choose the hardest task? Do you choose the easiest? You choose the one that is most important to your goal!
- How to work: In units!
One of the big negatives about being sick, besides being, you know, sick, is the stress of seeing work pile up. Thinking of sick days as another
situation we can learn to manage is a huge help.
You know how I'm always talking about how we can't set hardcore schedules, we must adapt to the ever changing situations that are our lives. Well, I am. For me, this week is a case in point.
A family member made a quick and successful trip to the ER this weekend. While he is well on the road to recovery, he is recovering, and I'll be helping out with some of his elder care responsibilities and other life chores. This week just happens to be one in which I had appointments digging into my work time, anyway.
- I know I can't do everything I normally do in this particular situation, and I don't enjoy trying and failing to do so as much as I used to. Feeling busy and overwhelmed doesn't really attract me much.
- I think I might be better off focusing on just a couple of work-related things this week so I can try to make some real progress on them instead of struggling with a number of things and not getting too far with any of them. Practically speaking, I think it's a better move. Emotionally it will be, too. Or not.
- I've decided that in this type of situation, blogging may not be the best use of my time. Even though I do most of my blogging in the evening, I have a promotional plan for next month that I could be working on then that might be a better work choice.
Thus, I will be back on Friday to report how things went.
A few years ago, a friend told me how much she loved working outdoors. I said, "Yeah, I like it, but only for a half hour or so. It's not so much that I don't have the physical endurance. I get bored."
"But there's so much to do," she replied. "When I get tired of doing one thing, there's always something else I can work on."
She was right. I've gotten a lot more yardwork done since I've followed her work plan. Just this past Sunday, I put in ninety minutes outside, starting with weeding and thinning one of the perennial beds to the right, moving to the back of the house to supervise pruning some shrubs, and heading out front to do some more perennial work.
Very nice, Gail. But this is a blog about writing and children's literature, not gardening. Make a connection. Soon.
I realized Sunday morning that I'd been using the yardwork model for writing last week. And I got a lot done. I started a new piece of flash fiction, which I wasn't expecting to do. I began revising a very old piece of fiction, which I wasn't expecting to do. I read an old article on revising short stories that was absolutely fantastic and did some more work on both those manuscripts. I did some more work on revising my website, which I was expecting to do, and started roughing out a new workshop. I'm not sure whether or not I expected to do that. I made a submission, which I was expecting to do. I began working on the book length manuscript I made so much progress on during May. I've continued this work method this week.
This Yardwork Model, as I'm calling it, is one of those
situational time management things. It's only going to work in certain situations:
- You have no deadlines, contractual or otherwise, that you should be focusing on full-time until they're met
- You are careful to make sure you're putting more of your attention into creative rather than reactive work
I think that if the Yardwork Model works for someone, it's because it's another variation of the
unit system. Every time you change tasks, it's like starting a new forty-five minute unit of work. Your mind reboots, thinking it's starting over at the beginning of the day when your impulse control is at its strongest. And thus you're able to make progress on each new task.
Concerned about not finishing anything? Tomorrow you do this all over again, and the next day, too. You make progress on every task you take on.
And what if you get to the point on one of them that you want to stick with it? That's a new situation. So adapt and keep working.
Last week I wrote about trying to find ways to manage time and work while recovering from health problems. That's definitely an example of situational time management. With any luck, for most of us health problems are a temporary situation that we have to work through like so many other changing situations in our work lives.
This past week at Writer Unboxed, Lydia Sharp described another situation to work through, one that occurs with more frequency, writing with seasonal affective disorder. There are times of the year--situations--when she is able to work better than at others. For her, the year is broken into quarters. She has a quarter when she is most likely to be able to generate new work and a quarter when it's best to revise.
If you read Sharp's post and the comments that follow it, you'll see that she and some others manage their writing time by recognizing that their situation will change over the course of the year and planning what they'll do during the different seasonal situations. One writer even determines whether she'll work on fiction or nonfiction by time of year.
Notice, also, the impact of the "write-every-day" and "Butt in Chair" philosophies on people who are trying to manage writing time while dealing with this type of situation. Not only are they not helpful, they often lead writers who just can't work that way to feel guilty.
I've written here frequently about situational time management and the need to constantly adapt how we manage time to the new situations writers (and all people who work for themselves) are always finding themselves in. Last week author Laurie Calkhoven wrote at Smack Dab in the Middle
about authors who work regularly for hire and their need to set criteria for the jobs they'll take on. But I think her post also was a case study in how a writer's work situation can change and how rapidly it can change.
During a period when Laurie was working on a book of her own, she was offered a freelance job with a deadline that was only a month away. She accepted the job on a Friday, meaning her work situation for the next four weeks had suddenly changed dramatically. Then on Saturday she became ill. On Monday she had to quit the job she had accepted only three days before. Suddenly, her work situation had changed again.
I usually write here about more modest situational changes for writers: dropping everything to respond to a request for a proposal or an appearance inquiry or having to dedicate time to promotion, for instance, instead of generating new work. (Reactive vs. creative time.) But authors who do work for hire face these more extreme situational changes. Early this fall a Facebook friend posted about having just accepted a writing project with a Thanksgiving deadline and last spring I met an author/illustrator who had accepted a job that meant her next two years would be tied up illustrating another person's books. These are changes in work situation that can be sudden and intense, and the use of the author's time while in those situations has a big impact on their work output.
On Friday, May 3, I taught a Situational Time Management workshop at the New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Conference. This post contains information related to the writers and people I referred to during the workshop and is here for the benefit of participants and anyone else who is interested. The author materials are listed in the order they appeared in during the workshop.
Francesco Cirillo, The Pomodoro Technique
Ellen Sussman, A Writer's Daily Habit: Four Steps to Higher Productivity, Poets & Writers, Nov./Dec., 2011
Herbert Benson, The Breakout Principle Article about: Oprah
Dorothy Duff Brown Post about with links to videos: Original Content
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct Articles and book excerpts Psychology Today blog
Timothy Pychyl, The Procrastinator's Digest Psychology Today blog
Alan Lakein, How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life About the Swiss Cheese Method of Time Management
Susan K. Perry, Writing in Flow
Frank Gilbreth Lillian Gilbreth Frank B. Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, Cheaper by the Dozen
Hersey Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory
Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit
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