Project Management

With email, instant messaging, texting and mobile phones, we’re always reachable. Being available always can be a problem. Here are a few tips on how to detach your self sometimes and get a little time to get work done. Your email client doesn’t need to be running when your computer is turned on. People sending email doesn’t expect an instant answer. Turn you mail client off, and start it when you switch to ”mail processing mode”. Turn it off again once your done. While the little pop-up notifications may be practical, they do break the attention away from the task being done, when the mail arrive.

Make a small list every day of the items you need to do. Use checkmarks and track your progress throughout the day an notice which thinks out side the list, eats you time away. Run with the system a week and use the result. First the list helps you notice how much you get done throughout the day. Most people seem to work more by the clock than by tasks. By planning tasks and noticing the task progress, you learn how much you handle on a day and hopeful get better at guessing how much time a task actually takes.

Every workplace seem to have a certain fondness for mettings, and some organizations seems to have so many meetings that they hardly have time to mind their business. There are a few tricks, which can help you make the most of meetings – or at least lessen the pain. If you’re invited to a meeting…

As a general rule expect at least two days notice before any meeting with more than 3 participants. Meetings arranged with a tighter deadline (unless some current event is the cause) are too often a joint coffee break than a meeting.

Generally I’m a fan of the GTD-thinking, and while I may not be following the system (yet anyway) I have picked up a few habits, which seems to help a lot. I’ll try to post a few items on some of the things, which seems to work for me. First item on that list, is the ”no morning meetings”. Whenever I manage my calendar, I make an effort to keep the first 30 to 60 minutes after I get to work free of meetings and other interruptions.

The past months my calendar at work seems to have been a pure mayhem of meetings, seminars and other activities away from my desk and the feeling of during actual work. There are however one trick, which seems to do magic – make a meeting without inviting anyone. In modern offices with enterprise calendaring systems such as Outlook&/Exchange setting up meetings is much easier than ever before (maybe too easy but that’s a topic for another post).