Matthew Cornell

(An update: I am delighted to announce my guide, Where the !@#% did my day go? The ultimate guide to making every day a great workday, a downloadable PDF. I've updated, improved, and expanded the idea of daily planning with worksheets, answers to common questions, example plans, and unique experiments to get insights into how you use your time. It also ties in important topics like prioritizing, procrastinating, handling interruptions, and finishing your entire list - getting a "touchdown." Take a look! -- matt) For the last two weeks I tried an exacting method to help make solid daily progress, to which I added the extra spice of an accountability partner to keep me on track. The goal was to determine if the traditional productivity advice to plan each day ahead of time works better than an ad hoc "select the next action in the moment" one, as popularized by David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology, among others. This is meant to plug one of the 10 GTD "holes" I identified recently. Here's what I did: For two weeks I did a nightly planning session for the next day, which I then worked from. To plan, I printed my calendar and all my actions as a list, then went through a simple estimating and prioritizing process: Calculate available hours (workday minus calendar, personal time, and emptying inboxes), review your master task list, pick a handful to include, compare to available and adjust (painful!) During the day I used this list by 1) sticking to it (!), 2) tracking actual time spent on each action, and 3) logging interruptions (both internal and external) that took me off plan. For accountability I committed to sending check-in emails at the start and end of the day. The morning message was simply a list of what I wanted to accomplish that day (split into "must dos" and "like to dos"), and the evening one summarized what I actually did, with a short analysis. The result: Very helpful, and a real eye-opener. Two surprises: Emptying my inboxes always took at least two hours per day (the consequence of what I've invited into my life - notes from meetings and reading, ideas, and the usual "stuff of life"). And: Everything always takes more time than expected. A general guideline: Double estimates. (This should get better with feedback.) More specifically, daily planning was helpful because it forced me to think about what's important (prioritizing), what's possible (being realistic), how much time a task should take (estimating), and how much time the work actually took. Finally, it helped me focus by constraining choices, mostly by being a closed list [1] that I wasn't allowed to add to; my only edit choice was to check things off. Overall: Highly recommended. I'm now integrating this into my consulting as the main way to choose from a large master list of work to do. Future: I'll definitely keep doing this. The exercise/ritual builds in a comprehensive review, and makes explicit my action choices. What's more, there's a gold mine of information to use for positive feedback, including:

• more accurate estimates ala Extreme Programming [2],
• better focus (staying on target),
• more realistic about expectations, and
• more aware of and manage distractions.

Finally, there's a larger piece at work here - deciding what constitutes a "good workday." This is relevant because I found myself being a too-demanding self manager. At the end of many days I felt dissatisfied with my accomplishments, which is both discouraging (didn't I do enough?) and just plain wrong (I did a lot!) The estimated-vs-actual task information is helpful in working out what is realistic. And this leads to making those tough choices around that basic productivity question: What should I be doing? I'll have to re-read the wisdom of lowering my standards (see Great Time Management Ideas From The World Of Improv Wisdom, esp. the fifth maxim: Be Average). My Idea Collaborator Liza writes more about "What makes for a good work day?" at Power of One Blog: A Whole New Work Day. What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of this, including the experiments in daily planning you've tried.

References

• [1] For more see Are Daily To-do Lists And GTD Compatible? and Mark Forster's Do It Tomorrow.
• [2] I've written about XP and productivity here, including Is GTD The "Extreme Programming" Of Time Management?. And no, I'm not talking about the XP that is giving Eric Mack fits (heh heh heh).