Getting things done

"Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results."
Source: Atomic Habits, James Clear.

List of lists

I've tried a few different ways of capturing what needs to be done and by when which I found critical if I wanted to be known as someone who can be trusted to get things done in the timeframe that is required or committed to. For me one of the best tools to do this is the Kanban board (you can read more about the Kanban board here) or to put it simply a list of lists. Kanban boards can be organized in a lot of different ways however I've found the following lists as being important:

• To Do
• In Progress
• Watch and Review (some people like to call this Waiting For), and
• Done

Here's an example of a board.

What is important to recognize is that, in a typical knowledge-work job, you can practically only work on a few things at any one point in time - these are the tasks that reside in the In Progress list - in my experience, 3 maybe 4 tasks depending on the task complexity and duration. As you complete tasks they move from In Progress to Done and you can then review your To Do list and select the next task to work on. The key point being that you recognize that you can only effectively work on a few things at a time. You can continue to capture things that need to get done in the To Do, which is important so that you don't forget things that need to be done, but you don't focus on those things until you bring them into your In Progress list. This prevents you from being overwhelmed by a constant stream of things that need to get done, and allows you to focus on completing a few things.

It follows that if you use this method that you need to decide on what to work on next. You might find yourself in roles, especially early in your career, where you are told what to do and by when (later its likely that you will be the one setting the priority, for yourself and others). If that is the case, you use this method to discuss with your manager, or whoever is assigning you work, the prioritization of work. You can clearly outline (together with time blocking, which I will discuss next) the things that you are working on, the time you estimate that they will take to get done and when they will be completed. You can also outline the other things that you've been asked to do that you will be working on next. This should be an open, two-way conversation where you both agree as to what should be worked on next. As a manager I really appreciated members of team that did this proactively. They would schedule regular time with me and say "Hey, I'm working on these things and you've asked me to do this new thing. I can start this new thing later in the week, is that OK with you? Or I can do this new thing first but I need to delay this other thing that I am working on which means I need to let someone know that it will not be delivered when I committed to do so.". A more experienced manager might use this conversation to suggest ways in which tasks could be done more quickly, suggest or assign others that can help with the work, or reprioritize as to what needs to be done next. You will need to flexible and this method I have outlined above in intended to be flexible and not a rigid approach to work.

Side note: It is likely that throughout your career you will find yourself in situations where your manager asks you to do something now and does not expect or care that something else will be delayed as a result. You can work longer hours to compensate and, in my opinion, this is OK from time to time but not OK if this becomes the norm. You will also have days and weeks where everything gets turned upside down - it could be an intense week of travel, it could be something that happens in your personal life - injury, sickness, etc. Stuff happens. A tool that I found useful was to remember that it is only one day or one week and that as long as you as reasonably consistent with following your medium and long term plans you will make progress on the things that are important to you.

Time blocking

"Our work culture’s shift toward the shallow (whether you think it’s philosophically good or bad) is exposing a massive economic and personal opportunity for the few who recognize the potential of resisting this trend and prioritizing depth. ... To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction. ... To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction."
Source: Deep Work, Cal Newport.

Making a list or a list of lists is one thing, but to get things done you need to allocate time and then do the work - which brings us to time blocking. Time blocking simply means to estimate how much time a task may take to get done and then to block that amount of time out in your calendar. The key to time blocking is to be realistic with the estimate of how long something will take to get done. Experts on this subject, such as Cal Newport, suggest that you take your estimate and double it, especially when you're early in your career and are inexperienced at estimating how long things actually take to get done. Even as someone who has been working for more than 30 years I still find myself on occasion not allocating as much time as is needed to get a thing done!

Things to keep in mind to make time blocking effective:

• You can't block out every minute of every day. I don't care how much of a robot you think you are, you need to allow time for breaks and you need to allow time for stuff that just happens.
• Be flexible. In modern knowledge work, spanning multiple geographies, it can be difficult to get everyone together for a meeting to collaborate on an idea or work through a problem. In those situations it pays to be flexible. Especially if you're just starting out in your career, be prepared to move your time blocks around.
• Some people block out specific times of the day to attend to email. While I applaud people that can do that it just doesn't work for me. Instead I make sure that I don't check email when I am working in a time block but allow several floating windows of time throughout the day to check email and to respond to emails that only require a quick reply.
• I like to read a lot of articles however it is easy to get into the trap of reading articles as they arrive in your inbox, Substack feed, web browser suggestions, etc. Another of Cal Newport's suggestions that I found effective is to set aside a time once or twice a week to catch up on articles to avoid getting dragged down the proverbial reading rabbit hole every time a new article is sent to your inbox. See also my tips for managing distractions below.
• Put things on auto-pilot. Catching up on articles once a week at a predefined time is one example of how to put things on auto-pilot. You know that you've set aside time once or twice a week to read and so you are not worried when you are going to get this reading done - you can forget about it. In the same way you might want to block out an hour every morning at the start of the day to exercise. See also the weekly plan below.

