Well, I hate to give you the news, but we are rounding the corner to complete the first two months of 2021. Is it my imagination, or has this arrived sooner than expected?
Time is obviously relative and depends on everything from your workload to family responsibilities to personal projects. The more you juggle, the more challenging it can be.
Of course, there are those amazing people who have superhuman schedules and task loads and soar through heavy workloads like a walk in the park.
Instead of hating them, let’s look at a specific strategy that they use that can make a a huge difference in managing your workload.
Fundamentally, large projects don’t belong on a to do list. Something like “create a knowledge management system” is obviously a mammoth initiative.
I can promise that if you put something like that on your to do list, it will never be done.
Instead, consider “chunks” of the project. Using the same example, a few items that could be included are: defining what goes into the database, how it will be managed, and who will be accountable for keeping it organized going forward.
These are all smaller projects that are components of the larger one. What needs to happen now is continuing to break down these sub-projects until you get to tasks. Once you have arrived at tasks, now you can start adding to your to do list.
Human nature is such that completing a task is much easier and infinitely more manageable than completing a project. After you’ve identified the tasks, you can delegate, combine, delete or reframe as needed.
When you approach larger initiatives in this manner, you won’t have the congestion of unstarted or incomplete projects cluttering your organization system. You can schedule tasks on a timeline and stay on that timeline.
Help your team by sharing this method with them. They will be more productive, and not feel bogged down by things that seem impossible to accomplish. Ultimately as their progresses rolls up to you, you will experience greater organizational success.
And when this happens, you won’t be frustrated when yet another month goes by with the frustration of “where did the time go?”