Planning over different time frames

To get anything done it helps to plan, and to plan over different time frames. In my experience, thinking in the following time frames is useful: annual or long term plan, weekly plan and daily plan. The annual or long term plan outlines at a high level the areas of focus and perhaps particular projects that you want to complete during the year.

For example, last year, I wanted to focus on:

• Security Learning,
• Launching a Blog,
• And maintaining a focus on health: surfing, climbing, walking, yoga, mindfulness and working out.

And of course this is an addition to the day-to-day responsibilities of my job and life in general. It can also be useful to think about breaking the long term or annual plan into smaller shorter term chunks, e.g. first half or second half of the year, or summer, winter, etc. The weekly plan comes next. To set up my weekly plan, I look back at the annual or quarterly plan, and remind myself of the things that I want to work achieve or continue to focus on. I then sketch out a weekly plan that integrates with the commitments of my job and life in general. For example an abbreviated version of my weekly plan looked like this last year:

Mornings
5.30 to 7.00 AM: Area: Health: Walk, workout, stretch or surf every morning.
Area: Health: Mindfulness - mediation, 5 mins each day.
Area: Security Learning - 1 hour, once a week.
Project: Work on Blog - 1 hour, once a week.

Friday
Catch up on articles - 1 hour, once a week.
Afternoon: plan next week.

Evenings
Read a book (fiction or non-fiction).

Try to make reading the default thing you do if you find yourself with spare time. If you spent just 15 minutes a day, over the course of 1 year, you could read about 10 books of 300 pages in length!

A few notes about the weekly plan:

Some weeks are particularly busy or different, e.g. a lot of travel. In those weeks I may not be able to stick with the weekly plan. Its in those moments that it is useful to think in terms of a month or a quarter. In other words there might be a day that I miss doing one thing or the other but over the period of a month or a quarter have I made progress on the areas or projects that I said I wanted to focus on.

Don't time block everything. Don't time block the evenings or weekends. Its way too onerous and you will burn out and not be able to be flexible to accommodate the usual unplanned things that just happen.

Managing distractions. There are so many things that can distract you from getting things done. There are the real time wasters, e.g., Instagram, YouTube, etc. And then there's the distractions that may be worthy of your attention but by addressing them in the moment that they enter your inbox or browser recommendations you break your focus on the activity that you are completing that moment. I can recommend one App: Pocket, and one method (borrowed from Cal Newport): Treating YouTube like old-school TV, for addressing some of these distractions in addition to removing social media or at least time constraining your use of the media - there's lots of good Apps and phone controls to manage that.

Pocket captures and saves articles, stories or posts on the web, and as an added bonus it strips out any ads. The benefit of using Pocket is that instead of reading an article the moment that it appears in your inbox or browser you can read them in one or a few time blocks each week. You will also find that by saving articles and coming back to them at a later when you have time to think clearly, you sometimes make the decision that the article is not terribly relevant to your projects or areas of focus.

YouTube contains some excellent content. The problem with YouTube is that it is attempting to steal large chunks of your attention through its suggestions of what to watch. It is better to treat YouTube like how we used to watch TV. Identify the shows that we like to watch, and then only watch those shows, e.g. in the evenings or on weekend.

Annual Review

For the past several years, I've made it a habit to conduct an annual review. I dive into where I spent my time, what I achieved, and identify the activities that either fueled my energy (more of these, please!) or drained it (time to cut these out!). This reflective process is incredibly valuable for setting my goals and aspirations for the year ahead, shaping both my annual and long-term plans.
The tools I use when performing my review are my calendar in Outlook and the Completed tasks in Todoist. A manual review of calendar appointments takes less time than you might think and also allows you to pull out the material things and ignore the smaller annoyances that can fill a day or week!
By examining how I spend my time, I can identify annual events and ensure they are added as recurring tasks in my personal or work To Do lists.
I can also use the insights from my annual review to update my resume. Updating my resume is often a challenging task, especially when reflecting on achievements over several years. However, the annual review helps highlight key accomplishments, making it easier to summarize and incorporate them into my resume.

Conclusion

Hopefully you've found the above useful. I should emphasize that this is what works for me. We are all wired differently and so different people will use different processes to get things done - some are able to get things done with no process at all! Find what works for you, and get things done!